St Mary Magdalene

In connection with the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition in Durham this summer, our church is organising a Gospels art project with local schools. As we are St. Mary Magdalene, Belmont, we have set the challenge of making illuminated manuscript versions of the stories in the Gospels that mention Mary Magdalene.

The children at all the local primary schools are getting involved, and I am going in to talk to them about Mary Magdalene, and also about the history of illuminated manuscripts from the Lindisfarne Gospels onwards.

Mary magdalene from Miranda Threlfall-Holmes

This powerpoint is the one I used in assembly today, to introduce the story of Mary Magdalene. We looked at all the Gospel readings that mention her, and concluded that she is a great example of discipleship. As members of a church named after her, we seek to be people healed by God; faithful followers and supporters of Jesus; witnesses to Jesus' death and resurrection; and people who spread the good news.

Godly Play: Creation

The first time I ever saw Godly Play - the story of the Good Shepherd, at an IME 4-7 (curate training) event in Newcastle diocese - I was hooked.

Godly Play is a Montessori-inspired way of telling Bible stories, the idea being that they are translated not into another language, but into 3D. Little wooden figures, sand boxes for the desert, green felt to represent the world or a meadow.

The Godly Play creation story is done using 7 cards showing the 7 days of creation in stylised form, with felt collage, on a background of black or navy felt. I made this set several years ago, when I was a curate, and used it in Sunday School and at a school Bible story lunchtime club that a friend and I ran.

Tomorrow I am doing an assembly on Creation at the local infants school, and wanted to use this set. But it is relatively small, so hard for 100 little ones to see (ideal audience size is probably 6-12). So I decided to use an accompanying Powerpoint presentation on the interactive whiteboard. However, I couldn't find any images of the cards on a Google Image search, so I have taken my own. Do feel free to use them under Creative Commons if they would be helpful for you.

This is the original Godly Play book that I use; there is also a whole range now available. I know the Durham and Newcastle diocesan resources center have a good set, and I imagine they are widely available.

For copyright reasons I shan't give the full text here, but in summary:

1. You start with a box: mine is covered in rainbow paper!

2. Opening the box, the first thing you take out is a long piece of dark felt: you unroll this (and - my favourite bit - trace the outline of God's smile on it!).





3. The cards are presented and placed in turn:

4. Finally, you ask the 'I wonder' questions: I wonder which is your favourite day? Could we do without any of the days? etc.

If you want to use them in your own presentation etc, here are the images:

Vision and Generosity: a dedication festival sermon

Sermon for St Giles Durham Dedication Festival, 9th June 2013


The first reading today (1 Chronicles 29.6-19) celebrates the vision and generosity of the Israelites who first built the Temple. It seems particularly appropriate today, as we celebrate the generosity and vision of those long ago ancestors of ours who established and dedicated this church, to the glory of God and as a place of mission to and hospitality for pilgrims approaching Durham.
That passage from Chronicles emphasises the long term: 901 years doesn't seem out of  place! And the writer grounds the intergenerational vision and generosity that is described in a clear sense of perspective.

First, there is a very realistic sense of perspective about time, God's time, and our mortality. We are just 'aliens and transients before you', David says. It reminds me of that lovely passage from Bede about our life on this earth being like a bird flying through the length of the king's banqueting hall. And there are echoes of the passage that we often read at funerals:

Our days are like the grass;
We flourish like a flower of the field:
When the wind goes over it , it is gone,
And its place will know it no more.
But the merciful goodness of the Lord endures
For ever and ever.

Those who are giving so generously to build God's temple can do so first because they see clearly that they are transient, but they are building something much bigger than themselves. It wont last for ever - the Temple isn't God - but it will long outlast them.

Secondly, this sense of perspective is rounded out, made three dimensional. A true sense of perspective about us and God isn't just about time, stretching off into the distance with us at one point on the line. It is also about the whole of life now.

You might imagine a graph, with the bottom x axis stretching off across the page from those first Israelites, through 0 AD and the events of Jesus' life, past the foundation of this church, past us and long into the future. But there is also the upwards y axis: all of life going on at each of those times. And David's speech grounds their generosity in a clear sense of realism and perspective about this axis too. Its not just that God will be around for a lot longer than us: its that a proper sense of perspective recognises that everything there is, is already God's. As David says here, and as we often repeat at the offertory in our own services, 'all things come from you, and of your own have we given you'.

The ability to be generous in doing what seems right comes from a clarity of perspective. An understanding and way of seeing the world in its right proportions, that knows we don't have our money, or our gifts, or our time except, ultimately, because of God's generosity to us. Our earning potential, our intellectual gifts or physical strength or craftsmans skill, our health that means we can use those gifts, even the common sense that enables us to live within our means: these are not within our control, except in the most trivial ways. We can choose how and whether we use those gifts, but we cant give them to ourselves. Truly, all that we have comes from God. As David says, giving generously to God is a way of acknowledging both our gratitude, and our understanding that that is how things really are.

Thirdly, there is a lovely sense of perspective about future generations in this reading. The Israelites are giving not for something they will see, but something that they are trusting will be for their children and grandchildren. David isn't even planning to build the temple himself: that is a task he will be entrusting to his son Solomon.

Questions of the responsibility we have for future generations, and intergenerational justice, are very current at the moment. From pensions to house prices, benefits to the environment, many of the most difficult issues facing us and our politicians are about how much current generations are responsible for the future. Or how much those who have done well out of periods of economic growth in the  past, with generous pensions and houses that have rocketed in value, should subsidise those who are not so fortunate.

We thank God today for vision and generosity of those long ago who dedicated this church for the benefit of unimaginable future generations, and for those who have rebuilt, extended, reordered and maintained it over the centuries.

But as we celebrate today the generosity and vision of our ancestors in founding and maintaining this church - both as a building and as a worshipping and learning and growing community - the question for us is what we are going to build for future generations. How much responsibility do we have to ensure that there is still a Christian presence in Durham in 10, 20, 50, 100 years time?

This is a very practical question for churches in Durham now, as it is a year after Bishop Justin established the new parish share system. You'll remember that now, instead of the diocese telling us how much it needs from each church to keep the work of each parish going, each church tells the diocese what it is going to give. And this month, we need to decide what our offers are for next year. Are we going to grudgingly give as little as  we think we can get away with? Or as much as we think the diocese needs? Or as much as we can spare? Or can we bring ourselves to be as generous and visionary as David and the Israelites, giving all of our abundance - everything we have that is excess, luxury - to God?

The measure of generosity that Chronicles puts before us is eyeopening. The question there is not 'how much do we need to give?', but 'has anyone got anything unnecessary left?' Do any of you have any jewellery left? Any gold rings or sapphire earrings? Who has enough money in the bank to be going on holiday abroad this year, or be planning a cruise in the next year or two? Do you really value the church being here? How much?

We are here this morning saying we are quite grateful for it - but how much do we really value it? Are we just quite pleased to have it, maybe prepared as necessary to keep this one going for ourselves and our community? Or do we believe with all our hearts that this is something wonderful and lifechanging, that should be available both for future generations, and for those less fortunate than ourselves across the diocese in this generation?

When the people of Israel were fundraising to build a new temple, it would, no doubt, have been seriously embarrassing for someone to go out in public wearing diamond earrings after that. Why had they kept them back for themselves? That, of course, is part of the difficulty for us now: our peer pressure doesn't just come from members if the church, but from friends and colleagues and neighbours operating on what should be a very different scale of values. How different would things be if we were embarrassed to wear valuable jewellery? Ashamed to be seen driving a car newer than four or five years old. Furtive and embarrassed about booking a cruise, because we knew, and so did everyone else, that that money could b working for God?

Durham diocese would not be keeping six clergy posts vacant to save money this year. We wouldn't be debating whether or not we can afford to rise to the challenge of adopting more church schools and sponsoring church academies. We wouldn't have people in our parish who never got a clergy visit, or schools that only got a Christian assembly once a month, once a term, or never. There wouldn't be villages in the rural areas who have closed their churches, and are sharing one vicar between five, six or more parishes. Justin wouldn't have said that if things go on as they are, the diocese of Durham will be bankrupt in ten years time.


In our two New Testament readings this morning, the physical temple is redefined as the body of Christ.

The whole of our church - buildings and people and institution - is built on the foundation of Jesus's resurrection. His body, destroyed on the cross, was rebuilt in three days at the resurrection. And as in our church year  we have passed through Easter season, and the remembrance of Christ's ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit, we are now in the months when we reflect on what it means for us to now be the constituent parts of that rebuilt temple, the body of Christ.


So I invite you to ask yourself very seriously: what exactly are we celebrating this morning? What exactly were our ancestors doing when they established and dedicated this church 901 years ago? And what is our response, as individuals, and as a church, as we decide how much we value the church? let us pray for the grace to be as faithful and as generous and as clear sighted in our perspective, as those we remember today.

Authority: a sermon*

I wonder how the word ‘authority’ makes you feel? I guess it makes some of us squirm, some feel secure, some feel trapped, some feel important. 

It is one of those words where context is all, isn’t it? Authority. It can mean everything from bureaucracy to justice, security to tyranny, expertise to abuse.

We all rely on authority every day, one way or another. At perhaps the more trivial level, we use it in conversation and gossip: ‘I have it on good authority....’ as a conversational gambit.

Do you remember when sat navs were still relatively new, and there was a spate of lorry drivers getting stuck in tiny Devon villages, or grounding out in fords? We rely on the authority of maps, and get very annoyed when they are inaccurate; or laugh when someone else follows them too blindly without using any common sense; or have our hearts in our mouths when someone nearly dies because of a map reading error or mistaken instructions.

We rely on the authority of experts or supposed experts for much of our day to day lives. I’m sure I can’t be the only person who buys at least one guide book to the area whenever I am about to go on holiday, and then relies on the authority of the guide book authors to tell me what to do, where to eat, what I mustn’t miss. And how annoyed I get if the guide book messes up! If I’m outside a museum and the book said it was closed on a Monday but its now Tuesday and the doors are firmly locked, I take it as a personal affront – how dare the guide book waste my time and risk ruining my holiday by getting it wrong!

We rely on the authoritative ingredients list on the back of the food packet to tell us whether the food contains something we are allergic to or not – and many people would be prepared to sue if the packaging company got that wrong.

In fact, so many of our current scandals are at root about authorities not being trustworthy, that it is not surprising if we are ambivalent about authority. The Leveson enquiry showed us that not only could we not rely on the authority of our newspapers, we couldn’t even rely on the honesty of their authorities – information we assumed they had come by legitimately could have been tapped from a dead girls phone, or bought from a crooked cop. The MPs expenses scandal showed that we couldn’t rely on the people who are meant to be guaranteeing the rule of law, on which all of our safety and security rests, to not be using our money to enrich themselves. The various banking scandals we’ve endured showed us that we couldn’t rely on the banks to be solvent, to be safe places for our money, to keep our pensions safe, or even to know where their money was. We can no longer rely on authoritative pronouncements about the economy and prevailing interest rates, as we now know that these can be fixed between the banks for their own profit. We can’t even trust beef to be beef.

 

The Bible is as ambivalent about authority –certainly about human authority – as we are. Its rather less ambivalent about God’s authority, but even there the writers explore how different human beings might react to God’s authority, or know about it, or learn to trust it given how flawed so many of our experiences of human authority are. All three of this mornings readings highlight and reflect on different aspects of what God’s authority means for us.

Lets look at the gospel reading first. At least three different kinds of authority are explored here.

First, the centurion chooses with care the people that he sent to Jesus asking for a cure for his ill slave. He chose Jewish elders, people with authority in the Jewish community that he is asking for help from. And when those elders get to Jesus, they spend some time giving the centurion a character reference, telling Jesus that he is someone they vouch for. He is worth helping, they say: and their authority for saying this is based on solid evidence: he is good to the Jews, and has demonstrated that by paying for the building of a new synagogue. Here, authority is based on reputation and esteem – the speaker is authoritative, he is an authority – and on evidence.

 Secondly, and at the heart of this passage, notice what that centurion says to amaze Jesus. ‘For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me’. The key word here, the one that amazes Jesus and makes him exclaim at the centurion’s unique faith, is ‘under’. It is of course true, when you think about it, that authority over others is normally hierarchical, part of a system of authority with people above you and beneath you. If you are a manager, or a teacher, or a sports captain, or an army sergeant major, you have authority to direct the actions of others because a higher power has given you that authority. If people ignore your orders, they are answerable not just to you but higher up the chain of command.

Authority over others usually comes from being under authority ourselves. So the centurion’s statement is not simply about Jesus’s power to command: it is a recognition that Jesus’s power comes from God. In his simple, direct army analogy, the centurion makes a clear and unambiguous statement of faith in Jesus.

Thirdly, though, the reading doesn’t end there. It ends with those who had been sent returning to the house and finding the slave in good health. So thirdly, authority is found in proof, or rather in corroborative evidence. The story wouldn’t mean much if the slave hadn’t, in fact, been healed. This is authority as ‘the proof of the pudding’ – or, as the Bible puts it more eloquently, ‘taste and see’. This, incidentally, is one way in which the long-running debate about whether science and religion are incompatible misses the point. The Bible positively encourages us to experiment and to assess the results.

This ‘try it out and see for yourself’ approach to authority is also the emphasis of the first reading from 1 Kings. So too is the fact that in practice, our actions and beliefs are based fist of all on supposedly authoratative hearsay. Solomon prays to God that when a foreigner, hearing of God’s great reputation– when the foreigner, on the authority of rumours and travellers' tales - comes to see for himself whether this God of Israel matches up to his billing, that God will answer his prayers, giving the final evidence that yes, this God is the real thing all right. God’s action will be the definitive authority, and will convince all who experience it.

Paul, in today’s reading from Galatians, is in something of a dilemma over this. On the one hand, he is convinced that God spoke to him directly, in that amazing Road to Damascus conversion, and gave him the definitive gospel message which he is dutifully and busily passing on. On the other hand, he is so furious that others are corrupting that message that he insists here that nobody else, not even him, not even God,  can do something similar again. ‘Even if I – even if an angel from heaven – told you something different, let them be accursed!’ Even by the standards of rabbinic exaggeration for effect, cursing an angel, a messenger of God, if they were to dare to bring a new message is a bit extreme.

Paul’s outburst could be read as saying something about the authority of scripture. But of course, we need to bear in mind that scripture as we know it didn’t exist at that point. When Paul says ‘the gospel’ he means ‘what I told you about Jesus. Remember?’ And when he says ‘I did not receive it from a human source, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ’ we are back where we started. Paul’s authority is grounded in the fact that he is utterly convinced that what he is saying was told to him by God.

The letter to the Galatians is urgent and impassioned – it really matters, Paul is sure, that they get this right – and he is distraught that the church he started, that was running well, is now going off the rails. He is in full flow telling people off, and he doesn’t stop to consider that he was equally certain that he was doing the right thing, the thing God commanded, when he was busily engaged in persecuting the early church.

However, Paul has calmed down somewhat by the end of the letter, and once again the theme of evidence, the proof of the pudding, comes to the fore. The whole letter builds to a crescendo as Paul offers the concept of the fruits of the Spirit as a guiding ethical principle. ‘the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. There is no law against such things.’ 

The proof of the pudding is whether whatever you are doing, whatever you are believing, produces such fruit. Paul of course is no liberal – he can’t conceive that any teaching other than that he has given them could possibly produce such fruit. He tells them very firmly what to believe, and what to do, in the circumstances he has heard about. But his own experience has taught him that we can’t rely on the religious formulations and traditions of yesterday. And Paul knows that the church he is writing to will face in the future all sorts of trials and questions he can’t imagine. By the time his letter has arrived, they may well have lurched on to the next crisis. He will have to trust that this guiding principle, this litmus test, will pull them through.

Our faith, our lives, are built on a messy combination of different kinds of half-trusted authorities. Even when we don’t trust the authorities – the banks, the supermarkets, the MPs, the papers – we have to rely on them for our day to day functioning. And the more we trust the people that tell us about something, the more we trust the information they tell us enough to base our actions on it. Whether that is wearing short sleeves because the weather forecast said it would be sunny, or trying a restaurant because a friend said they had a good meal there, to risking faith because we trust the accumulated wisdom of the centuries. But ultimately, we make our decisions based on our experiences of those actions. One too many weather forecast failures and we carry a mac everywhere we go. If we like the food, we go there again – and are more likely to rate that friend’s recommendations in future. If we meet God, in prayer, worship, sacrament and friendship, we carry on doing what we were doing, and trust the Bible or our traditions more because they have been tested and found reliable.

In my first job at Proctor & Gamble I was responsible for doing quite a few marketing mailshots. We often included a money off coupon or a free sample to encourage people to try our products, from nappies to washing powder. The wisdom was that if the product was noticeably better than the alternatives, it was worth sending a free sample, even though that was by far the most expensive option. Because people would try it, see it was the best, and be far more likely to buy it after that experience. If you couldn’t really tell the difference, then a free sample was pointless.

God is confident enough in his love and in the deep joy that knowing about God brings, to encourage us to give it a go. The ultimate authority of anything rests in our experience of it: today's readings are clear-eyed about that. The Bible writers know that the practical test of  whether authority measures up to experience applies to faith as much as to anything else in life, and they are confident that God will live up to that test. 

Authority is ultimately only worth anything if it is recognised as such by others. The centurion recognised it in Jesus. Paul recognised it in that voice on the road. Solomon recognised it in answered prayer. Let us pray that we will recognise it when we see it.

* For 2nd June 2013: Lectionary Readings 1 Kings 8:22-3, 41-3; Galatians 1:1-12; Luke 7:1-10.

The T(w)eenage Prayer Experiment

I'd like to invite you to have a look at my latest project, The Teenage Prayer Experiment

This week I tried to buy confirmation presents for a 10 and 13 year old from my church. I asked the Cathedral book shop for a book suitable for each age, that would help them to begin to develop a regular pattern and habit of prayer. But apparently, no such thing exists.

So, my son and I decided to write one.

Here's how it is going to work. I am meant to come up with a suggestion for a way of praying - a technique, a method, whatever you want to call it - each week.

He is going to try them. And then he is going to write a review of them, and give them marks out of 10 for ease of use, interest, and how close to God/religious/challenged/whatever they made him feel. Or those categories might change!

We'd love it if others tried them too, especially teenagers, and let us know through the comments how they were for you. You can give them marks out of 10 too.

If all goes well, we're hoping to write this up and compile a book in a year or so of the ones that worked best (and maybe the ones that were a disaster too). It seems to us that there really should be a book available out  there that can be given as a confirmation present to, say, 11-16 year olds, that shows and talks about different ways of praying, and developing a habit of prayer.

If you know of a such a book, or have suggestions for things for us to try, I'd love to hear from you. And do point and t(w)eenagers you know who might be interested to the project website, and encourage them to get involved too.

Synod voting and 2/3 majorities: A discussion paper

If we were going to turn down the Women Bishops legislation, we should have done so earlier. Here's how.

In the immediate aftermath of November's rejection of the Women Bishops legislation by General Synod, there were many mutterings about the voting system and the requirement for a 2/3 majority. I did not join in with these, as knee-jerk suggestions that we change the system to try to get the result we wanted are rarely the best reaction to a disappointing outcome.

I have, though, spent some time thinking about the whole process that had taken us to that point. And in particular, I have tried since November to analyse why people felt let down by the voting system, not just the result, and whether there are lessons to be learned for the future. My suggestion would not have changed the outcome, but I think it would have saved much wasted time.

It seems to me that the mistake in our procedures lay not so much in requiring a 2/3 majority, but in requiring that 2/3 majority in the wrong place in the process. There was a great sense of anger and disillusionment amongst members of deanery and diocesan synods, who had discussed and agreed the legislation, that it could then be rejected. There seemed little point asking the dioceses' opinion, if it were to be ignored in the final voting.

Presumably the purpose of requiring a special majority is to ensure that any changes command broad support. It means there is an inherent prejudice in favour of the status quo, on any issue, which some may find reassuring. However, I think the experience of the Women Bishops debacle has demonstrated that the Final Approval stage is the wrong point for that majority to be needed.

There were many stages that the legislation had to pass through. A each stage, other than the final approval debate, the legislation needed to gain 50% of the votes cast (in Houses, if such was demanded) if it were to proceed to the next stage. At the final approval stage, it needed a 2/3 majority in each House.

The legislation proceeded smoothly (albeit via some major and stressful debates) to the reference to the diocesan synods. This reference is required of any 'Article 8' business (business that involves changing Canons of the Church of England).The Reference stage is designed to prevent General Synod from passing legislation that does not meet with the general approval of the members of the church at a more local level.

Let's look at what happened at the most critical of these stages:

Revision Stage (July 2010): Synod voted to 'take note' of the Revision Committee report,  and then in a separate debate underwent detailed consideration of and voting on a series of amendments, which resulted in the legislation being substantially unchanged. The key vote was that 'Clause 2 stand part of the measure' - effectively, a vote on whether this legislation should be referred to the dioceses, and this passed:
Yes 373, No 14 (17 abstentions).

Article 8 Reference to Dioceses    Passed with 42 dioceses in favour, 2 against

Final Drafting (Feb 2012) Passed, in houses:
                             Bishops: Yes 28, No 0. Clergy: Yes 149, No 14. Laity: Yes 132, No 37.

Reference to the House of Bishops   Passed (with amendments, voting unrecorded)

Final Approval     Rejected, voting in houses and needing a 2/3 majority:
                             Bishops:Yes 44, No 3. Clergy: Yes 148, No 45. Laity: Yes 132, No 74.


What strikes me, looking at those figures, is that the serious anomaly came at the Revision stage. Many people must have voted then to send it to the dioceses, who later voted against it. This, it seems to me, is the root of the anger and disenfranchisement felt by 'people in the pews'.

It was unfair, misleading, and wasteful of people's time and church resources to commit the legislation for debate by Diocesan Synods, if a third of the members of any house of General Synod was prepared to disregard their views.

I suggest, therefore, that if we wish to keep a 2/3 majority requirement for Article 8 business, that we move it to an earlier point in the process.

One option would be to require a 2/3 majority in General Synod at the end of the Revision Stage. This would mean that legislation was only sent to the diocese if it achieved the 2/3 requirement for the support of synod.

A second option - and my preference - would be to require a 2/3 majority of diocesan synods. In this case, when General Synod sent legislation to the dioceses, if 2/3 of them accepted it the legislation would then be deemed passed. In the first case, only a simple majority of diocesan synods would have to approve it for it to be deemed passed.

A third option would require a 2/3 majority at both of the above stages.

There would be no need for a further Final Approval stage: or if there was, for technical reasons, it should be a technicality only and would only require a simple majority.

Finally, it is very important that no further changes (other than technical drafting amendments, perhaps) should be made to the legislation after it has been sent to the dioceses. I can well understand that, when Synodical government was first introduced, the bishops didn't feel able to relinquish full control over matters of doctrine. I feel that is now an outdated attitude, but even if the bishops wish to retain the right to make amendments, that too should be moved to an earlier stage in the process. Perhaps, for example, the bishops might wish to make changes after synod had approved the legislation but before it went to the dioceses, though I think this would be a mistake. The bishops of course will always retain a veto on any legislation, since by voting in houses a simple majority of bishops can always defeat any proposal.

These proposals would mean that only legislation that General Synod was happy to see passed would be referred to the Diocesan Synods, avoiding the wasted time, money and goodwill that has been involved in this process.

General Synod is a fairly young institution, and so we shouldn't be surprised if glitches in its systems are sometimes discovered. Standing Orders are revised quite often, and it would be a simple matter to make these changes, itself requiring just a simple majority in General Synod.

In making this proposal I am trying to be as neutral as possible on the presenting issue. That is, I don't think - and it isn't my plan - that the change I am proposing would have made it more likely that the Women Bishops legislation would have got through. Instead, it would have meant it fell earlier, wasting considerably less time and energy in the process.

Any suggestions for changing Standing Orders need to be thought through. If changed, the new rules would apply to all future debates, not simply this one. You will all have your own particular bugbears that you can test my suggestion on by asking how it might affect issues that you care about deeply. My personal test has been to think about the Anglican Communion Covenant debate. I don't want to suggest any changes that, applied retrospectively, would have got the Women Bishops legislation through at the cost of also making it more likely that the Covenant would have been passed. But I don't think this suggestion would affect the outcome of any votes, simply move the point at which a special majority is required to prevent another debacle like that of November.

I would be very grateful for any feedback on this proposal; and perhaps, if it is found helpful, for someone who is currently a Member to formally propose it to General Synod for debate.

Lydia, the dealer in purple cloth

Here is my sermon given at St Laurence Pittington this morning, on Acts 16:9-16:

The New Testament is full of walk on parts. Characters that we hear about briefly, maybe something amazing happens to them, or they have a conversation that we overhear, and then we never hear of them again. We have two of them this morning - the paralysed man by the pool of Bethzatha - and Lydia, the dealer in purple cloth and one of the earliest house church leaders.

I want to focus first of all on the story of Lydia. It is a brief story, but full of significance for us.

For someone with one of these walk-on parts in the New Testament, we actually know quite a lot about Lydia. For a start, we know her name: that might not seem much, but its quite a contrast with the story of the paralysed man in John, where we are told the name of the pool, but not his name!

We know what she did - she was a merchant, specifically a dealer in purple cloth. It wasn't particularly unusual for a woman to run a successful business in the ancient Roman world, and the writer of Acts doesn't make anything of her gender. Purple cloth was the elite fabric of the day, rather like being a dealer in silks or fine wine rather than just running a dress shop or off licence. The implication is that Lydia was a fairly wealthy woman.she was certainly well off enough to run her own household, and for it to be big enough to house Paul and his companions, and later be used as the local church meeting place. After Paul and his companions are imprisoned and then set free, at the end of this chapter we learn that they went to Lydia's house, and met with the still very new Christian community there.

We are also told that Lydia was a 'worshipper of God'. That is, although she was a Gentile not a Jew, she was one of the many gentiles who were attracted to the Jewish belief in one God, and worshipped with the synagogue without going so far as to formally convert to Judaism. Historians think that this was a very significant group of people at the time that Christianity began to spread. It may well be that the presence of so many people who believed and worshipped God, but without wanting to be part of the official religious institution that was Judaism, was a major factor in enabling Christianity to spread so far and so fast.

I wonder what this might mean for Christianity today? We certainly encounter a lot of people who say they believe in 'something out there', or God, or 'a higher power', but don't feel the need or desire to join the old established churches. Is this an opportunity, rather than a threat, just as it was for Paul and the other early Christian missionaries?

But back to Lydia.  On this particular day, a Saturday, the Sabbath, she had gone out to the riverbanks wand met there with some friends. We don't know what they were doing, but Paul finds them there because he supposes that there might be a place of prayer there. It seems that there weren't enough Jews or gentile adherents to Judaism in the town for it to run to a synagogue. Paul's strategy in Acts was normally to go to the synagogue to proclaim Jesus as the fulfilment of prophecy. In this case, in the absence of a synagogue building, he and his companions have put their heads together and thought - if there are some Jews, or some Gentile worshippers of God, in this city, where might they gather on the sabbath? And the first place they go to look is outside the city walls by the river, because such groups often apparently liked to meet near running water, and they strike gold. So the assumption is that Lydia and her group have indeed met for prayer and worship or some sort of spiritual discussion together in this spot. They presumably are delighted to welcome some Jewish visitors to their gathering, and Lydia at least listens with attention and enthusiasm to what they have to say.

And she takes it to heart. She and her household are baptised that same day, and she invites the missionaries to her house and wont take no for an answer. Within a few days or at most a few weeks, there is an established house church under her leadership, and Paul goes off to the next town leaving her to get on with it, as is his pattern.

There are two particular things that I think this story has to say to us today, two questions to ask ourselves. The first is about mission, the second about conversion.

The first thing that leaps from the page for me today is that Paul and the others went out to the river, where they thought there might be a place of prayer. When they got there, they sat down, and began to listen and talk with those they found there. Its the same pattern as Jesus follows throughout the gospels, and in our reading today: going to where people are interested in and hoping for healing, community, peace, though they certainly aren't expecting the version he gives them.

The question this leaves me with is, where are these places for us? Where in the places we live, or at work, do people go to talk, in the sort of conversations that might be open to faith being mentioned? Where and when do the people you know mention that they are worried about their mums cancer, or their daughters marriage, or discuss the reiki they saw on telly last night that Jordan had tried, and whether it works? All of those are the conversations of spiritual seekers but maybe without the vocabulary and concepts, certainly without the constraints of knowing what the right answers are meant to be according to the church.
Were do you hear those conversations, or where might you seek them out? Your kitchen table? The coffee room at work, or the water cooler? The gym? Smokers corner? The pub? On the golf course? At the knitting group?

(Just spend a minute or so discussing with your neighbour where those conversations happen for the people around you, either in this village, or at work, or among your family and friends.)

The challenge for us is threefold. to deliberately decide, like Paul, to go to those places;  to listen and genuinely join in with the conversations we hear there, and to speak explicitly of how what we have experienced of Christ is relevant to them.

(The congregation were then each given a piece of purple velvet, to keep in a pocket or handbag, the idea being that when they come across it there it will remind them of Lydia's story and remind them to ask if there is an opportunity to speak of their experiences of faith.)

Secondly, Lydia's story gives us another question, focused on ourselves rather than on others.

Lydia hears the message, is baptised, and immediately invites - well nigh forces - the evangelists to come and base themselves at her house. Within a very short time she is running a house church, the church in that place, and Paul and his companions leave to start again elsewhere, trusting the new Christians to get on with it.

There are echoes here again, like a shadow, with the healed man in our gospel reading. As so often in Jesus ministry, he is healed without any or hardly any show of interest or engagement on his part. He then goes off and we hardly hear of him again, except that later we are told he recognises Jesus teaching and tells the temple authorities that is the man who told him to break the Sabbath, and so contributes in a small way to Jesus' becoming a marked man.

As soon as Lydia is converted, she starts shaping and changing the future of the church, as happens again and again in Acts. As soon as someone encounters Jesus they start being part of its future story. Lydia's story shows very clearly that there is no time-served qualification for being a Christian who makes a difference, no sense that it should be left to the professionals or those who have been around longest.

Which leaves us with the question: how is the church different because you are a Christian? How does the fact that you come here week by week change this community, this church, or the world? Or if you don't think it does, how might it?