And She Prevailed Upon Us

Scripture Lessons: John 14: 23-29 and Acts 16: 9-15 Sermon Title: And She Prevailed Upon Us Preached on May 26, 2019 This second Scripture Lesson that I’ve just read contains one of my favorite phrases used in the whole Bible, “And she prevailed upon us.” It’s not a verse that anyone should commit to memory because it contains some life-changing theological truth. This phrase in Acts 16: 15 isn’t like John 3: 16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Memorize that one because it will change your life, but remember Acts 16: 15, “And she prevailed upon us,” because in five words the author of the book of Acts describes my whole childhood. Maybe it describes my whole life, and to know the story of the Christian Church is to understand that there are many heroes like Paul, whose names we know, who had to be pushed to realize their full potential by certain women whose names we might have forgotten. In reality, the book of Acts is the story of the likes of Peter and Paul, who would have been nothing were it not for the likes of Lydia. That’s something like my story. I was raised in a family of strong women. My father’s mother raised him and his two sisters in a loving household, despite her husband’s alcoholism. My mother’s mother, Mrs. Peggy Bivens, was such a force that I never once challenged her, questioned her, or tested her. I remember one morning at her house when we were kids sitting at her kitchen table. Because we were coming to visit, she bought some muffins from Sam’s, special for my sister. This purchase was out of character. She stocked her pantry inspired by weight loss crazes of the 1980’s. She mostly lived on Tab cola and Special K cereal. So, I remember her putting one of these calorie laden Sam’s muffins in front of my sister and saying, “Elizabeth, I bought these special for you.” In that moment, my sister did something I thought was unadvisable. She said, “But Nanny (that’s what we called her), I don’t like those anymore.” After she said that, I remember my grandmother trying to convince my sister that in fact, yes, she did still like those muffins. My sister refused to submit to our grandmother’s determination to influence what she liked and didn’t like, which is the kind of thing that happens when there are two strong women in a family, neither willing to be prevailed upon. What my sister did is not what I would have done. Had it been me, it wouldn’t have mattered if they were peanut butter muffins and I had a peanut allergy. I’d rather face anaphylactic shock than the defy the iron will of my grandmother. A couple times I remember trying to tell her that I wasn’t hungry. Did you ever try that? Have your grandchildren ever tried that? Telling your grandmother that you aren’t hungry when she thinks you look too skinny is an exercise in futility. All this is just to say that I can imagine what it was like for Paul meeting Lydia. “And she prevailed upon us” is how our Second Scripture Lesson ended, and I know what that means. Now, being prevailed upon can be either good or bad. If you always allow yourself to be prevailed upon, you’ll lose yourself. Peer pressure can be like that, and peer pressure can be just plain evil, but in this instance, had Paul stood his ground, his bullheaded insistence might have stifled the spread of the Gospel. Thanks be to God, “she prevailed” upon him, because when she did, she expanded the spread of the Gospel beyond what any of the disciples might have imagined. Those disciples were prone to being narrow minded, despite the Savior’s best intentions. Without Jesus around to correct them, surely, he was nervous about who he was leaving his church to. In our First Scripture Lesson, Jesus had to warn the disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” He told them that he would be ascending into heaven, leaving the work of spreading the Gospel to the ends of the earth to them, but for them to do it, he must have known that they were going to need a little help. Why? Because that’s how we are. The choir sang, “every time I feel the spirit,” which makes me tap my foot a little bit. Already, that’s pushing me beyond my Presbyterian comfort zone. However, if we are to feel the Spirit, we have to be ready to sway to the music. We must be swept up in a greater vision, beyond what we could have imagined. If we never allow ourselves to be prevailed upon by God’s vision for our lives, we’ll never live into our full potential, which is bigger than whatever we had been planning for ourselves. I received an inspirational email last week. I’m on the High Point University mailing list because this woman I was having breakfast with at a conference prevailed upon me. Signing up for the email was easier than fighting her on it, and just this week the inspiring email said: “If you don’t imagine, nothing ever happens at all.” That’s a quote from someone named John Green. I don’t know who that is, but he’s right. However, I’d add to it, because what God does in our lives would defy our imagination, which is unfortunate for us, because what’s beyond our imagination scares us. I’ll give you a personal example. About two years ago a man named Jim Goodlet called me. At the time, I was happily serving a church in Columbia, Tennessee. Jim left me a message telling me that he was chairing a Pastor Nominating Committee to find a new pastor to serve the church I grew up in. Now why did I imagine he was calling me? I imagined he was calling me so I could give him the names of some people who might actually be qualified for the position. Never did I imagine that he would want to talk with me. Then a couple weeks later, after a few phone interviews, Jim Goodlet tried to get me to come down here to interview in person. Now that made it a little too real. I got scared then. Why would I do that, I wondered? Why would I even think about going down to Marietta, GA when I was perfectly happy in Columbia, TN. I told Jim that on the phone one day about two years ago, but guess what happened? He prevailed upon me, and it’s one of the best things that has ever happened in my life. How often is that the case? So often the best things in life, the greatest gifts we ever receive, are just like that. We get called out of our comfort zone. CS Lewis said it’s like a child making mud pies in the alleyway receiving an invitation to the seashore. What will she do? Will she go? Will she stay? Will she choose what is unknown and far beyond her reality or will she stick to the small joy of what she has. Will she allow God’s vision for her life to prevail upon her? Years ago our church faced the same choice with this Sanctuary. This Sanctuary was built to seat 400 worshipers. That’s a lot of people, especially when you consider that this Sanctuary that was built to seat 400 was built by a congregation of 96 members in 1853. What were they thinking? There may have had some slow-growth, fiscally responsible members of the congregation who suggested that they pace themselves, but someone like Lydia prevailed upon them and here we are today. You see, this is the way it goes. We have one idea in our head, we settle in to certain expectations and we get used to certain things, but every once in a while, someone like Lydia calls us to do something bigger. It happened in the neighborhood around Kennesaw Avenue last Thursday. Last Thursday if you drove on Maple Avenue or some of the other streets around the Westside School you might have noticed that so many of the mailboxes were decorated. Signs were up congratulating someone named Floyd. I didn’t know who that was, so I asked Chris Harrison our neighbor and he told me that their mailman, Floyd, was retiring after 35 years of delivering the mail. That his wife Katherine said, she’s lived in a house on Floyd’s rout for so long that she’s had a relationship with Floyd the mailman longer than with her husband Chris. This kind of thing doesn’t happen all the time. It doesn’t happen all the time that a mail carrier works for 35 years and retires, it doesn’t happen all the time that a neighborhood even stops to notice something like that, but someone like Lydia prevailed upon all of them. In that neighborhood her name isn’t Lydia. One’s name is Sarah Bullington, another’s name is Becky Poole, and I can imagine how those initial conversations went. “We should do something for Floyd,” one said to her husband. “Sure, we should,” he responded, and then went back to watching the Braves on TV. However, these women weren’t going to let this occasion pass without notice. So, they prevailed upon their husbands and their neighbors. They had a party in the street, raised enough money to send Floyd to Hawaii, and the whole story ended up on CNN. That’s what happens when we listen to the likes of Lydia. While all too often we resist these kinds of voices. By doing so, we stifle the Spirit. We settle for mud pies when God invites us to the beach. Lydia invites us to change the world, but we busy ourselves rearranging the furniture on the deck of the titanic. She reminds us that God speaks of justice on earth and righteousness in government, but what do we settled for? On the eve of Memorial Day, I realize how important the voice of Lydia is, for as the war drums beat again, we must listen to the voices of those mothers and fathers whose children will never come home, to learn again the price of war. Lydia would remind us, if we are faithful enough to listen, that while we have grown used to wartime, God would lead us in the ways of peace. Too often, we don’t imagine enough. We don’t allow God’s vision for the future to prevail upon us. To use Cassie Wait’s image from last Sunday, we don’t pull up enough seats to the table, limiting God’s grace. But what would have happened had Paul ignored Lydia’s voice? He started out this passage in Asia Minor, what is now Turkey. You can read in Scripture about the great signs and wonders performed through Paul and others during his ministry there, but today the skyline of every city in Asia Minor, is dotted with minarets. A journalist trying to follow the footsteps of Paul in Turkey arrived for Mass at the Church of Saint Paul in 1998 and joined a congregation of five other Christians. Macedonia on the other hand. On the cover of your bulletin is a picture of the ceiling of what is called the church of Saint Lydia in Macedonia, which we now call Greece. Thanks be to God she prevailed upon him. And may God, through the likes of such a woman, prevail upon you. Amen.