While we celebrate Mother’s Day today, we celebrate those special parent-child bonds that, when they exist, make our lives full and rich and meaningful. Where they do not exist, we often find surrogates who provide the sense of home and family that we need. God will provide a way for us to have what is lacking in our lives.

After all, we are good news, resurrection, new life, with humans life can be difficult and painful, but with God all things are possible people. Today we hear a good news story about how God, through the good news of Jesus Christ, and by way of Paul, took the message of Jesus into Europe.

It really is a simple story. Paul and his fellow evangelists are traveling when the Holy Spirit tells them not to go into Asia. We don’t know if Paul heard a voice or if he just got a feeling that it was not yet time for them to go there. We do not know if Paul heard a voice or if he just got a feeling that it was not yet time for them to go there. We are simply told that the Spirit told them not to go.

Paul knew that when the Holy Spirit spoke, he had to listen and obey. He helps us to do the same. How do we hear the Holy Spirit speak to us? We may call it intuition, or that voice in our head that tells us what the right thing to do is. It may come to us in the form of a strong feeling – some people have the gift of sight and insight beyond our physical ability to see. However the Holy Spirit comes to us, it makes itself know in us when we can articulate that "something that will not let us go," that gets hold of our own spirits and lets us know God is present in us in a powerful way.

Paul paid attention and did not go to Asia. The Spirit had another place in mind for him. He travels to Troas, and in the night Paul has a vision of a man who makes an urgent request, "come to Macedonia and help us (v.9)". We hear that call from those in need, the homeless, the undereducated, those struggling for a place in the world and into the church, "come over and help us".

What stands out in his vision is the plea for Paul and his companions to move from where they are. Ministry requires that we go to the places where the need is. It’s great to have a home base, a place of worship and work as we have here. But ministry is not just here, it is more than what happens where we are, it is "out there" too. So we nurture one another, and we offer ministries of outreach. We celebrate our story here, 137 years of ministry in this city, 100 years on this corner, and we take our story outside. We get ourselves together in here, and at the same time we go out as we are to invite others to join us, and we are blessed as we go, and make their way to Philippi.

"Come over to Macedonia and help us." And they go. What was special about Macedonia?

"Macedonia was the first known European area where the gospel was proclaimed, and it was not at all prominent during that great golden days of Greek art, philosophy, and literature, had become important on the world’s stage when Alexander the Great, the king of Macedonia, conquered the known world. The very city that Paul was in, Philippi, was named for Alexander’s father, Philip of Macedon, who shortly before his death had united the city-states of mainland Greece. In a sense Paul is Alexander in reverse, what he brings is not warfare, but the good news about Jesus Christ" (Texts for Preaching – Year C. Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 1994, p.313).

Paul went to a place that before Alexander, few people knew about. But great things happen in places that are not always well known. In Philippi, while looking for a house of worship, Paul goes to the river and meets a group of women. He went to where people were gathered and found there an opportunity to share his faith with the women gathered at the river.

We can by the way we live our lives, by mentioning every now and then that we are regular churchgoers who do not go out of mere habit, but because of our love of God, our faith in Jesus, the Spirit moving in us, directs us to be in God’s house as often as we can. We never know who we might meet along the way.

Paul meets a woman named Lydia, a businesswoman, who bought and sold expensive materials. Lydia was ready to give herself more completely to God. Paul talked, Lydia listens. He tells her about the love of Jesus Christ, she believes, and she and her household were baptized. She becomes the first European convert to Christianity.

William Willimon helps us understand the significance of her conversion.

"First, Luke makes it clear that her conversion is due to the work of God, not Paul’s skill. Second, Lydia is a woman. We need not be startled that Paul and Silas, Near-Eastern males though they be, are talking to women in public (v.13). Twice in his Gospel, Luke mentions the women who followed Jesus from Galilee (Luke 23. 49, 55), and he writes often about people of "low degree", and in those days, few people were lower on the social scale than women.

"When compared to the traditional Jewish, Greek and Roman ideas about women, the church must have seemed radical in the way it welcomed women and featured them as leaders and prophets (I Corinthians 11.2-16). Women could be members of this movement without permission from their husbands. The early church had women leaders like Lydia even though it seems to have struggled to put together the gifts and leadership of women with the conventional attitudes about a woman’s place in society.

Third, Lydia was a rich woman. Throughout both the Gospel and Acts, Luke portrays possessions as a special danger, saying for instance, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Yet Jesus redeemed the wealthy Zacchaeus (Luke 19.1-10), with the result that Zacchaeus gave over half his wealth to the poor. The parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates the good that can be done through the right use of wealth (Luke 10. 30-37). In the church, wealthier members give for those who have less (Acts 2.44-45; 4.32-35)…and now a rich woman named Lydia demonstrates her conversion through hospitality. That Paul consented to stay in her house as the recipient of her hospitality indicates that barriers which sometimes divided male and female and other groups do not hold in the church. Lydia is now free to be hospitable and Paul is now free to welcome her as a sister in Christ" (Interpretation. Acts. William Willimon. Atlanta. John Knox Press, 1988. ppgs.136-138).

There is good news in Lydia’s story. The good news for us is that the inclusive, unfettered spirit of God available in Philippi is available to us here.

Today’s Psalm reminds us that God blesses us and we respond by living in ways that include us in God’s good news story. We can adopt a spirit, a pledge, a promise to God that we want to find and fulfill our purpose which according to Rick Warren can lead us to be warmer through fellowship, deeper through discipleship, stronger through worship, broader through ministry, and larger through evangelism.

The story that began in Philippi with Paul and Lydia comes to us through the church that Paul started there. We know they remained close to his heart, we know that because we have his letters to them. What he wrote was encouragement to them and it can encourage us too.

We are encouraged to find faith to offer God our highest hopes and service: "And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God" (Philippians 1. 9-10).

It encourages us to know and appreciate fully the difference Jesus makes, and it encourages us to be like him: "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (2. 5-8).

We are encouraged to hear and live the good news and to reach higher and higher: "Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus" (3.7-12-14).

And we are encouraged finally to hear and receive, and believe the good news with joy: "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (4.4-7).

God has included us in the good news of Jesus Christ, we are disciples of his, and bearers of his story. Let’s tell it, let’s live it, let’s be the good news we proclaim. Praise be to God. Amen.