Bible reading: Acts 16:1-12.

Message.

In his poem “To a Mouse”, the Scottish poet Robert Burns is describes how the field or harvest mouse, all cosy and content in its winter nest, has its life turned upside-down when the farmer ploughs up the field and destroys its home The poem contains the famous line, which I’ll translate into English: “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and leave us nothing but grief and pain instead of promised joy” – in other words, no matter how carefully we make our plans, something totally unforeseen may come along and upset them.

So, for instance, we’ve all probably had our holiday cancelled at the last minute because of a strike by cabin staff or air traffic controllers, or a family reunion postponed because someone has fallen ill, or an important meeting moved to a different venue because the heating has broken down, or we’ve missed a concert or a match because of a snarl-up on the motorway; perhaps we’ve ordered a present online only to be told by the supplier that they’re out of stock … you don’t need me to spell out all the possibilities! Just last Monday I was all geared up, with lifts arranged, to go to the Heath for laser treatment on my eyes – only for the hospital to phone up and say that the doctor was unwell and that they were “postponing my procedure”. At least I didn’t pay for a taxi and only discover the bad news when I arrived at the hospital; that’s happened before and was most annoying.

I’m pretty sure that we say that these hiccups and frustrations are nothing more than part and parcel of life. Although some Christians might see certain occurrences as attacks from the Devil – and that’s something I wouldn’t rule out entirely, especially if we feel that God’s work or deeds of mercy are being hampered – I doubt very much that we’d give any spiritual value to them. Yet that’s exactly what Paul and his companions did when they were stuck in Turkey, hoping to travel to several places to spread the Good News of Jesus yet constantly finding something that stopped them from going. They came to the conclusion that it was the Holy Spirit, no less, who was frustrating their plans – but that belief wasn’t a great deal of help: why was God himself preventing from spreading the Gospel, as he had commanded his disciples to do? It was a puzzle which they couldn’t solve.

Before I continue, I need to set the scene. The last time we met Paul was just after his dramatic conversion. But in the years since then he has matured and developed and is now a respected evangelist and teacher. He has gathered around him a band of like-minded Christians; together they have been on a so-called “missionary journey” taking in Cyprus, south-east Turkey and the top-right corner of the Mediterranean. In today’s passage they, with a few changes of personnel (there’s been at least one falling-out!), are well into their second journey, this time covering a wider area across Turkey and ending up at Troas, a port looking across the Aegean Sea to Greece. Between these two journeys and back in Jerusalem there has been a hugely important meeting of Christian leaders, who have (rather grudgingly) accepted that Gentiles can be Christians without having to follow Jewish rules and practices. The discussion, in which Paul had taken a leading role, hadn’t been easy – in fact it had been passionate and intense with its result by no means a foregone conclusion. But the meeting’s final decision did two things: it severed the new faith from its Jewish roots and set it free to become a worldwide religion.

So we meet Paul and his companions in Troas, puzzled and perplexed. In the previous verses Luke has summarized a long and complicated journey through five regions of Turkey. The details would bore you; as you can see me they go all over the place, back and forth, constantly finding themselves thwarted by what they conclude must be the Holy Spirit. Rather surprisingly, they don’t seem to preach as they travel: in fact this seems to be a “non-missionary” journey.

We’d love to know how the Spirit prevented the little band from going where they wanted to go, but we’re not told. Luke, who seems to have joined the group in Troas, presumably knew what had happened but, for whatever reason, decided not to tell his readers. We could make all sorts of guesses about what had taken place – illness, disagreements, accident, war, bandits, a general feeling of unease? – but there’s little point in doing that.

What perhaps we should notice is the contrast between the missionaries’ plans and the Spirit’s roadblocks. Paul and his companions were enthusiastic about their evangelistic task, yet God himself seemed to be preventing them from carrying it out: how strange! This frustration must have been hard to handle and seems to have led to a spiritual crisis. Stuck in Troas, all they could do was pray: “What’s going on, Lord? We want to do your work, so why do you keep putting barriers in our way? What do you want us to do? We’ve tried everything, so please, please, show us the way!” Every way north, south or east seems to have been blocked; to the west there was only sea. Granted, their situation wasn’t as bad as the Israelites trapped at the shore of the Red Sea, with the Egyptian army charging behind them: no-one was going to die! Nevertheless they did need to find a way forward, and God finally told them what to do – a plan which, with the benefit of hindsight, should have been blindingly obvious!

For, as you know, Paul had a dream or a vision. Now the book of Acts is peppered with visions, which link back to the Old Testament verse quoted by Peter in his sermon at Pentecost: “God says: I will pour out my Spirit on everyone … On my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit, and they will proclaim my message”. So, for instance, we read about Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus and Ananias’s in the same chapter; later on Peter has his strange vision of a sheet, bulging with food which Jews aren’t allowed to eat, descending from heaven while Cornelius the centurion sees an angel who tells him about Peter. We might question the whole idea of God speaking to us in visions and dreams, but this was widely accepted by the Jewish community; indeed, even the pagan Romans and Greeks, who Peter and Paul were mingling with, believed that this was a valid way for their gods to speak. So we can’t just dismiss it as a fanciful idea.

Paul’s vision in Troas was very specific. In it he sees “a man from Macedonia” – in other words a Greek – saying, “Come over and help us”. That’s all there was to it: the man doesn’t do anything and he says just a few words – but he speaks with passion and power. We presume that, the next morning, Paul told his companions about his dream; they must have quickly agreed that this was God speaking for they immediately make plans to pack up, get on a ship and sail to Greece. There’s a sense of urgency and excitement; after all those frustrating delays and days of hanging around, it’s time for action!

I’m not going to say anything about what happened when the group arrived in Greece, except that they adopted Paul’s usual strategy of making for the principal city of the region, in this case Philippi. What though is important is that the Gospel has for the very first time been taken from Asia into Europe. True, Paul and his associates haven’t left the Roman Empire; nevertheless they have entered a very different world and are now definitively approaching people who aren’t Jewish; as Jesus had predicted in his last words on earth, his message was now reaching out towards the furthest places of the earth.

Had Paul and his missionary group not realised this before? Had they limited their thinking to the near East and Turkey? Even they already knew that Christianity was for Gentiles as well as Jews, even though an Ethiopian and at least one Roman had already turned to Christ, had they still thought of going to Europe with the Gospel as a step to far? Had the Spirit been hindering their travels in Turkey in order to bring them to this new point of understanding? I can’t give a definite answer to those questions, but it does seem as if they’d been thinking of the evangelistic task on too small a scale.

On Wednesday, May 31^st 1792 seventeen Baptist pastors gathered at the Friar Lane Chapel in Nottingham. At 10 o’clock that morning, as had been arranged, the young minister from a chapel in Leicester got up to speak. He announced his text, an obscure verse from Isaiah: “Enlarge the place of thy tent … Lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes …” and then went on to picture the British Church living like a widow in a small tent; not preparing a larger canvas, not getting longer cords and stronger stakes, not anticipating the children that would make her a glorious home for all nations. It no longer expected great things from God but was timid, unbelieving and contented with its lot. William Carey – for that of course was the preacher’s name – had a burning ambition for the Christian message to be spread across the world; in fact he had self-published a book called “An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen” which he sought to sell to his fellow ministers.

Carey’s colleagues didn’t entirely disagree with him: indeed, local Baptists had been holding monthly prayer meetings asking for “the Holy Spirit to be poured out” so that the Gospel could be spread “to the most distant parts of the habitable globe”. What they were waiting for, though, was spiritual revival, a modern Pentecost no less: only with that dramatic experience of God could they take up the task. But Carey challenged that view: as far as he was concerned, the Church already possessed God’s Spirit. It simply needed to obey Christ’s command to “go into all the world”, to get off its backside and move.

And, of course, Carey acted upon his words: the Baptist Missionary Society was formed and just a year later he and his family set sail for India – against the wishes of his father, who thought he was mad; against the powerful East India Company, which did all it could to hinder his work; against the fact that there were at that time few, if any, Indian Christians; against the fact that the Bible had not been translated into local dialects; + in the face of the dangers that faced foreign travellers at that time, and with only a tiny support network, thousands of miles away. While (as far as I know) Carey never had a vision of an Indian man imploring him to come, he had seen something that most other Protestant Christians had failed to see. He wanted to open their eyes so that they’d see that God wanted to work on a far scale than they had imagined – and he did.

Let’s go back to Paul and his missionary band. I wonder how they felt when Paul told them about his vision or dream. Did they say, “Praise God, he is guiding us!”; were they disgruntled: “God took his time! Why did he let us go tramping all over the place when he could have given Paul this guidance weeks ago?”; or did they say, “We’ll go – but we’re a bit nervous”. Why did things happen as they did? Had the Holy Spirit been playing games with them? – surely not. It’s all a bit of a mystery.

But perhaps both Paul’s missionary group and Carey’s minister colleagues, even they were deeply spiritual and knew how to seek God’s direction, were too blinkered in their thinking; perhaps they simply were unable to realise that God had other plans which they’d never even thought of. If so, that’s why God had to use unusual ways of penetrating their minds, why he had to give them jolts that would get them to sit up and take notice. Thank goodness that those had the desired effect!

The questions I must ask us – as individuals and as a church – are, “Have we reached a dead end, not knowing where to turn? Are we, too, frustrated and confused? And does God need to give us a jolt, to push us into trying something that we’d never anticipated doing?” That might mean, for any of us, seeking a new job or course of study; for this church it might mean starting a new community activity? Granted, God may not give us a clear vision like he gave Paul (in fact he probably won’t) and we might feel that we are launching out into unknown territory. But we believe that God will be with us – and surely that’s what faith is all about?