Dear Friends in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The votive ship hanging over the baptismal font is a copy of the 1825 Restauration that brought the first Norwegian emigrants to America.  On July 4th, a replica of the original wooden sailing ship began its 98- day crossing of the Atlantic Ocean to commemorate the 200^th anniversary of the Restauration.  When the original ship arrived in New York harbor on October 9^th, 1825 the passengers were met by Cleng Peerson, a fellow Norwegian, pioneer and a Quaker sympathizer, who had spent three years in America from 1821-1824. He served as the “advance agent” for the emigrants, and opened the doors for them and their great adventure in the new land.

I think the Apostle Paul wished at times that he had a man like Cleng Peerson as his advance agent. Paul’s first missionary journey with Barnabas had been a success, to be sure, but it was primarily limited to a small portion of modern-day Turkey that they could travel to by foot. There, Paul and Barnabas had preached and organized small congregation within the Jewish community who chose to worship Jesus as the Savior of the world. Together with his three new travelling companions, Silas, Timothy and Luke, Paul began his second journey visiting these same communities.  Through these visits the churches were being strengthened and growing in number. And so Paul thought that this pattern of ministry would simply continue as his life work. But surprisingly, we read in the Book of Acts, Paul and his companions were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach in the Roman Territory of Turkey called Asia. Instead, the Spirit was directing Paul away from the large cities he thought would have the greatest potential for embracing Christ, and instead, carrying them away on a ship in an entirely different direction.

My friends, that is an important insight for all of us to embrace early in life and the focus of this morning’s sermon.  Sometimes life’s direction is determined as much by the closing of doors as by the opening of them. But be assured, whenever God closes a door, he has opened something new to you.  You simply need to be curious and patient to find it.

The four bewildered travelers stood at the port of Troas curiously wondering where God was leading them next. There, “during the night, Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’” God’s dream was greater than any Paul could imagine on his own. God was opening the door for the faith of Christ to pass from Asia to Europe, and the cry, “Come over and help us,” was a call to the whole western world. As Luke would write, “When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.”

The port of Neapolis on the coast of Macedonia would have been a natural place to start, but it held little interest to Paul. Without pausing he passed on to Philippi instead. That is where he felt the gospel of Jesus Christ was most surely needed.  How surprised Paul must have been by the lack of ceremony arriving in the West. There was no welcoming committee, no key to the city and no one to greet him.  He thought that his vision of the Macedonian man was a powerful call to do work in the legendary homeland of Alexander the Great and his father Philipp, only to arrive in a city where there was no synagogue.  Jewish law required ten males for a synagogue to be formed. But in Philippi, there were not ten God-fearing Jews in the whole city.  He arrived in the historic Roman city where the Republic ended and the Empire began. 100 years earlier, in the Battle of Philippi, the armies of Brutus and Cassius who had assassinated Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, were defeated by Mark Anthony and Augusta Octavian, the first Roman emperor.  They declared Philippi a Roman colony, but not with the same rights as Rome itself.  Religious tolerance was not practiced and so etched on the arches of the city walls was a prohibition against bringing any unrecognized foreign religion into the city. That may explain why there was a Jewish prayer meeting being held outside the city, on the riverbank.  But with no Jewish men and no synagogue, Paul must have wondered whether God had brought him to the right place.

I know that feeling personally.  I have mentioned this before, but when Janna and I first arrived in Latvia in the fall of 1993, after the fall of the Soviet Union, and we too wondered what we were doing. We boarded the passenger ship in Stockholm bound for Riga with 50 green hymnals, a 25- pound reading Bible, a black preaching robe and great expectations.  But when we arrived the following morning in the container port in Riga, moored between rusty ships, and were barred from passing through customs unless we paid a bribe, which was carton of cigarettes, we too wondered whether God had brought us to the right place. Days passed as we tried to determine the best location for holding worship services.  The promising Lutheran congregation in our neighborhood didn’t believe that a coffee hour was essential to the work of the church.  It was too Baptist.  The church building that we had been invited by the archbishop for services, was managed by the Riga Technical University and was run as a cultural center. The most promising venue was in the church office building, but the archbishop had no time to initiate our work. On our first personal meeting, he asked what resources I brought with me- and he meant financial resources. Yes, we wondered whether God had brought us to the right place. We finally held our first worship service nearly two months later on Reformation Sunday.

Although Paul and his companions had wasted no time in getting to Philippi, the mission itself required patience. Not much happened for a while, but when God began work in Macedonia, it came with surprises. The first person to welcome the gospel was not a man at all, but a woman, named Lydia from Thyatira, from the very area that Paul had be forbidden by the Holy Spirit to travel and speak.  She was a seller of purple cloth with plenty of resources, including financial.

As Paul spoke, Lydia listened intently.  We don’t know how long these visits lasted. She was already regarded as a worshiper of God, but she knew nothing of Jesus. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what Paul said.  Whether it was a single day or weeks, Lydia listened to Paul’s words at the riverbank and grew in her devotion to God. She longed to be baptized together with her whole household in Jesus’ name. How exciting it was for the apostle that Lydia was becoming the first European convert to Christianity, but also quite surprising.

This was all a new territory for Paul. Having been trained by the scholars in Antioch and Jerusalem to be a leader among Jews, he would have been well acquainted with their views on women. The rabbis were known to say, “It is better that the words of the Law be burned that be delivered to a woman.”   Still the Spirit changed both the heart of Lydia and Paul in those visits. The fact that Paul was willing to speak to these women on the riverbank at all indicated that he no longer held that view.

Most remarkably, Lydia didn’t just open her heart, but she courageously opened her home to this new faith as well. Given her business, the role of women in society, her social connections and the high price of purple cloth, her economic security and social status were all in jeopardy, but she willingly shared what she had and demonstrated the spiritual gift of hospitality. The Lord used her greatly to aid Paul, and her home would become the first church in Europe.

The majority of the emigrants aboard the Restauration upon arrival in New York, traveled northwest toward Rochester, New York to the town of Kendall, near Lake Ontario on a tract of land purchased for the Norwegians by Cleng Peerson. In 1834, Peerson led a second group of 62 emigrants 1500 miles by foot and wagon over the Alleghanies from New York State and westward across the prairies of Ohio and Indiana into the Fox River Valley on the border between Wisconsin and Illinois. From there other leaders inspired by Peerson, established the first Norwegian community in southeastern Iowa at Sugar Creek. In 1847, Peerson joined a group of Swedish immigrants hoping to build a utopian society at Bishop Hill Colony in Illinois. Finally in the 1850’s, he led Norwegian settlers to Texas.  There, he lived until his death in 1865. Over the course of 100 years, 900,000 Norwegians, nearly 1/3 of the population left Norway for a new life in a new land. And it all began by the first emigrants stepping off the ship and making way for the next.

The story of the church in Philippi, much as the story of the first Norwegian emigrants in America serves as a model of this faith building and nurturing.  There is a mutuality in the relationship between the shepherd and the sheep, the pastor and the congregation, the advance agent and the settlers. Paul preached the good news and Lydia used her gifts and possessions to welcome and offer hospitality to the newly founded church.  One person, you see, can make all the difference.

My friends, you may wonder about your own gifts and your significance in the church. You may have found yourself in an awkward place like Paul. You look around and ask, “God, am I in the right place- doing what you want me to do?” The circumstances and frustrations may seem over -whelming and you may not foresee a good and prosperous future. Don’t be too quick to abandon God’s work for your life. Just as it did for the Apostle Paul in Macedonia, one unlikely convert, a woman named Lydia can make all the difference.  Amen.

May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.