May 13, 2007--Sixth Sunday of Easter

Lectionary Texts:
Psalm 67;
Acts 16:9-15;
John 14:23-29 or John 5:1-9;
Revelation 21:10, 22--22:5

Sermon Text: Acts 16:6-15, 16-40

A Leading Lady

In the book of Acts chapter 16 is found one of the more familiar passages of scripture. There Paul and Silas have come to Philippi and begun to minister. At some point their path crossed a slave girl who is possessed by a spirit of divination. Her masters had her telling people’s fortunes for money. She began following them around saying, “These are slaves of the most High God who proclaim to you a way of salvation” (v. 17) She kept doing that for days until Paul finally got annoyed with her. Who knows, perhaps he thought young ladies should be seen and not heard. At any rate, he turned around and said to the spirit in her, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her” (v. 18). It came out right then and she was free! What a great story! The problem is her masters didn’t like the loss of income, so they brought Paul and Silas in on some trumped up charges. Paul and Silas were stripped and beaten with rods, and then placed in prison, and kept there securely guarded.

At about midnight, they were praying and singing to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken, immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains fell off. The jailer just knew everyone had escaped and that he was a goner, so he drew his sword to take his own life, when Paul rushed out and told him, “Wait! Don’t do yourself any harm. We are all here!” (v. 28). The jailer called for lights, and went in and fell down at Paul’s feet. He asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, Christ and you will be saved, you and your whole household.” (vv. 30-31). They shared the good news about Jesus. The man washed their wounds, and his whole household was baptized without delay. It is a great story. It is a wonderful story. Think about it. The man went from suicidal to saved in just a few minutes. But not just him; his whole household. That’s just the way it should be right?

I wonder what the man’s wife thought about it. We have a friend, a part of this community, who works at a prison. I know more than one person who works at the prison. I wonder what would happen if he came home late one night next week, walked through the door and said, “Dear, I’ve got a surprise for you. There was a little, uh, rumble, at the prison tonight, I was so impressed with the way a couple of the inmates conducted themselves. I brought them home. They’ve got some good news to share with you and then we are going to head out to Lake Overholser for a little dip.” So are you game? I’m guessing this jailer’s wife, the mother of his children, was at first a little concerned. But before long she was baptized.

When the man of the house was saved because of the witness of some prisoner his whole household was saved. That’s just the way it ought to be. He gets saved and the whole household follows. That’s just how leadership works, isn’t it?

A few years ago, I opened up a nationally known news magazine and read a page of quotes. There on the page was a quote by a pastor who ministered about one mile from where I lived at the time. He was a famous voice of another denomination. The quote simply said, “We believe leadership is basically male.” I want to ask, is this story about the Philippian jailer the paradigm for all ministry, was my fellow pastor right, or can women lead? Some people have very definite opinions about that kind of thing.

Last week I read again the story of Gene’s mom:

She was 20 years old when Gene was born. She was strikingly attractive with long auburn hair, a little over five feet tall, fit and trim. From the age of five or six, Gene accompanied her Sunday evenings to one room schoolhouses and grange halls in several small settlements scattered throughout the valley, in the northern Rocky Mountains where they lived. Lumberjacks and miners would assemble in those buildings, as she held religious meetings. There were six or seven locations to which they would go in turn making the circuit every couple of months. They did it year round, summer and even winter in the Rockies.

She had a plain contralto voice, a folk-singer voice, and accompanied herself on an accordion or a guitar. She led her small congregations in country gospel songs, religious folk ballads and hymns: “Life Is Like a Mountain Railroad,” “Old Time Religion,” “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder.” The lumberjacks and coal miners in their clomping boots, bib overalls, and flannel shirts loved it. She sang the sentimental songs and they sobbed honking into their red bandanas, wiping tears without embarrassment. Not genteel congregations these. Gene never remembers a woman among the group except his mom.

After the singing she would preach. She was a wonderful storyteller who told stories out of scripture and out of life. Occasionally she would slip into that almost musical style that you hear in black churches where they ride the phrase like a surfer. On wintry nights they would get stuck in snowdrifts at the grange halls, but the men would rally to the rescue and push them out. Some, not discipled for very long, would yell curses and then apologize in confused embarrassment. Gene says, “I heard the best preaching--and the most colorful cursing--of my life those nights.”

This went on most Sunday nights until he was about 10 years old. Then, it stopped. He didn’t know why until as an adult Gene asked his mother why. She said that someone had come to her with a Bible opened to one particular passage in First Timothy. Paul’s words there are, “Let a woman learn in silence. I permit no woman to teach.” (vv. 11-12). Gene’s mom went silent that very day, because what she was doing wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. She wasn’t supposed to have any authority or lead in the way that she was. She didn’t fit the paradigm because, “Leadership is basically male.”1

The story I told you before, the story of the Philippian jailer from Acts 16, is a very familiar story. In fact if I took a straw poll, and asked who here had heard of that story, I think probably over half would say they’ve heard of it. The story is the way it’s supposed to be. The man hears the message from other men; he comes to faith and goes home, and leads his whole family into the waters of baptism.

Would it surprise you to know that the Philippian jailer wasn’t the first person to come to faith in Philippi? Would you be able to guess who was the first to come to faith in Philippi? My hunch is most of you wouldn’t be able to answer. Why don’t you turn with me to Acts 16, let’s stand together, and we will find out who was the first person to accept Christ in Philippi.

Read Acts 16:11-15

Did you hear that? There in Philippi, before the jailer came to faith in Christ in the story we all know, Lydia, a wealthy business woman, came to faith. And her whole household was baptized. Why are we so much less familiar with that passage? I wondered about that and so I did an experiment.

I want to tell you a secret. We pastors have changed the way we do things a little. Every pastor used to have a 25 volume set of illustrations that were indexed by scripture passage and/or topic. We don’t have those any more. Now there are web sites where we can post our own good stories and make use of stories others have found and used. It makes for a few less bookshelves, and if we are really studying the word before we go there, it probably makes for some better, more interesting sermons too. A pastor can go to those sites, and type in a passage, and sometimes over 100 pieces of information will come with illustrations, quotes and so on.

Last Wednesday, when I was thinking about these two stories, I went on the largest site, and typed in Acts 16:16-40. That’s the jailer part. You know how many illustrations and quotes came up? For the story of the Philippian jailer, 28 pieces of information came up. Then I went back and typed in Acts 16:11-15. Do you know how many pieces of information came for that story--1. One piece of information that had nothing to do Lydia. It was about Luke and Paul and their journey. I know, the story of the jail and the earthquake is more exciting, and we preachers like to be exciting so maybe that’s why there was more material. Or maybe not. I noticed something else as I was looking at those 28 pieces of information. I also noticed it when I was reading the credits for each piece of information. The contributor’s name is listed after each piece of information. Of those 28 contributors, 26 of them (93 percent) were men. I guess the other two (7 percent), those two women who contributed to the jailer story and not to the story about Lydia, have been listening to the other 93 percent preaching their whole lives.

You know why I think there are no illustrations about the story of Lydia? I think it is because of where Paul and Silas found her. When Paul and Silas got there on the Sabbath, they went outside the gate where there was a place of prayer and where they met with some women who gathered there. There she was--a wealthy woman and business owner who at some point had taken the initiative to move her business from Thyatira, where she was from, to Philippi, the leading city of the district of Macedonia. She was a leading woman who’d probably made a very calculating business decision to move her operation to this leading city. Only she was a woman, so Paul and Silas found her with the rest of the women. Back then, neither business nor religion bothered with a glass ceiling. They just made a stone gate out of it. That’s where the women went to pray, outside the gate. This town didn’t have a synagogue, probably because there weren’t 10 devout men in the whole place. The devout women, however, prayed outside the gate. So that is where Paul and Silas had to go to find people who worshipped God. The jailer was an official of the government. He was an insider to the system. He was a man, but that isn’t where the work started in Philippi. The ministry started outside the gate.

Outside the gate they sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. Lydia, this wealthy, decisive business woman, heard what was being said and as a result her whole household was baptized that day. She said to Paul and his companions, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my home and stay there” (v. 15).

Can you imagine what it was like to be her husband? “Hi honey, I’m home from prayer meeting. Listen, I need to tell you that a couple of men from out of town crashed the prayer group this morning and stared sharing some very powerful words. They’ve changed my whole life and I want you to hear what they have to say. Then we are going to all head back outside the gate to the river so we can all be baptized. By the way, you’ll need to move your fishing stuff out of the guest room, and you kids will sleep on a pallet in our room because they will be staying with us for a while. Come outside and let me introduce you to Paul, Silas and Luke.”

I know--my imagination has gotten the best of me, but has it? This is the apostle Paul we are talking about here. Back in Acts 15 all the powerful Jewish Christians in Jerusalem couldn’t get him to change course. This is the Paul and Silas who the town government couldn’t cower with a night in the stockade. Luke, who is traveling with them, is a doctor. These are three very driven leaders, who hear from God, and then go and do it. They’ve been through two territories and four cities in the past six verses. The story comes to a halt, and stays in Philippi for 30 verses because they encounter this woman Lydia outside the gate. And the word says, “She prevailed upon us” (v. 30 NRSV).

I won’t do it, but here on Mother’s Day I think it would be very interesting to ask all the men in the room to raise their hand if they have been prevailed upon by a lady. I’ve got news for you. If you’ve got a mother, you’ve been prevailed upon by a woman.
“Oh pastor, all Lydia was doing was keeping house and making a place for Paul and Silas to stay.” Can women lead? I think before we can answer the question, “Can women lead in the Church or anywhere else” we’ve got to come to a pretty clear definition of what leadership is. So much of what we see in the world about leadership means using power to control an organization or a group of people. For Jesus leadership looked much different than that. One night when His disciples were all eating Jesus evidently wanted to teach them about leadership; so He got up from the table, took a towel and washbasin and washed his disciples’ feet. Then He said, “You call me Lord, and Teacher, and you are right for that is what I am. So if I your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet” (John 13:13).

When Jesus wants to define leadership He doesn’t pick up a gavel, a pen or a phone. He picks up a towel and a washbasin. You know what I think that means, men? Under Jesus’ definition of leadership, if “leadership is basically male,” the next time the kids are outside and get muddy this summer, we’re the only ones qualified to clean them up. Jesus said He did that as an example of Lordship, leadership.

But that’s not really the way it is. Is it? No, it is the one who is there who heads to the tub with the kids, grabs the towel and wash basin and scrubs the dirty feet. That’s Jesus’ definition of leadership. The truth is we aren’t told a thing about a husband for Lydia. She may have had one, and then again, she may not have.

Someone I know has, through no fault of her own, become a single mother of multiple children. It is recent and it is raw. She’s talking about the shock of it all with her children, and she gets them through the wash basin, the breakfast table, and in Church with her each week. Folks, that woman is a leader.

No, it is the one who is there who winds up taking up the towel and washbasin. Let me ask you a question. Once a mother, single or happily married, has taken up the towel and washbasin and followed the example of Christ, the head of the Church, is her ministry limited? If the Holy Spirit has opened her heart to a call to ministry should the rest of leadership be denied her? Sometimes it is denied her; but not always.

It isn’t always. This morning I want to introduce you to another woman. Here name is Mrs. G., the mother of two sons and a devoted wife. The fact that both of her sons, and her four grandchildren, serve the Lord in churches across the country is evidence of her Christian leadership in her home. But that leadership part of her life started long before she had kids or even before she was married. One Sunday when she was 14 years old, she knelt at an altar of prayer, her heart was opened and she became convinced the God was calling her to preach. That was a defining moment in her life; the only problem was it was 40 years ago. The world was not very open to that sort of thing. But, by the grace of God, she got up from that altar and told her pastor of it. And he asked her to preach in the very next service. She began to preach here and there, went to a Nazarene college, married another ministerial student and they co-pastored churches in several places. For the past twelve years she has served as the world wide leader of Nazarene Mission International, preaching all over the world and helping the church to see the vision. Those who’ve been involved with her in meetings where vision for missions was at stake have told me that, more than once, she has prevailed upon the predominantly male leadership. I should probably tell you, Miss Griggs is her maiden name. She uses it as her middle initial. Her name is Dr. Nina G. Gunter. In the summer of 2005, Dr. Nina G. Gunter was elected the first woman General Superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene. It is the highest office in the denomination. She now ordains ministers who are called to preach.

Who leads in the Church? We know the answer. It is the Holy Spirit that leads in the Church, and despite the different cultural barriers in Bible times and in current times, the wind of the Spirit blows where it will. In Acts 2, on the Day of Pentecost, several chapters before the stories of Lydia and the jailer, Simon Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit. He stood up and said among other things, “This is what the Prophet Joel was talking about when he said, in the Last days, says the Lord, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy . . . and even on your slaves both men and women and they will prophesy” (vv. 16-17, NRSV).

But pastor, this is Mother’s Day. It’s not about leadership; it’s about nurture. In effect, that’s what someone said to Gene’s mom and silenced her. Well, it sort of silenced her. You see, I read her story in this book. (Hold up books) And I read this book, because I read this book. And because I read those books, I read this book. It is called the Pastoral Library. Gene, that little five year old boy who for five years followed his mother’s lead through that mountain valley and listened to her preaching and singing, grew up to become Eugene Peterson, church planter and scholar. One of the living authorities on what we pastors do. Incidentally, he is also the translator of The Message, the Bible in Contemporary English, the word of God for people outside the gate. I think that might have happened, in part, because he followed the lead of his mom who showed him leadership starts outside the gate.

Can women lead? The truth is the Spirit leads, and very often He does that through the open hearts and prevailing words of the women we know and love and follow.

1. Adapted from Eugene Peterson Under the Unpredictable Plant (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 42-45.