Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. Alright.

Welcome to church. If you're new to the community, my name is Jeremy. I'm actually pretty regular around here, but I have been away from preaching for a few weeks. Been doing some writing and planning and thinking about post COVID commons and how we plan to rebuild some of our practices, but also thinking about how we can make some changes and adapt and evolve to meet the realities of our new normal. Coming out of this long and exhausting season that we have all found ourselves in.

By the way, today we are starting a new series called Everything is Awful, a letter about hope. When we planned this a year ago, I'm not sure we understood just how prescient this series would be in May 2021. But remember, ultimately, this is a series about hope, so hold on to that. However, before we get to that, if you missed any of the sermons in our last series on Easter, you definitely need to go back and catch up. Bobby and Scott always do incredible work, but this was a home run.

I learned so much sitting back and listening over the last five weeks. This community is such a gift, and huge thanks to Bobby for quarterbacking that entire series for us. But Esther is just such an incredible story. Imagine there's a book in your Bible that doesn't even mention God. Think about all the ways that just that opens up your imagination of God.

The fact that you don't need to be able to notice God for a story to be divine. The realization that if you can't see God near you, that doesn't mean you are forgotten. The divine humility of a God who doesn't need to be the center of every story. Have you ever thought about a God who's content to wait in the background of your life cheering you on? That's the God we see in Esther.

And if these texts are inspired by which we simply mean that these are the stories through which God has orchestrated our movement toward Jesus. Well, then that means God has inspired stories where God is absent, where God is unseen, where God is overlooked, which means that perhaps all of those moments in all of our lives as well are actually part of a much bigger, much more beautiful story than sometimes we see on the surface. A story where God is inviting all of us home regardless of whether we are aware of the path ahead of us or maybe even if we haven't quite found it yet. And so perhaps like Esther, we just keep doing the right next thing in front of us. And eventually, we find ourselves where we were meant to be.

Today, though, we start a new series. And as I said, it's called Everything is A Letter About Hope. And what we're going to do together over the next eight weeks is work our way through the letter to Philippi. Now as Paul writes, Philippians is not gripped in the midst of a pandemic that refuses to end. He is, however, writing to a community of people that are, for a variety of reasons, struggling.

I think if you pull some of Paul's words in his letter out of their context, they can feel a little bit glib, maybe a little bit too easy. When he says, don't be anxious about anything or I can do all things through him who gives me strength, that can feel a little bit flippant. I often think of John Jones, the UFC fighter who has Philippians four thirteen tattooed on his chest. And note of the man is an extraordinary athlete, but the juxtaposition of I can do all things through him who gives me strength as he strides up to beat out another man that feels jarring at best. And so we're gonna talk about hope in the midst of this kind of moment.

But we have to acknowledge, as Paul does, that sometimes it does feel like everything is awful. So please hear me. This is not about giving in to despair. In fact, it's actually the opposite. It's acknowledging the moment for all that it is so that we can choose hope on the other side.

Now Philippians is our goal. But here's the thing. When we read these New Testament letters, we really should remind ourselves that these are letters. And Paul is not talking to us. Paul is also not teaching into the void.

Paul is writing to a very specific people that he has particular relationships with. Don't get me wrong. Of course, of course, we can listen in and learn but part of how we learn well is by understanding what it is we're listening in on. When I talk to my son, I do that differently. I use different vocabulary.

I reference a different shared history than when I'm talking to the random kid my son met at the playground. And even here in this community, I preach differently than I would anywhere else because I'm building on an existing relationship. And so when Paul writes to Philippi, Paul is doing all of that, and we should pay attention to all of it. Because if not, then statements like don't be anxious about anything will probably fall a little short for us. So today, we're not even gonna get to Philippians because first we have to talk about Philippi.

So here's the plan. Purple dealers, fortune tellers, anxious jailers, the strengths of real community. But first, let's pray. God of all grace who comes to knit us together, to bring us back into relationship with you through your Son, but also to help us find the way to be community. To find strength in each other.

To find encouragement in each other. To find our anxieties melt away when we're able to speak to each other and share to each other. To share stories with each other that lift us up and ground us in our real world. God, in all the ways that we have been missing community this year, may we give thanks for all the ways that kind words and Zoom encouragement and online church has filled some of that gap to keep us connected, to keep us strong, to keep us moving forward in the same direction. We trust that in all of that, your spirit has been and is present to us just as we need.

And even when everything is awful, we pray that in you we might be grounded in hope. In the strong name, the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay. Philippi.

You you possibly understand this already, but when you come across books in your Bible like Romans or Galatians or Philippians, these titles come from the cities to which Paul is writing. Rome or Galatia or in this case, Philippi. And more than just being a convenient way to keep track of these letters, even these broad titles give us some insight into who Paul is talking to and what it is he might be trying to say to them. If you remember back to our epic five year series on Romans by the way, wasn't five years straight, so don't panic. But if you remember back to that series, we frequently kept coming back to the context of a Roman church struggling to integrate Jewish and non Jewish followers of Jesus, a big part of what's going on in that letter.

Roman xenophobia for anyone who is a non citizen, Jewish apprehension about being too open toward people who had historically oppressed them. These are very real human tensions that sit below the surface of Paul's letter to that city. Well, here in Philippi, we get more than just some insight into the cultural context of the city. We actually get to meet some of these individuals who made up this Jesus community. See, in Acts 16, Paul and his friend Silas, they make their first trip to Philippi.

By the way, two trips to Philippi are mentioned specifically in Acts. There's this one and then another later in chapter 20 when he comes back for another visit. But there's also a mention between those of Paul moving through Macedonia and visiting the churches he had started there. And since Philippi is an important city in Macedonia, it's very likely, almost improbable in fact, that he wouldn't have visited then as well. So by the time Paul writes this letter to Philippians, which comes after all these visits, he knows these people pretty well.

But in Acts 16, starting in verse 12, we read that Paul traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia. He stayed there several days. On the Sabbath, went outside to the city gate to the river where he expected to find a place of prayer. But instead, he sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. Now, we're about to meet some of the key characters in Philippi here.

But first, Philippi, colony, a leading city of that district in Macedonia. There's a lot to understand here already. The Romans took control of Macedonia from a series of Greek kingdoms in the second century BCE. By the time of Jesus, Rome is firmly in control of the area. However, one of the ways that Rome built their base in new areas was to colonize those areas with loyal soldiers.

So Philippi is literally a city populated with ex soldiers, probably Praetorian guard, who were granted plots of land for their loyalty to Octavian who took the city. Octavian who would later take the name Emperor Augustus. In fact, the city gets its name from the Greek king Philip of Macedonia. But when Rome took it over, the city was renamed Colonia Vitrix Filippensium or the Colonial Victory over Philip. And then once Octavian became emperor, it was renamed again, this time Colonia Augusta Ulia Filippensis, which is sort of something like the colony of Augustus, son of Julius in Philippi.

Now nobody called it that in common conversation. I mean, it's a mouthful, hence Philippi. But when Paul shows up in town, everyone knows that this is Roman town. In fact, over time, Rome even structured the city as a mini Rome going as far as to move the roads and walls to mirror Rome. And Augustus even had a temple to the god Mars, the Roman god of war constructed at the edge of the city.

So this isn't Galilee. This isn't Jerusalem. This isn't even Rome that pulled in people from across the empire. This is a Roman military town. In population, in structure, in worship, in every conceivable way, Augustus is Lord in Philippi.

And so when Paul shows up in a new city, his MO is generally to find the synagogue and to begin a dialogue with his fellow Jewish people there, introducing them to his understanding of Jesus Messiah and slowly building a believing community in that city. Now a synagogue in the city may or may not have been a building. In the Jewish culture of the time, the synagogue really was the faithful community. By the way, how novel is that considering the way that we have had to think about gatherings and buildings and churches this year. The faithful tradition has always valued the investment of the people over the setting in which they gather.

But even if you don't have a building in which to meet in the Jewish culture of the time, you still needed 10 men to form a minyan in order to hold a Torah service. Think of a quorum needed to start a business meeting. So Paul realizing that there's no synagogue goes outside the city looking for a quiet place that a minion might gather to pray. And instead, what he finds is a group of women. Now, it's a really fascinating moment because you might think that a Jewish man who's trying to start a community that might follow what he believes to be the Jewish Messiah is pretty disappointed to not even find a minyan in this Roman military town.

I mean, he he likely wasn't expecting much. You gotta keep your expectations reasonable, but certainly he hoped for at least that to start from. And yet in the very next verse, we read that one of those there was a woman from the city of Theatira named Alidia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshipper of God. Now, we keep reading in a moment here but this phrase worshipper of God, this means that she is not Jewish.

It could mean that she is what is sometimes known as a God fearer, which were Gentile, non Jewish people who followed the Jewish God Yahweh, but even that is unclear. So possibly the best assumption here is simply that this is nothing more than a statement about her openness to spirit. And yet, if we keep reading, we hear that the Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message when she she and the members of her household were baptized. She invited us to her home. If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my house.

And she persuaded us. Now, I want to talk about Lydia here because she is likely the foundation of the entire church in Philippi that comes. But first, think about Paul here. He comes to town, a Roman town, a Roman military town. He looks for the synagogue.

He searches for 10 men. He finds some women and, well, he does not miss a beat. Now, I understand Paul is a product of his time and place. And sometimes I wish he was more direct in his criticism of the patriarchy that dominated his world. But understand this about Paul.

Paul understands the patriarchy. Paul often works within the confines of patriarchy. But Paul is not a slave to the expectations of patriarchy. In fact, Paul honors the apostle Junior. Paul commissions the preacher, Priscilla.

Paul sees the leadership inherent in Lydia of Theatera. And without a second thought, when what he expects is nowhere to be fine, he leans in to recognize that this is where God is. And where God is is with this spiritual but not religious woman gifted with profound leadership ability. Now we read here that she's a dealer in purple cloth and people make a big deal about this, but it shouldn't go unstated. Rome pretty heavily regulated the purchase and sale of anything purple.

A Tyrian dye, as it was known, was an expensive dye made from the shell of snails. A pound of it cost roughly six months of a soldier's salary, so it was not cheap industry to break into. But because of that value, it was also considered a royal color and it was primarily the purview of wealthy or the well connected in Rome. And so that meant anyone dealing in purple likely had contracts and clientele within the world of the Roman upper echelon of society. Also, by the way, when you see these images of the ancient world and they are all sepia toned and brown, that is not at all what Rome looked like.

Archaeologists tell us that Rome was a vibrant, colorful city full of painted murals and statues, so dye was a really big deal. That said, Lydia herself dealt in purple cloth, which likely meant that she bought dye and treated cloth to then be resold. So think of her more as an entrepreneur and an artisan rather than just a wealthy woman who inherited some good connections. In fact, her name means something like the Lydian woman from Theatira. The Lydians were an ethnic group within the Indo European region, but some scholars think that that lack of a family name indicates that she was probably originally a slave who saved enough of her own money to buy her freedom and then went on to build a business for herself, which is probably why she found herself at some point moving from Diatira Philippi to build on those imperial connections she had made.

So she's probably not bitcoin rich, but she's probably pretty well off at least compared to most. And it's likely she financed the church in Philippi at least to get it rolling as well as hosting the church community as it got started. Honestly, pretty impressive woman and this is far more than just someone who happens to have some money. Okay. So here's our starting point in Philiopei, Lydia.

But then in the next verse we read, once we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She had earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune telling. He followed Paul and the rest of us shouting, these men are servants of the most high God who are telling you the way to be saved. And this is a strange one, so stick with me here. The next person they meet is a fortune telling slave girl who's apparently very enamored with Paul and Silas and keeps telling everyone to pay attention to them.

But Paul, for whatever reason, is not amused. She kept this up for many days. Finally, Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to her, in the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her. And at that moment, the spirit left her and she could no longer tell the future. Now I don't know what to do with this story exactly.

Are there really spirits that can help us see the future? Or is this talking about an affectation that she learned to put on to play the part of a fortune teller and drum up business? I I don't know. But either way, she stops. And I do find this very interesting because at one level, I mean, she's saying the right things.

Right? She's saying, listen to these guys. They know the way to be saved. And that sounds like the kind of thing that Paul would want to hear. And yet, for some reason, Paul seems to pick up on the idea that this isn't fully sincere.

It isn't being driven from the right place. There is something sideways in this praise. Honestly, this is pretty intriguing for me. First, Paul discovers leadership in unexpected places and leans into that. Then he finds support that comes with some kind of agenda and he leans away from that.

And listen, having started things and spent most of my adult life in shaping community, these are counterintuitive, deeply important lessons all of us need to learn. We should value gifts and potential over positions and titles, that we should value honesty and transparency over praise and flattery. I wish I had figured this out years earlier. But for whatever reason, Paul sees through this. He tells her to stop and she does.

The problem is this spirit or this act that she has conjured up is what has made her valuable to her owners. They're not happy about this. So these businessmen, and we can call them what they are, slavers, they have Paul and Silas dragged into court. Verse 20. They brought them before the magistrates and said, 'These men are Jews, and they are throwing our city into an uproar.

And by the way, notice the way they immediately other Paul and Silas. They are Jews. This isn't just a dispute. This is about us and this is about them. Remember, we're in Philippi, a Roman colony won through battle and settled through war.

And in verse 22 the crowd joined in attacking Paul and Silas and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods and thrown into jail. All of this, by the way, before they ever have a trial. It's all over money and the only argument ever made is essentially they are not us. It's a pretty stark reminder of the way our fears can be mobilized and weaponized on a dime. But they're put in jail overnight and the magistrate will deal with them tomorrow.

But a guard is put in charge to look after and making sure they don't escape. And later in verse 25, about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God. I mean, singing in the middle of jail. But the other prisoners were listening to them when suddenly there was a violent earthquake and the foundations of the prison were shaken. The prison doors flew open and everyone's chains came loose.

Finally, something starts to go Paul's way. But what happens next seems a bit odd. When the jailer was shaken awake and when he saw the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. Now, you have to understand in Rome, guards were essentially private contractors. A lot of the time soldiers would take jobs during their off time to guard inmates or escort prisoners.

I mean, if the empire wasn't fighting, there wasn't a lot of work to do and soldiers don't get paid for their time off. But because they're private contractors, local cities and magistrates had to have a way of making sure they didn't slack off and so the general rule was any guard whose prisoner escaped would be subject to whatever punishment the prisoner was supposed to receive. And so this guy, seeing the way that Paul and Silas had been treated, figuring he's done for if the entire jail has escaped, is about to off himself. But just in time Paul shouts, don't hurt yourself. We are all still here.

Side note, sometimes I think it's worth remembering that good news for us doesn't always sound like good news for everyone else. And a little compassion, little slowness, a little ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes might make the world of difference for someone. But if you read the story of Paul and Silas, they talk to this man. They tell him the story of Jesus, and he and his family are baptized that day just the way that Lydia and her household were on day one. And now our church here in Philippi is up and running.

We've got a successful woman in a heavily male dominated culture. We've got a spirit infused fortune telling slave girl with a tendency towards shouting in the wrong moments. We've got a suicidal jailer who was likely a paid soldier working for the Roman Empire that had stamped itself violently on this colony. And think about that. Paul came to town looking for a synagogue where he could start with what was familiar to him.

And he ends up working with the Guardians of the Galaxy to start a church in Philippi. Look, I know I spent a lot of time on the strange background to a lot of strange characters, and I know this is supposed to be a series about the letter to the Philippians, and we haven't even gotten there yet. But you gotta understand that when we finally turn the page to Philippians and we hear Paul say, I thank my God every time I remember you, in all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the Gospel from the first day till now, being completely confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus arrives. These are not just nice words from a nice man. This is not a generic greeting that works regardless of who is on the other end.

This is a deep expression of profound relationship born of odd encounters and unexpected welcomes, unforeseen challenges, and unwanted suffering. And all of it contributing to a shared story that sits behind and yet permeates every single word that Paul writes in this letter we're about to read together. Because sometimes everything is awful and the way we get through it is together. This year I've tried to write letters. It's not something I've done often in the past, but with everything being online this year, pen and paper and stamp and envelope just felt more meaningful for some reason.

And so I've written family and I've written friends and I've written some of you, a lot of you actually. And usually it's it's just been these like quick little notes, but every time I've written a letter this year, I thought about these words from Paul. And let's be honest, I I knew we were coming up on this series, so this has been on my mind, but I certainly didn't know we'd still be in COVID here when we got here in May. And yet all year I've been able to thank my God every time I remembered you. In all my prayers for all of you, I have always prayed with joy because of all the ways that all of you have been part of my story for years now.

You see, sometimes everything is awful. And yet then, it's the moments of those surprise encounters and chance meetings, the funny memories and the hard seasons that you and I have been through together, the fact that you're still watching YouTube after this long. It's all of that that has made all of this still full of all kinds of hope for me. And so, it's it's been a long year and I can still say I'm not anxious about anything. I can still believe that with God I have the strength to go through whatever may come.

And that sounds nice, but I know it's only in the midst of all the relationships that form the communities I ground myself in that that can ever be more than just a cliche. Because when there's a story behind your words, behind your hope, this is what makes it all real. And so next week when we finally turn our attention to Philippians and we read Paul's words there, my hope is that we'll be able to picture Paul's friends from here in the beginning. Purple dealers and fortune tellers and anxious jailers are reading his letter and drawing hope from it. All the ways that we can draw strength from each other even when everything is awful.

Let's pray. God, for all the ways that you have drawn us together, sometimes online, sometimes in person, sometimes through strange encounters, sometimes through difficult moments. And yet here we are, part of each other's lives now, for real. May we speak kind words, generous words, words that build each other up and soothe our anxiety and give each other strength. May we speak true words that name what is really real, that expose the most vulnerable parts of our souls, that allow us to be known by each other.

May we speak true words about the goodness inherent in each of us, the potential we see when we look at each other, the ways that God is overjoyed when God looks down to each of us. And in that, might we help each other follow the path of Jesus back toward our home in God. In the strong name of the risen Christ, pray. Amen.