Authentic evangelism is always Spirit-led

Sermon delivered Sunday, May 1, 2016 (6th Sunday of Easter, Year C) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.

Acts 16:9-15, John 14:23-29



“Come over to Macedonia and help us.”

This line from today’s passage from Acts is a classic in the theology of evangelism and missions. Paul’s vision of the man from Macedonia pleading for help has been echoed in the call stories of evangelists throughout the centuries – many missionaries have framed their sense of call to travel abroad with a similar sense that a foreign people is asking them to “come over and help us.”

At its best, casting missionary work within this framework encourages people to be willing to go wherever God calls them and to respond to expressed human need wherever they find it. But at its worst, conceptualizing missionary work in this way has led to a patronizing kind of approach in which the missionaries go of their own initiative to “help” people who have not expressed a need for help, bringing with them an attitude that assumes they have all the answers and solutions to bring to the people they have set out to “help.” Let’s explore that shadow side a bit more before we turn our attention to what I believe is a corrective to that shadow side within this very passage.

Any time we talk about “helping” others, we have to step back and examine the power dynamics at play. It is often much easier to be the “helpers” than to be the “helped.” The “helpers” are the ones with power, money, with enough abundance in their lives that they have something to give. The “helped” are the ones “in need,” the ones who lack something, the ones who are vulnerable and dependent. It is much easier to see ourselves as the competent givers than the vulnerable receivers, and yet in our relationship with God we are ALL vulnerable and dependent. The roles of “helper” and “helped” are never completely separable when God’s Spirit is at work. That’s the tricky part and the key thing to remember anytime we begin to see ourselves primarily as the “helpers.” All encounter that is led by the Spirit is intended for the mutual transformation of both parties, and requires listening and obedience on both sides.

The blueprint for evangelism we have in the Acts of the Apostles, the stories of how the first disciples spread the faith in its earliest days, show story after story of mutual encounter. I’m struck by how often the people to whom the disciples are sent to bring the message receive their own vision from God ahead of time to let them know these people are coming. It’s not like the disciples are the only ones receiving visions telling them what other people need; the people they are sent to have also been spoken to by God and they are ready and waiting for them when they arrive.

We’ve heard several of these stories lately: in Paul’s conversion story we heard a few weeks ago from Acts chapter 9, Paul receives a vision from God telling him to go into the city and wait for someone to come and tell him what to do, and Ananias receives a vision telling him to go look for Paul, the infamous persecutor of the church. When they meet up, they confirm that they each have received visions that brought them together. In Acts 10, we hear the story of how Cornelius, the Roman soldier, receives a vision that he should send for Peter, and right about that same time Peter receives a vision telling him that all foods are clean and the Spirit tells him that some men have come looking for him and that the Spirit has sent them. This leads Peter to share the Gospel with Cornelius, breaking tradition in taking the message to and including Gentiles, not just his fellow Jews.

In today’s story, we don’t have as clear of an example of the Spirit moving on both sides – we’re not told whether the people of Macedonia also received a vision telling them to expect the disciples, but Lydia is receptive and open to their message when they arrive. And far from a patronizing encounter where the disciples do all the “giving” and “helping” to this “poor lost soul,” Lydia does her own share of giving right back – she shows them hospitality by providing lodging for the disciples while they are in her community. The encounter is one of mutual transformation, mutual benefit, mutual assistance, not just from one side to the other.

And perhaps the most important aspect of this evangelism story is that it is Spirit-led; it is God’s initiative that leads to Lydia’s conversion, not Paul’s or any other person’s. Paul and his crew weren’t even planning to go to Macedonia originally; they had planned to continue to travel in the region where they had been. If our first lesson had started just three verses earlier in this chapter, at verse 6 instead of verse 9, we would have heard this introduction to the journey to Macedonia:

“They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas.” (Acts 16:6-8)

It’s here that our reading for today picks up, with verse 9:

“During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days.”

It is in Philippi that they encounter Lydia. Now, if you look at the map I’ve included in your bulletins, you’ll see all these cities or regions that were mentioned in the reading have been circled. Look at where Phrygia and Galatia are, in the central part of what is now Turkey. That whole region is called “Asia” on the map, and even though the scripture says they had already been “forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the Word in Asia,” still they try to go to Bithynia – see where that is on the map? Even further north than Galatia, and still East! It’s like, um, hello, what part of “not in Asia right now, folks!” did you guys not get? But “the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them” to go there, and so they go down to Troas – see where that is? Basically as far West as you can go and still be in Asia. They’re trying desperately to hang on to what they already know, to stay in the area that’s familiar to them, to continue to try to do something in Asia despite being told that their ministry is not there right now. So here they are, hanging out in Troas, at the very edge of their familiar territory, and it’s here that Paul receives the message to go to Macedonia – even further West – a whole different land mass! They follow that call and they wind up finding Lydia in Philippi. She was the one God had prepared for them to encounter next, and if they hadn’t been willing to listen to the Spirit’s promptings and follow where God led, they would have never even met her.

In our Gospel passage for today, Jesus promises the disciples that after he is taken from them, they will continue to have a teacher and guide in the Holy Spirit: “I have said these things to you while I am still with you,” he says. “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” (John 14:25-26)

The Holy Spirit is the continuing presence of God among us, to continue to guide and direct the church in the ways that God wants us to go. The disciples had the benefit of an actual human person in the form of Jesus of Nazareth to teach and guide them, but now we are left with this illusive and not-so-easy-to-identify Holy Spirit as our guide. Our challenge is to remember that we still have a teacher and guide with us, because it is a lot easier to ignore that guide if it is not a physical person actually speaking to us and showing us the way. It’s a lot easier, in the absence of a physical person as leader, to be guided by our own ideas and desires rather than God’s ideas and desires.

I’ve said quite a bit about that distinction lately, and I want to make clear that I’m not saying that our ideas and desires are inherently opposed to God’s ideas and desires. They can, in fact, be the same thing. But the key is remembering to ask the question, to listen for where the Spirit is leading us and being open to the idea that that might not be the same place we’ve decided we want to go. Like the disciples in our passage from Acts today, we might think we’re going to Bithynia, but God wants us to go to Macedonia! Sometimes when we listen to the Spirit, we find a whole new direction that we hadn’t even thought of before. Other times, we confirm that the direction we’re already going is indeed of God – but again, remembering to listen is the key point.

So the corrective to the shadow side of Christianity’s missionary impulse is to ensure that evangelism is always Spirit-led. When left to our own devices, we know the horrible things we are capable of – coming in to a community and tearing away their time-honored traditions and the ways God has spoken to them throughout the centuries, insisting that they do things our way, right down to the clothes they wear and the language they speak, falsely equating one particular human culture with the Gospel. But when we look at the stories of evangelism in the book of Acts, the account of how the faith first spread, we are reminded that authentic evangelism is always Spirit-led. It is God-initiated rather than human-initiated. And it is never a one-way encounter. It is never one people telling another what to do. It is always a mutual encounter in which both sides have received messages or visions from God and together they attempt to discover the wonderful thing that God is trying to do in their midst and to be faithful to that call.

So as we consider the ways we might reach out to our neighborhood and the community around this church building, let us be in prayer and deep listening about where God is calling us – and how God might already be speaking to the people around us. Being still long enough to listen will help us ensure that our evangelism is Spirit-led rather than human-led.