The lectionary reading from 2 Corinthians is straightforward. The congregation in Macedonia has come to the aid of the congregation in Corinth and Paul is very happy about this show of support. I’ll get back to that in a minute. The really interesting part of the story for me is the back story.
In the 16th chapter of Acts, we learn that Paul receives a vision in the night of a person in Macedonia calling to him, saying: “Come over and help us.” The text doesn’t say what help they expected. Supposedly this call from Macedonia marks the beginning of the Christian movement in Europe, but we know from the text that, that cannot be the case. The person reaching out to Paul in this vision is a Christian, and after Paul arrives in Macedonia, he meets a woman named Lydia who has already been baptized. So, by 50 CE there is already a Christian movement in Macedonia before Paul arrived. That’s kind of a picky point but it helps tell my story.
I think from the beginning the Christian movement was aiming to build a new society. Paul sometimes calls it a new creation. I think before Jesus died and certainly after he died, his followers fanned out across the Roman Empire to create a counter cultural movement. Roman society was a tightly structured hierarchy. Jewish society as very Temple focused with the priestly class in charge of things. The early church was an egalitarian movement. The goal was to create an open and inclusive society. The people of Macedonia wanted to have an experienced community organizer to come and help them. That’s what this text in Acts is about.
When Paul arrives, he goes to the city of Philippi, which is the largest and most important city, and he stays there several days. One day he goes outside the city wall to pray, and he meets Lydia and a group of women who have also gathered to pray. She tells Paul and his friend Silas that she is a Christian and she invites them to stay at her house. The text says, “She persuaded us.” The text also suggests that she was an independently wealthy woman who ran an import business. She was a dealer in purple cloth. She was a merchant. She owned her own home and ran her own business.
The text says that one day Paul and Silas were met by a slave girl who had a spirit that allowed her to predict the future. She earned a lot of money for her owners. For several days she followed Paul and Silas around town. Everywhere they went she went. And she shouted, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” This went on for serval days and finally Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and told her to shut up. Well, he didn’t actually say that. The text says that he commanded the spirit to come out of her.
After that the owners of the slave girl got angry because they realized she was not going to be earning any more money for them. So they complained to the city officials and told them that Paul and Silas were Jews and they were throwing the city into an uproar and advocating unlawful customs. So the magistrates had Paul and Silas arrested, beaten, and thrown into jail.
I think sometimes we read the Bible and we don’t know enough about the history to really get a sense of what’s going on and why it matters. In one scenario, Paul went to Philippi in 50 CE to help build the Christian movement, then went to Corinth two years later to help start the church there, and two years after then wrote the letter to the church in Galatian. In that letter he talks about the church as a new creation in which we are no longer Jews or Greeks, slave or free, male or female, but we are a new creation in Christ. I think when he wrote those words, he was probably remembering his experience in Philippi when he was staying at the home of Lydia, and then later freed the slave girl. And when the people in Macedonia learned that Paul was starting a new church in Corinth, they were only too glad to help because they remembered the time he visited them two years earlier.
The message is twofold. First, I want to say that the early church networked. The community in Philippi was connected to the community in Corinth and later to congregations in what is now Turkey. These congregations learned from each other and found ways to support one another. If there is to be a new chapter for Pine Valley, we are going to have to find ways to build networks across lines of race, gender, and all the rest.
The second part of the lesson for me is that the hallmark of the early church was compassion. It was a church that cared more about people than it did about race, class, gender, or sexual orientation. Paul was staying with Lydia when he freed the slave girl. And then he went to prison for his actions. Sally read the Bill for Tans Rights this morning. On this last Sunday of Pride Month, we know that the struggle for Trans Rights is just beginning. We know that the struggle for the rights of women to have access to the health care they need is far from over. We know that some political leaders and their followers want to ban people as well as books, and others would rather talk about the law of Moses than the love of Jesus. We know all that. But even more deeply we know that we are called to love one another, so that’s what we’re going to do.