There’s a lot happening in the morning’s scripture reading, which is a bit of a mishmash of a scripture reading. So let me give you some context for it. The Book of Acts was written as a sequel to the Gospel of Luke, by the same author (Luke) and was written for, was addressed and dedicated to, the same reader, Theophilius.
Other than his name, we don’t know much about Theophilius. But that Luke wrote for him, for one reader, rather than a whole community of readers, sets this writing apart from the other gospels and most of the writings in the New Testament, which were written to groups of Christians, to the Romans, the Corinthians, the Ephesians, and so on. So there is some personal relationship behind this scripture. Probably Theophilius was Luke’s patron, and this was a commissioned work. But we don’t really know.
Luke describes himself as a careful gatherer and checker of facts, as having been in conversation with those who lived through everything he wrote about, and even as having lived through some of it himself. There are a number of times in the Book of Acts when the narrative perspective shifts from the third- to the first-person; Luke, the narrator, writes himself into the story: it wasn’t “they” who went here and there, but “we.” You may have noticed this in the morning’s scripture reading; it happens here for the first time in the story, just as a long journey commences, so it’s thought that Luke was a traveling companion of the Apostle Paul.
The Book of Acts picks up where the Gospel of Luke leaves off. It tells the story of the Christian movement’s earliest days: of what happens after Jesus’s death and resurrection, of how a small, confused, frightened huddle of his followers becomes the Church. The story begins in Jerusalem, just a month or so after the crucifixion, and the story ends some years later and a world away, with the Apostle Paul under house arrest in Rome.
The movement and the movement’s message – of the love and justice Jesus preached – spreads, out and out, out from the Holy City, out even from the Holy Land, out and up around the coast, out, city by city and island by island, across the Mediterranean. And as it spreads, as word of this teacher and this healer who, in some mysterious way, people keep finding themselves taught by and healed by, even though he is no longer there with them – as word spreads, it spreads across every conceivable line of difference. Jews, Samaritans, Syrians, Greeks, Ethiopians, and Romans, women and men, rich and poor, slave and free – all are embraced within the circle of community.
Luke seems to delight in this boundary-crossing, and at that time, scandalizing, diversity, because over and over again, throughout his gospel and the Book of Acts, he places stories back-to-back, in parallels or pairs, in which the characters’ differences are easily spotlighted. Like, in the lead-up to the Christmas story: the unimpeachably righteous priest, the man, Zechariah is visited by an angel. And then the suspect, soon-to-be-pregnant-out-of-wedlock, woman with a soon-to-be questionable reputation, Mary, is also visited by an angel.
This morning’s scripture reading is actually the first story in a pair of stories; the lectionary (the calendar that determines which passages from the bible are read when) divides the pair of stories into two, but immediately following this one, in which the Apostle Paul encounters Lydia, a freeborn, wealthy woman, with status enough to be named, and with resources and possessions enough to share generously – in the very next verses, he will happen upon a slave girl, a poor, unnamed nobody who is herself a possession, both of her owners and of the evil spirit which makes her into its marionette. Lydia is in control enough to “prevail upon” the Apostle Paul to come and stay in her home. The slave girl is controlled by the demon that sends her roaming through the streets. It’s classic Luke.
This passage comes at around the midpoint of the Book of Acts. The Christian movement and the message of the Christian movement – of the love and justice Jesus preached – has spread, but not yet so far as Rome. A journey of about 800 miles, from Phrygia to Galatia, by Mysia and Bithynia, to Troas, to Samothrace, to Neapolis (which is the first setting-foot of a Christian on European soil), and from Neapolis, finally to Philippi in Macedonia – a journey of about 800 miles is condensed into a handful of verses. In this passage, Luke, educated, cosmopolitan Luke, shows that he could more than hold his own in a geography bee; he knows the map of the ancient Mediterranean world like the back of his own hand. (You can contrast that with Mark. Mark, in his gospel, gets the map, gets the geography of a much smaller area, just the region around the Sea of Galilee, all wrong.)
Luke often lifts up the place of women in the early church; this passage is another example of the emphasis he puts on not only the inclusion but the prominence of women in the Christian movement. This passage shows different kinds of people, people from different places and with different backgrounds, people who speak in different accents, coming together and eating together, breaking bread and breaking down social barriers together. For Luke, Christian love was a gravitational pull drawing people, to one another, drawing people across their differences, to one another. Passages like this one are how Luke says what we say in church every week: “Whoever you are, and wherever you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”
So, as I said, there’s a lot happening in the morning’s scripture reading. But just as important as what happens in it is what doesn’t happen in it. I’ve saved the most confusing part of this passage for last: those enigmatic lines at the beginning of it about the Apostle Paul and his companions “being forbidden by the Holy Spirit” to travel to Asia and then, again, trying to travel to Bithynia, but “the Spirit of Jesus not allow[ing] them.”
This scripture reads like a Frommer’s or like a Lonely Planet guide of places not to go, an anti-itinerary itinerary. Can you imagine someone telling you about their vacation by telling you everywhere they didn’t travel? (“First, we didn’t go to Nantucket, and then we didn’t go to Newport.”) And this “being forbidden” and “not being allowed to” business: What does that mean? How does that work? Was there some kind of invisible forcefield around these provinces?
Or was it, like, on that old movie The Truman Show, where Jim Carey’s character tries to sail into what appears to be the open sea, only it’s a wall, it’s the painted backdrop of the small-town-sized Hollywood studio lot he has unknowingly lived his whole televised life trapped within? Did the Apostle Paul walk along until he banged his head into what, for all he could see, was clear, blue sky? What if was much less dramatic, and in the moment, much less clear, than that?
What if it was the equivalent of a flat tire – their donkey broke its leg or their cart lost a wheel? What if, while trying to get to where they were going, some altogether ordinary hindrance forced a change of direction – and, in that, in hindsight, they saw the secret working and guiding hand of God?
Is it possible that what doesn’t work out can tell us something, can teach us something, about who we are and what God wants for our lives? And that one of the ways God makes things happen for us is by not making things happen for us?
One of the greatest gifts God gives us is the gift of not forcing our lives to bend to fit our plans for them. The colleges we didn’t get into, the second dates we never went on, the jobs we were never offered, what we’ve never enjoyed, what we’ve never been good at, timing that just wasn’t right: all of this means something.
There’s a line from Marilynne Robinson’s novel Lila that I’ve always loved; the main character, Lila, who is married to a Congregationalist minister, asks – “What do you ever tell people in a sermon except that the things that happen mean something?” So, too, I think, the things that don’t happen mean something. We could, any one of us could, if we have wisdom enough, if we have a sense of wonder enough, if we have grace enough – by which I mean, if our confusion and disappointment and regrets and broken hearts have been healed by grace enough – we could tell the story of our life’s journey by listing out all the dead-ends and all the paths we didn’t take.
All the setbacks, all the wandering, all the wrong turns, all the rejection: this is how we are “forbidden by the Holy Spirit,” to use Luke’s language, from living lives that aren’t really our lives. I don’t think everything happens for a reason. But I do think that in everything that happens – and, for that matter, in everything that doesn’t happen – something is happening.