Last Sunday our Christian brother and Associate Pastor, Mark Swarner, said goodbye to us by preaching from the first lines of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the brand new church in the Roman city of Philippi. Mark’s message was poignant and meaningful to me personally for two reasons, the first being the simple fact that it is never easy to bid farewell to a valued and trusted colleague in ministry. So let me first say a word about that today.

It is natural and right that we would grieve Mark’s departure much as we would grieve the loss of any close friend from our day-to-day fellowship. We will miss him and his family and there will be times that we will desperately wish he were still among us. But we will also move on from here to see what God has in store for us in the next season of church life. The average associate pastorate in this country lasts somewhere around 2 years, so the more than 4 years we had with Mark was truly a blessing. And while we will miss all the gifts he brought to ministry here, we will also be enriched and enlivened by the gifts that his successor will bring to us. The coming and going of staff members and church members alike is a bittersweet thing: we love to welcome the new, but we hate to say goodbye to the old. And yet, the new would never take place were it not for the old moving on. We can be happy for Mark’s new assignment and proud for whatever small role we played in his growth and development as a pastor, and we can take great comfort in knowing that even though he is away from us, he is merely taking up residence in another part of the body of Christ. Above all, we must always focus on this defining fact: that it is God’s will for this transition to take place, and there is nothing better for us than to be within God’s will.

In the next few weeks and months, our Elders and senior leadership will go through a very typical and normal evaluation process to determine our best steps forward from here. We will look at the possibility of bringing on an interim associate or program director, and we will conduct a study of our future staffing needs. Mark’s departure comes at a time when our church is poised for some new initiatives in ministry and for a season of development of our physical facility. Let me assure you that both of these will continue at full pace, and I for one am very excited and eager to enter this next phase of our congregation’s life. God has great things in store for us here! We have much work to do for his Kingdom and much growth to enjoy in our relationship with Christ. God is leading it and when God is involved there is nothing we can do to stop it.

The other reason that Mark’s message last week was special to me was because it was preached from a letter written to a church whose actual location some of us had just visited less than two weeks earlier. On Monday, June 18, a group of 40 folks, some from this church, including yours truly and his wife, sailed into the modern Greek city of Kavala, and then we made the brief journey inland to the ancient city of Philippi. We walked on marble stones that formed part of the Roman road called the Via Egnatia, the same road that Paul had walked. We worshiped by the same stream that Paul had visited, by which Lydia had worshiped and in which Lydia and her household were baptized. We saw the ruins of the Roman marketplace and theatre, as well as the ruins of a church built several centuries after Paul’s visit, and the home of the bishop of that church, with large clay pots still sitting in their places on the floor. We saw Paul’s name written in Greek in the tile mosaic on the floor of a smaller church. And the whole time, what had seemed so long ago and so far away, now seemed not so distant, not so old. There are lessons to be learned, spiritual truths to be discovered once again, spiritual power to be tapped into once again, as we go back nearly 2000 years to the story of the beginning of the Christian church in Philippi.

Let me briefly set the stage for you of what was going on in our passage from Acts. Paul and Silas have traveled through Asia Minor, now modern Turkey, and along the way they have met and enlisted Timothy in their mission work. They have come through the ancient city of Troas, just a short distance from legendary Troy, and there met up with Luke, the physician and eventual author of both a gospel and the book of Acts. From there, they have sailed across the Aegean Sea, leaving the continent of Asia, and arrived at the ancient city called Neapolis, now called Kavala, which is on the continent of Europe. When Paul and his associates set foot on land in Neapolis, a whole new chapter in the growth of the church was begun. Neapolis was just a port city. Philippi was the major town, just inland, where Rome had established an important colony. That is where Paul meets Lydia.

Lydia was from Thyatira, a city back in Asia, modern Turkey, not all that far from Troas, Luke’s home. Lydia was involved in multinational business. She sold purple cloth which was produced from purple dye made in Thyatira. Purple dye was very expensive stuff, which made Lydia a wealthy and influential woman, so much so that she had a home staffed with servants and large enough to host Paul’s little group and eventually, the first Christian church in Europe. Here, by the way, is the purple t-shirt we all wore on the day we visited Philippi.

Paul’s business strategy for spreading the gospel was simple: go to a new town, find the Jewish meeting place, or somewhere that people were talking about religion if there were no Jews, and start sharing about Jesus Christ. In Philippi there apparently were not the required 10 Jewish males to begin an official synagogue, so the Jews there worshiped by the river, convenient for the ceremonial washings. Lydia was herself a Gentile who nevertheless worshiped the God of the Jews. And when Lydia heard about Jesus, she believed and converted. Paul baptized her and those of her household in the river, and then she welcomed Paul and his fellow travelers into her home. Later, Paul and Silas would be thrown in prison in Philippi, but after their miraculous escape, Lydia again welcomed them. And, later on we learn that the fledgling Christian church is meeting in Lydia’s home. Lydia is the first Christian convert in Europe, and her home becomes the first Christian meeting place. Not bad for a peddler of purple.

Those are the simple facts of what happened in Philippi. But there are deeper dynamics here that you and I must not fail to notice. These deeper realities have much to say to us today about not just ancient Christians, but about modern Christians; not just about the ancient Church, but about the modern Church.

Lydia was open to God, a seeker after spiritual life. Because of that, she was open to hearing and believing the truth about Jesus Christ. Everywhere around us are people who are searching for spiritual truth. Sometimes they don’t know that is what they are looking for, sometimes they are consciously looking but in the wrong places. And we ourselves, are looking too, always looking and searching for deeper truth about the truth we already know in Jesus. To know God a person must first be open to God.

To discover truth about God requires more than being open. It also requires someone to share that truth. Like any form of information, truth must be transmitted. In Paul and Lydia’s day, that meant that someone had to travel and teach. Paul had accepted that role in his life, the role of teacher and preacher about Christ, so that other people could know God. And Paul used what is still the most effective method: personal contact. Yes, he wrote letters. But they were secondary means. Yes, we can publish pamphlets or broadcast on television or iPods. But the primary way people learn the truth about God is through direct contact with other people who already know God.

Lydia was open to God and Paul was there to share God with her. And so she was baptized in the river as a visible sign of her new belief in Jesus Christ. Here, by the way, is a small bottle of water that I drew myself from the stream in which Lydia and the others were baptized. It will take its place on my shelf beside the 3 bottles of water I have from the Jordan River, where Jesus was baptized. Jesus knew the deep importance and spiritual power of physical symbols, and so one of his last instructions was for us to baptize. The church has been doing that ever since. We have done so today. There are lots of rituals and customs and practices that have come and gone over the centuries of the life of the church. We have used all kinds of music, buildings, costumes, and art. But in the end, only a few things are non-negotiable and non-changeable when it comes to being a Christian church, things like the Lord’s Supper, the preaching and teaching of God’s Word, and baptism.

When Lydia accepted Christ and entered the Christian life, she began to use her own particular skills and resources to support the Christian community. She opened her home to the missionaries from the east, what we call hospitality. She almost certainly contributed financial support as Paul and the others continued their travels, something to which Paul alludes in his letter. She hosted the meetings of the church in her home. Without her and others like her, the church would not have survived and the good news about Jesus would not have taken root and changed lives. I don’t know if they used the term back then, but today we would call her “a pillar of the church,” because the church is built of people. That is the way it was back then, and the way it still is today. The church is all about the power and reality of God becoming real in the lives and work and ministry of people. God was at work in the world back then, changing and redeeming and transforming the world. God was working through Paul and Lydia. And God is not finished.

There is today a small amphitheater built beside the stream just outside Philippi, where Christians from around the world come to remember Paul and Lydia. Twenty days ago I preached there, from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. We had communion there, too. And we all took off our shoes and waded through the stream, remembering our baptisms. On that morning, we had to wait a few minutes before we could take our seats beside the stream, because a group of Korean Roman Catholics were already there. We had three Presbyterian ministers in our group, all dressed in purple t-shirts and khaki shorts. The Koreans had a priest in full vestments, a deacon in full vestments, and an altar boy, in full vestments. We were underdressed! As we waited our turn, the Koreans began singing songs. We couldn’t understand the words, and we didn’t know the tunes, so we just listened. But then they began singing another song, in words we still didn’t understand, but this was a song we could sing with them in our own words: “Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee, how great thou art, how great thou art.”

Lydia and Paul probably spoke Greek to each other. Most likely they worshipped in Hebrew. T-shirts hadn’t been invented yet. How Great Thou Art hadn’t been written yet. But the same Jesus who was present with them beside the stream that day was also present with us. The same Spirit was moving. The same God was at work.

People come and go in the life of the church. Houses of worship are built and used and eventually they wear out. The way we dress, the way we speak, the way we sing, the way we do everything evolves and changes. But God is the same yesterday and today and tomorrow. And God works the same way yesterday and today and tomorrow. People still need God. People still need to share about God. People still need to come to Christ in their hearts and in the symbolic and spiritual reality of baptism and communion. People still need to participate in and contribute to the continuing life of Christ in his Church. God is still at work. These are lessons we learn from Lydia. And these are the same needs that propel our mission and our ministry and our personal discipleship to Christ today. The people and places and all the other details will change, but God is still building his kingdom on earth. I want to be part of that. I hope you want to be part of it, too.

Amen.

ⁱ From the book Einstein, by Walter Isaacson, as quoted in Time magazine, April 16, 2007, p. 46-47.
ⁱⁱ John Leith
ⁱⁱⁱ George Washington Carver, as quoted by Paul G. Humber, GodCreatedThat.com, p. 5, as retold by Max Lucado in Cure for the Common Life, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 2005, p. 11-12.