Lydia's Household

In Acts 16:6-10, the Holy Spirit kept Paul and his companions from entering into the province of Asia and Bithynia. They then traveled to Troas by passing by Mysia. A vision appeared to Paul at night: “A man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’” Luke (the author as well as Paul’s companion) concluded that God called them to preach the gospel to the Macedonians (16:10).

They traveled from place to place and finally arrived at Philippi, “which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony” (16:12), where they met a business woman named Lydia. As Paul was teaching the women on the Sabbath day, “the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul” (16:14). The gospel of Jesus Christ was preached and expounded by Paul. The Lord opened Lydia’s heart to understand it. The doctrine of the gospel needs to be taught by women and men in accompany with the work of the Spirit. It illustrates that Lydia’s mind was at work in hearing the gospel with faith. In commenting on this verse, John Calvin wrote, “Wherefore, we see that not faith alone, but all understanding and knowledge of spiritual things, is the peculiar gift of God, and that the ministers do no good by teaching and speaking unless the inward calling of God be thereunto added.”[1] One of the means that the Spirit works through is faithful teaching of the gospel. Both faith and mind are at work here.

Lydia got baptized. So did her household. She urged them, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay” (16:15). Her true faith led her to open up her house and invite them to stay. This household became the seed of church planting in Philippi. This woman was the first-fruit of the gospel in Philippi; her household became the gathering place through which the Spirit planted the church in Philippi.

The church as an institution is foreign to the New Testament. In the New Testament, the church is always a people of God. It is not about a place, but a people called out by God. In the early church, Christians gathered together in different households and scattered from them. These households were the churches in the first century.

The other day Sue and I revisited the concept of ministry and asked, “What kind of ministry do we want to go into in the future? What kind of ministry are we suitable for? What kind of ministry does my ministry style and personality fit into? How do we make disciples of all nations in a practical way?” We came up with an idea that perhaps it is a right direction for us to start different house churches and make disciples through household gatherings in the future. Can we have the Lord’s Supper in Lydia’s household? Can we baptize people in a household? Can we sing, pray, and worship corporately in a household? Can we have Sunday school in a household?

The church is a church because of a people, not a place where the building is registered as a church. How does the New Testament view the church? What is the function and nature of the church?

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[1] John Calvin, Commentary upon the Acts of the Apostles, vol. 2. 500^th Anniversary Edition (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009), p. 103.

Reading the Bible Relationally

I am rereading Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008). The first time I read the book was 2008. I can’t believe it is 2012 now. Reading Scot Mcknight urges me to read and study the Bible with seriousness and delight. God spoke to different generations through Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Jeremiah, Hosea, Paul, Peter, etc…God speaks to our generation through us. It is our noble task to make God’s truth timely. In other words, we need to contextualize the word of God in our contexts in our days in our ways. God spoke to the previous generation in their contexts in their days in their ways. As Scot McKnight writes, “Our task is to take the timely timelessness of the Bible and make it timely timeliness for our world. We need to go back to the Bible’s timely timelessness so we can come forward to live out the Bible in our timely timeliness” (p. 35).

One of the examples that McKnight uses to turn the two-dimensional Bible reading into a three-dimensional divine encounter is this:

Who of us, once having read C. S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, can forget the scene where Eustace Scrubb and Lucy and Edmund Pevensie stare at a picture on a wall of a Narnian ship when suddenly the picture draws them into a whole new world? Suddenly that picture on the wall comes alive and they begin to feel the breeze, smell the air, and hear sounds. The kids are magically drawn into the painting and find themselves in the water, where they are helped into a boat with the enticing name The Dawn Treader. These kids, now in a new reality, travel to distant lands looking for the seven lost lords of Narnia. At the end of their adventures they find a lamb that turns into Aslan. Great story (p. 42).

Bible reading is not to get information out of the Bible. Getting Bible knowledge is not wrong. It ought not to be our only purpose. In any meaningful relationship, we don’t merely get a piece of information about a person. Whenever we are more interested in pieces of information about the person more than knowing the person, we depersonalize the person. We get to know the person for the sake of knowing. True friendship is based on pure knowing. Knowing God precedes acquiring information about God. Knowing God comes before knowing about God. Bible reading is an act of immersing ourselves into the Story of God. It is exactly like how we interact with our good friends. We get to know each other in the presence of others through ordinary days, meals, and events. We enter into the stories of others with listening, discerning, and nurturing. We get to know more about each other by invitation only. I think this is the way we read God’s word as story. We don’t turn the Bible into a system. We listen and discern God’s story. We pay attention to the plots of this story just as we pay attention to the plots of our friends’ stories, such as school, career, marriage, children, career change, etc…

Not to Speak is to Speak

What kind of message does the world need from the church? What kind of problem does the modern church face in the world? I have been thinking about the phrase, Speak openly and clearly about what God is for. Speak openly and clearly about what God is against. One of the problems of being a Christian in our pluralistic society is that we do not speak up for almost anything. This Sunday, I heard something intriguing. The pastor said, “We are tolerant to beliefs. But we are judgmental to shoes.” We are judgmental to small matters. We speak openly and clearly about our views on fashion, music, food, etc…But we are silent on serious matters, such as morality, religion, lifestyle, etc... Where is our moral courage? Where is our message? Can we speak openly and clearly about what God is for and against?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” I think the world needs this kind of message from the church. Or I should say, the church must openly and clearly preach this kind of message to the world. So many silent Christians live in the world and are only judgmental to what people wear. But they are not “judgmental” to secular morality like friends with benefits, gay marriage, abortion, injustice in the world as well as in the church, etc… What are we for and against? If we are for honesty, we are against any form of deceitfulness in the church and the world. If we are against domination and oppression, we are for equality and stand in solidarity with the oppressed.

In the church, the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that we have been telling people to live a life of spirituality that is very self-centered and society-decentered. I feel like most of the time we live our Christian life in a churchly way: We read the Bible and pray regularly. We practice spiritual disciplines on top of different life responsibilities.  We keep a sense of calmness in all matters. Don’t speak too much. Don’t raise our voice when we speak. Don’t get mad in all circumstances. Don’t look at women in a lustful way. Don’t debate with others because when you debate, you may get mad or go crazy in disagreement. We listen to a sermon with submission. In collaboration with others, we ought to focus on relationship, not relationship, efficiency, effectiveness, and goals/objectives altogether.

Sometimes I wonder, “Is this how Jesus lived? Is this a kind of spirituality that Jesus expected from us? Do we miss anything in our Christian living?”