Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 9, 2010

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

We just met a woman named Lydia in our reading from Acts. She’s a woman of the ancient world. She lived a long, long time ago in a place far away in a culture very different from ours. Acts gives us only a few lines telling us about her, but we actually learn a good deal about her in these few lines. She was a Greek. She came from a Greek city with a difficult name in Asia Minor. When we meet her she is living in Philippi. Philippi was a city in northeastern Greece, and it was a Roman colony. Lydia lived among both her own people the Greeks and among the Romans, the almighty rulers of the entire known world at that time. She was a businesswoman. She dealt in purple cloth. The color purple was reserved for the elite, the wealthy and the powerful in her world. Her customers were wealthy and influential. She was successful. We know that because she owned her own house, something only the wealthy could do. She was a person of worth and substance in her world, someone the world would have taken quite seriously.

Yet Lydia’s successful life among the rich and powerful did not satisfy her. She lived with an unfulfilled spiritual longing. She was looking for something more, something deeper, something higher than her material success could give her. We know that because we are told that she was a “worshipper of God.” That doesn’t mean that she worshipped the numerous Greek gods. It means that she was what is elsewhere called a “God-fearer.” The God-fearers were pagans, Greeks mostly, who were attracted to Judaism but who hadn’t converted to Judaism. They hadn’t converted to Judaism because of its strict dietary laws and because of the law of male circumcision, something the Greeks found both onerous and pointless. It’s easy enough to see why these people had not converted fully to Judaism—especially if you happen to be male, if you get my drift.

The more interesting question is why these Greek God-fearers were attracted to Judaism in the first place. The simple fact is that Greek religion left a lot to be desired. The Greek gods and goddesses—Zeus, Apollo, Athena, and the rest—were highly anthropomorphic. They were merely men and women writ large, with very human virtues and, especially, vices. Beyond that, they cared nothing for humans. They offered no hope, no solace, no vision of a better world. And they made no demands on people other than the demand that they be offered regular sacrifices, which functioned more than anything else to appease them and keep them off people’s backs. Having a Greek god your life was often not at all a good thing. These gods had no moral code, neither one that applied to themselves nor one they expected people to obey. Ancient Greek religion can fairly be called spiritually barren. It is not too surprising that people were looking for something more.

Judaism offered people everything that Greek religion lacked. It had only one God; and although that God had a masculine name and was addressed as he, by the first century CE the God of Judaism infinitely transcended any human form. He was, as the Gospel of John says, Spirit. He was the infinite Creator of all that is. Beyond that, he actually cared about and for people. He was an ethical God. He acted ethically himself, remaining true to his covenantal commitment to the people even when they were not true to him. He demanded ethical, moral behavior from the people. He was a God of right and wrong, which the Greek gods were not. He taught people a moral and spiritual way of living, which the Greek gods did not. And he offered hope, solace, and a vision of how life should and could be lived in a way the Greek gods never did. Given the manifest shortcoming of Greek religion it’s not hard to understand why a lot of Greeks were attracted to Judaism.

Lydia was one of them; and when she heard Paul’s proclamation of a type of Jewish faith that had all of the virtues of classical Judaism but that didn’t have the difficult requirements of the Jewish law, she listened eagerly. She converted to the Way. She accepted Jesus Christ as Lord. The Christian form of the Jewish message (and that’s what Christianity was—and is) spoke to her. It met her spiritual longing. It met her spiritual need in a way nothing else ever had. Lydia became a Christian. A lot of God-fearers became Christians.

So am I just giving you a history lesson this morning? You know it’s something I am hardly loath to do. I’ve given you some history yes, but that’s not really what this sermon is about. You see, as surprising as it may seem, Lydia, that woman of ancient Greece, is actually a lot like a great many people among us today. She had wealth and high social standing. She was “successful” in the way that her culture defined success. So many Americans today are wealthy, or at least aren’t poor. They have money enough and some to spare. They are socially respectable, so many of them. They are “successful” in the ways our culture defines success.

And like Lydia so many of our people today have an unfulfilled spiritual longing. People today are searching, searching for something more, something deeper, something higher than their material success and social standing can give them. We see it our popular culture. Films with mythic themes are box office smashes. Think of Star Wars and Avatar. Books on religious subjects are best sellers, even if they are books like those of the so-called new atheists who attack religion because the only religion they know is bad religion. New Age spirituality sells. Angels sell. People among us really are seeking for that something more, that something deeper, that something higher that they know that they lack, if often only on a subconscious level.

The religion of her culture didn’t satisfy Lydia. It didn’t meet her spiritual need. The most common religion in our culture doesn’t satisfy most people among us to day. It doesn’t meet their spiritual need. That religion is Christianity, but it is a particular and peculiar type of Christianity. It is Christianity with all the mystery driven out of it. It is Christianity reduced to mere barren facts. It is Christianity that spends much of its energy judging and condemning others and demanding adherence to a rigid moral code that borders at times on the inhuman. We may think of the big churches that preach this kind of Christianity as “successful,” but they reach only a small percentage of Americans. They turn most Americans off, just as we can assume that ancient Greek religion turned Lydia off.

Paul’s word of a new faith touched Lydia and met her need. It was a Christian word. It was a Jewish word adapted to the needs of the Greeks. A Christian word can touch people among us today and meet their need too. But it needs to be a different kind of Christian word. It needs to be a Christian word adapted to the needs of people today. It needs to be a Christian word that revels in mystery. It needs to be a Christian word that glories in myth and finds in story a truth much deeper than mere fact. It needs to be a Christian word of life, life for all people and not just for Christians. Real life, not life forced to conform to some ancient understanding of human nature just because that ancient understanding shows up in the Bible.

So many Americans, and Europeans too, reject Christianity because the Christianity they know does not meet their needs. It doesn’t speak to them. It doesn’t touch them. But we know that our great Christian spiritual tradition, properly reformed and better understood, properly adapted to meet the needs of people today, has the power to satisfy the spiritual longing that so many people feel. That’s why a lot of us are here. It’s why I’m here. Our country and the world need the Christian message that we proclaim, a message of an Open and Affirming church, a message of a loving and compassionate God, a message of a truth that is so much more, so much deeper, so much higher, so much truer than simple fact. So let us not be shy about proclaiming that message in this place and in God’s world. The world needs to hear it. No faith tradition is for everyone, and there are many who Christianity will never reach. But properly reformed and better understood it can reach a lot more people than it does today. There are a lot of Lydias out there. May we be able to reach a least some of them with a Christianity that meets their need and brings them fulfillment, just as Paul’s word to Lydia did so long ago in that place so far away. Amen.