May 9, 2010 - Easter 6

Good News is for Sharing!
Acts 16:9-15
Easter 6 – May 9, 2010

I want you to think for a minute of a time you got good news. I mean really good news. Maybe it was when you got that acceptance letter from the college you always wanted to go to and that you got a scholarship too! Maybe it was that big promotion at work or when you closed on your house. Maybe it was finding out that the cancer was in remission. Whatever it was, think about that – and how you felt – and what you did next.

I know that for me, and probably for most of you, when I get good news, when something good happens, one of the 1st things I want to do is tell somebody. When Andy & I met and started dating, pretty soon after that, I was calling up family and friends. It was good news – and I wanted to share it! And the day that we got engaged, we were burning up the phone lines with that news too. When we were nearing the end of seminary and found out, generally anyway, where we would be going for our 1st calls, e-mails and phone calls went out to just about everyone we knew. And when we found out recently that we're going to have a child – well, that was good news too, and we had to share it. Because good news is for sharing. You can't help yourself! And usually, it has nothing to do with convincing anybody about it. You just want the people who matter to you to be involved. You want them to be a part of your excitement and joy and anticipation of what is to come.

And yet, when it comes to sharing the gospel, another word for good news, most of us aren't nearly so eager to tell the world. Sharing the good news of what God has done for us in Jesus gets us all tied up in knots; instead of excited, we get nervous. Maybe it's because we think we won't know what to say. Maybe you've had some experiences with people who were a little bit pushy & confrontational in their desire to share their faith – and you don't want to ever be like that. Or maybe it just seems too risky and you don't want to get tagged as one of those freaky Jesus-y people or get into an argument with someone who has different beliefs that you do. Whatever the reason, most of us tend to keep this good news about what God has done and is doing to ourselves. We hear these stories of the early disciples going from town to town and country to country and we think, “well, better them than me! Good for you, Paul! Keep up the good work, and keep me out of it!”

But good news is for sharing! It's part of what God calls all followers of Jesus to do. People of a resurrection faith have eyes that are open to see what God is up to in the world, in our communities, in our own lives. People of a resurrection faith are constantly on the look-out for the good things God is doing – whether it's through individuals or congregations or volunteer organizations or governments, or even through those things we call coincidences, the times when things happen that have no natural or logical explanation, and yet there they are. People of resurrection faith are aware of how God is at work – and then tell those stories!

That's what Paul was so good at: at telling the story, at looking for those ways and places where God might already be at work and then going into those places and seeking out people to tell the good news to. That's what we see in this story from Acts today. Paul, who saw a vision and was convinced that God was calling him and his companions, Silas and Timothy and Luke (yep, Luke, the author of the gospel and of the book of Acts), to go to Macedonia, to proclaim the good news there. They arrive in Philippi and stay there for some days, and when the Sabbath comes around, they head out of town. They go down by the river, where “they supposed there was a place of prayer.” There they find a group of women, including Lydia, this rather unusual woman, at least in her day. She's far from her home of Thyatira, having sailed across that same sea, perhaps coming to Philippi on business. She sounds like she runs her own business, dealing in purple cloth, which was a luxury cloth, only affordable by the wealthy. But for whatever reason, Paul and Lydia find themselves together that morning. Lydia is a worshiper of God, Luke tells us, which most likely means that she was interested in and attracted to the God of the Jewish faith, but hadn't converted to Judaism.

And so Paul and company sit down with these women and he begins to tell them about what this God has been doing in the world, how God sent Jesus to live on earth, to teach people about God's love for them, to give his life that they might experience that love, and how on the 3rd day, God raised Jesus from the dead! And the Lord, who was already at work in that place long before Paul ever showed up, opened Lydia's heart to “listen eagerly” to what Paul had to say. Sometimes we think of evangelism as some kind of burden, as a whole lot of pressure to say the right things and convince people to believe – but Paul knew it wasn't about him, and that what happened wasn't all up to him. His job wasn't to convince Lydia or anyone else that he was right; his job was just to share his good news – because good news is for sharing, and just like the rest of us, when Paul had good news, he wanted others to be a part of it. He wanted them to experience it for themselves, to feel his joy, to be comforted with that same peace, to experience the same amazing grace in their lives that knowing Jesus had brought to his.

God was at work in Lydia's heart that day. God opened her up to hear what Paul had to say, to be changed by it – and she was changed! Good news happens to her that day – and she does what anyone does when they have good news – she goes and tells somebody. Because good news is for sharing! We know that she shares it, because Luke tells us that she and her household were baptized – which to mean sounds like she went and gathered up any family she had, her servants, the people she was connected to, and told them what Paul had said that day, what God had done in her life down by the river – and they all are baptized. They become followers of Jesus. And then she jumps in, joining them in this mission to share the good news the best way she knows how... she invites Paul and the other men to come and stay at her house. She puts her house and all of her resources at their disposal. She gives them a home while they are in Philippi, a place to go out from as they work in the city. She becomes a partner with them in sharing the good news.

You see, you don't have to be like Paul to tell the story - he's a pretty intimidating model, with all his missionary traveling and church planting and writing that huge chunk of the New Testament - but all of us can follow the example of Lydia, sharing the good news with those we know and love and diving in to offer ourselves and what we have to God's work in the world. Because all around us are people who weighed down by bad news, by health problems, by addictions, by money issues, by family turmoil... The world is filled with bad news. But we have good news! We know the One who gives peace in the midst of trouble, who promises never to leave us, who brings the hope of new life. That he loves us and cares for us is certainly good news – and good news is for sharing! So get out there and tell somebody, would ya?

Amen.