A God of Action

Acts 16.11-15

11 We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, 12and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. 13On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. 14A certain woman named Lydia, a worshipper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. 15When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.’ And she prevailed upon us.

This is the last Sunday of our series on She-roes of the faith. This has been a real challenge for me. Because we read in scripture that humans are created in the image of God. Not just humans in general, but each human is created in the image of God. God, huge, holy beyond human’s capacity to understand. Each human.

Simplifying people to what I can present in five minutes seems unfair.

Because people are unfathomably complex, autonomous, contradictory, heroes and villains of their own legends…

In short, there is always so much more to the story.

But even in just the broad strokes, I invite you to look through this lens:

What does the life here tell us about God?

What is God up to in the lives of these she-roes of the faith.

This evening we’re talking about writer, activist, and the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement,

Dorothy Day

Born 1897 in Brooklyn but moved around a lot as her father changed jobs and cities.

Her parents who didn’t go to church but

as a young child Dorothy expressed interest in the church

and an avid reader the bible was often under her arm

She found an episcopal church, learned the catechism herself and was baptized when she was 14.

In addition to the bible, Dorothy read everything she could get her hands on. Especially social commentaries.

Upton Sinclair, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy

She moved back to New York as a young woman and worked on the staff of a socialist newspaper and

began to develop her philosophy of unapologetic pacifism and service to the poor

In Greenwich Village Dorothy wrote and led a bohemian life developing friendships with prominent communists, suffragettes, writers, social activists,

In her job and knowing all these people

Dorothy had a front row seat for the human price paid by the poor during the great depression. It deeply affected her and she decided to give the problem of poverty absolutely everything she had.

She didn’t agree with everything it did, but The Catholic church provided the organization she needed and she joined forces with the church to live out her mission of service to the poor.

In 1933, with a partner Day started the Catholic Worker, a newspaper that highlighted the hardships of the working class. The paper covered strikes, working conditions, the plight of children, women and people of color in the workforce. It encouraged readers to support unions working for the safety and security of the working poor.

Then, as Dorothy herself tells it, one day

her partner ran out of second hand clothes he was giving out at the newspaper’s headquarters and so invited everyone in line in for a meal instead.

Being a proud French peasant he thought soup was good for the body and the soul.

So he and Dorothy served soup that night and hundreds of nights after to whoever showed up at their door. This was the first, “soup kitchen”.

Dorothy believed that her duty as a Christian was live the Gospel and to care for the poor – end of story.

Her life encompasses almost another 50 years of advocacy and work for the poor, against war,

Always what was paramount for Dorothy was help for the least of these.

-The little ones as Jesus calls them, those who are underemployed, undernourished, undereducated, underappreciated, underrepresented,

-Dorothy Day’s life, complex as her and all lives are, was about help and care for those little ones – so precious to Jesus and by his directive so precious to us.

-And for this work, she is incredibly well known, especially in Catholic circles for her work in non-violence, anti-war and workers rights. There are many buildings, programs, professorships books bearing her name and legacy. 

-And she is in investigation by the Catholic church for sainthood.

-Truly a remarkable, one of a kind human and through her tireless efforts surely changed the world. 

Our scripture today tells of another woman, also very successful in her time

Lydia, purveyor of purple cloth. she would have either been a merchant of the purple cloth itself, a rare commodity or just of the dye, which this region was famous for.

Either way, somehow a woman had a home that she could offer to Paul and his companions. A typical woman of this time would not own anything let alone a house, but Lydia did.

This business life couldn’t have been easy for a woman at the time, but obviously Lydia made it work. Probably with some business sense, possibly a little good luck, and

Definitely a lot of hard work.

We celebrate this businesswoman, most unusual in her time, who through hard work was able to support God’s mission by put Paul up while he and his followers stayed in Philippi spreading the good news of God in Jesus Christ.

 Dorothy Day, Tireless efforts, Lydia entrepreneurial hard work,

 And then we also today celebrate Katherine Von Bora Luther

Then somewhere in the middle of the acknowledgement scale is Katie Von Bora Luther.

But she also, with incredibly diligent hard work won the heart of Martin Luther (a priest and monk who never would have thought about marrying) by Making herself indispensable to his mission, keeping books, managing help and most importantly very competently brewing beer.

Our women of faith today worked. Tirelessly. Relentlessly. Persistently.

Like them, God is a god of action. Moving above the formless void before anything, creating, naming, encouraging, loving, disciplining, and God in Jesus – acting. Jesus is never sitting still. Walking, going, travelling, teaching, speaking…

God speaks through the lives of Dorothy Day, Lydia, Katie Von Bora as a God of action. God speaks love to creation in the language of tireless, relentless and persistent work.

Appropriate for a day we celebrate Labor

I find Labor Day to be another difficult thing actuallyBecause It is so tempting in this culture for us to measure our worth by our output

What is my job? How well do I do it? How cool is the job? How often do people celebrate this particular job? How many people know my job exists? Do my closest loved ones even know what I do at my job?

Even the jobs that are cool or maybe well-paying or secure – there are days for everyone

When I don’t feel like I’ve done much or done well or earned my keep.

There are times when my work seems invisible and me with it.

Yet sometimes it is in that invisible work in which God can be seen specifically.

When there are no names attached to it, no medals awarded, no salary received even.

Little ways we live and set an example for others, little ways we love like no one else can and little ways we teach with our being and presence others about love of God and of neighbor.

 So I’m going to add another few people to our last Sunday of She-roes of the faith. These people have no names and what they did probably seemed like nothing at the time. They got no prizes, probably not even a thank you, and yet their just being brought about a little piece of the kingdom of God.

I want to tell you the story of Dorothy Emma Howell Rodham. Born in Chicago in the early 1900s, she raised three children one of whom grew up to be first lady, senator, secretary of state and first female candidate of a major political party to run for president of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hillary’s mom, Dorothy had a much different childhood from her daughter’s.

Born to teenage parents who didn’t know how to be adults and certainly weren’t interested in children, Dorothy grew up in and out of apartments and on the streets of Chicago during the great depression. Her parents would leave her alone for days at a time at the youngest of ages.

When her little sister came along she took on the role of mother.

When she was 8, she and her sister were put on a train by themselves and shipped to grandparents in California who didn’t want them either and punished and oppressed the girls relentlessly. It was so bad that Dorothy gave up on her dream of going to high school and at age 13, moved out and got a job as a live-in nanny. The mother of the family, the kindest human she’d known to that point in her life, said that if she got up early and took care of the children and housework she could go to high school if she could get herself there and back on time.

So grateful for this chance, Dorothy got up in the wee hours to work and by the time she got to school each morning had done an entire day’s chores.

After proudly graduating her mother contacted her and promised to send her to college if she moved back to Chicago. Excited that her mother wanted her finally, she went. But when she got there, she found her mother only wanted a free housekeeper and had no intention of sending her to college. Brokenhearted, Dorothy left to make her way in life, very much on her own.

An interviewer once asked Hillary Clinton after she told this story, “Did you ever ask her how she did it? How did she survive a childhood like this?”

And Hillary said, “Yes, I did ask her. I remember I asked her one time, How did you do it? How did you survive, and how did you turn out to be resilient and wanting to be a mom and wanting to do the best you could for your kids?

Here’s what she said, “At critical moments, somebody was kind to me. In first grade when my teacher noticed that I never had any food for lunch, from then on she always seemed to bring too much for herself and shared her lunch with me for the rest of the year.

All along the way, at critical moments somebody was kind to me.”

God in action in ways very few people will ever know about. Giving something to eat. Or even just giving a smile, a kind word on the way. No movements, No monuments, No sainthoods

Little things here and little things there that don’t seem to make a real difference in the moment.

But in the story of a life make all the difference.

So who is God in our stories, sacred and secular today?

God is activity itself. God is at work. Tirelessly. Relentlessly. Persistently.

God is active in lives of diligence, and renown and success.

God is at work making and sustaining Dorothy Day in her singular uniqueness…

feeding people in the soup lines, advocating for humane work conditions.

God is at work in creating Lydia a woman before her time giving her a competitive spirit

and providing her the opportunity to be able to shelter and offer care to travelers,

God is at work forming Katherine Von Bora in her tenacity working to make dreams into

realities for causes that change the world.

And God is at work creating and shaping you. In all your complexity, humanity, your hero-ness your rogue tendencies.

Big or small, God is with you in your doing and your being,

active and at work in your singular uniqueness, helping you giving gifts only you can give by being the wonderful, loving, complex and unique human you are created to be.

Thanks upon thanks be to God for creating humans so interesting and complicated and loving us into fullness bit by bit, day by day, in ways huge and hard to miss and in ways too tiny to notice.

Today and always dear Children of God, in your doing and in your being, you are truly blessed of your creator. Amen.