God of the Open Door
Acts 16:6-15
Do you know what a sliding-doors moment is? It refers to a seemingly mundane decision or event that proves to have life-altering consequences. The phrase comes from the 1998 movie Sliding Doors starring Gwyneth Paltrow. The movie features two parallel timelines that diverge based on whether Paltrow’s character makes or misses a subway train.
Years ago I had my own sliding-doors moment, which also involved transportation, although in my case I didn’t miss a subway train but rather a bus. It was the first day of class of my final semester in seminary. I was walking from campus to the bus stop to catch the shuttle bus back to my apartment, but I was too late. I arrived just in time to see the bus pulling away. Rather than wait a half hour in the January New Jersey cold for the next bus, I made my way over to the computer lab, which was just steps from the bus stop, thinking I’d kill some time online.
I thought I’d peruse the CLC, the PC(USA)’s online job board. Mind you, I hadn’t even posted my Ministry Information Form, the pastor’s version of a résumé. I wasn’t far enough along in the ordination process for that. Perhaps you’ve heard that Presbyterians like our orderly processes. For my ordination to be performed decently and in order, I would first need to become certified to receive a call before I could officially seek a position.
Besides, I wasn’t seriously looking for a church position. I already had a job waiting for me after graduation. Regional Medical Center in Trenton, NJ, had offered me a position in their chaplaincy training program. After a year’s residency, I would become certified as a hospital chaplain.
Scrolling through the job listings on the CLC, and not finding any that appealed to me, my eye was drawn to a link that said “Overseas Opportunities.” Clicking on that took me to a page with job listings in various countries, one of which was a church in South Korea that was seeking a pastor to lead the English ministry. I may not have been seeking a church position, but this one checked every box on my list—urban, mission-oriented, and most important of all—it said that the church would consider those still in the ordination process. I felt like the job was listed just for me.
In what I took to be a fortuitous sign, when I emailed the listing to my wife Sandy, she wrote back, and I quote, “Call, call, call me!!! I know the senior pastor.” Not only was the church well known in Korean-American circles, the senior pastor had once been one of Sandy’s professors at a Korean-language seminary in Queens.
To keep a long story from becoming much longer (and trust me, there’s a lot more to tell), I’ll summarize the rest by saying that, violating all proper Presbyterian procedure, I applied for the position, and after some back and forth that lasted nearly two months, I was offered the job.
I then had to go before the Presbytery of New York City and explain why they should approve this call even though I myself had not been approved to seek a call. Somehow, every obstacle that might have stood in the way fell like a line of dominoes. My ordination was expedited, and the way was clear for me to go to Korea.
Sometimes I wonder, “What if?” What if rather than missing the bus and going to the computer lab and seeing the job listing, I instead caught the bus and therefore never went to the computer lab and therefore never saw the job listing? Would I have become a chaplain and never gone into church ministry? It’s an unanswerable question.
I tell this story from my own life not because it’s unique but because it’s mine. We all have such moments in our lives, moments when we planned to go in one direction but then by circumstance or by decision we took a different path. This is not to say that one direction was ordained by God and the other therefore bound for misery and failure. God does not say, Well, I wanted you to turn right, but you turned left, so now you’re on your own. Good luck!
God doesn’t work that way, thank God! God is with us no matter what direction we choose. But there are times when God nudges us in a particular direction because God wants to bring about something wonderful.
That’s what we see in today’s reading from Acts 16. Paul and his companions, Silas and Timothy, want to go in one direction, but the Holy Spirit takes them in an entirely different direction. They set out from Antioch intending to make their way to the Roman province of Asia. Not Asia as in the Far East but rather what is now western Turkey. However, we’re told that the Holy Spirit forbade them from speaking the word in Asia, so they attempt to go to the region of Bithynia, in what is now northwestern Turkey. But again, we’re told that the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.
Paul, Silas, and Timothy then make their way to Troas, a port city on the western coast of Asia Minor. During the night Paul receives a vision. In his vision, a man from Macedonia pleads with him to come there and help them.
Paul does not hesitate. Convinced that he has been called to Macedonia, he, Silas, and Timothy set sail first thing in the morning and cross the Aegean Sea. They land in Neapolis and then journey inland to Philippi, a prominent city and a Roman colony. Philippi was named for Philip, the father of Alexander the Great who once ruled an empire as large as Rome’s. In the first century Philippi was not only a Roman colony but also home to many retired Roman soldiers. It was like the Palm Beach of the Roman Empire.
Last week we heard of the conversion of Cornelius, a Roman soldier and the first Gentile convert. Now the Holy Spirit is directing Paul to bring the gospel directly to the gentiles.
The first thing I want to draw our attention to is just how open Paul is to God’s direction. In some of his letters Paul comes across as a man who sees the world in black and white. He’s someone who doesn’t hesitate to correct churches that he believes have gone astray from the gospel.
Even when he was introduced to us two weeks ago as Saul, the proud persecutor of Christians, we saw that same binary worldview. There was the righteous way of those who followed the law of Moses, and the blasphemous way of those who professed Christ as Messiah. Paul saw himself as someone with a mandate to protect the law of Moses against this blasphemy of a crucified messiah. Right and wrong. Black and white. There were no shades of gray in Paul’s world.
Sometimes God will close one door—usually the door that we want to go through—only to open another door—often one that we hadn’t even considered.
But in this passage Paul shows a remarkable openness to the leading of the Holy Spirit. When the Lord places obstacles along the way to Asia, Paul doesn’t say to Silas and Timothy, “Look, it’s Asia or bust.” Instead, he takes the hint and allows the Holy Spirit to take the wheel. And the Spirit speaks to him through a vision and steers him to Macedonia.
Let me reiterate what I said earlier. I’m not suggesting that when we come to a fork in the road, metaphorically speaking, that there is necessarily a right way and a wrong way. As a wise Yogi once said, when you come to a fork in the road, take it. God will be with you whichever way you choose to go. But sometimes God will close one door—usually the door that we want to go through—only to open another door—often one that we hadn’t even considered.
And so Paul and company find themselves in Philippi, a place they had not planned on visiting. Showing just how deep into gentile territory they are, the only gathering of Jews they find on the sabbath is outside the city gate by the river. It doesn’t appear that there is even a synagogue in this Roman colony. The location where the Jewish faithful have gathered is called simply “a place of prayer.”
In this place of prayer Paul and his companions sit down and speak with a group of women. To our 21st-century ears this might sound unremarkable, but in a time when men and women were separated in worship, Paul’s openness to engage with these women whom he doesn’t know would have been shocking. Remember, Paul was a Pharisee, a religious conservative who upheld a strict interpretation of the law of Moses.
But in Christ, everything has changed. As Paul will one day write in his letter to the Galatians, in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, there is no male or female because all are one in Christ (Gal. 3:28).
Among the faithful gathered in the place of prayer is a woman named Lydia. She is a gentile, but as was the case with Cornelius whom we heard about last week, she is drawn to Judaism.
That’s not the only mark of distinction about her. She is also a businesswoman. She is a merchant, a dealer in purple cloth. Purple dye was a rarity in the ancient world, and purple cloth was therefore expensive. No mention is made of Lydia’s income, but it’s possible she was quite wealthy, which is made all the more astounding when you realize she doesn’t appear to have a husband, at least one who is alive. The household of which she is a part is referred to as her household. She invites Paul to “come and stay at my home.”
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Those biographical details are interesting, but the reason that we remember Lydia today, the reason that she appears in the book of Acts, is that she receives the gospel as being for her—a gentile and a woman—and in doing so she becomes the first follower of Christ on the European continent. Before Martin Luther, before Thomas Aquinas, before Constantine, before any pope or any of the early church fathers, there was Lydia.
And theologically speaking, let’s note how Lydia comes to receive the gospel as good news for her. Verse 14 reads in part, “The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.” Lydia was already a seeker, someone drawn to the God of Israel, but it was the Lord who opened her heart to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ. Similarly, Paul was attuned enough to the Holy Spirit to accept being rerouted in a direction other than the one he had wanted to go, but it was the Lord who guided his steps to a riverbank in faraway Philippi.
Did Paul know that when one door was closed to him another door would open upon an entire continent? I doubt it. He simply followed where the Holy Spirit led.
Did Lydia know when she went to the riverbank that morning that she would become a founding mother of a faith that would one day upend the empire? No, she was just seeking the God who was intent on meeting her right where she was.
And so it is with us when we look back on our lives and see, with the clarity that comes with time, how our steps were guided by the God who opens doors to new understanding, new relationships, and newness of life.