May 13, 2007
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
In our recognition of mothers today, here are 10 things that you know you’re a Mom when:
- Your feet stick to the kitchen floor and you don’t care.
- You can’t find your cell phone, so you ask your neighbor to call you.
- You spend an entire week wearing sweats.
- You have the local pizza shop’s phone number memorized.
- You know all the words to the Wiggles’ songs.
- You’re willing to kiss your child’s booboo, regardless of where it is.
- Your kids make jokes about burping, and other bodily functions, and you think they’re funny.
- Your idea of a good day is making it through without a child leaking bodily fluids on you.
- You’re so desperate for adult conversation that you unload on a telemarketer and he hangs up on you!
- You buy cereal with marshmallows in it.
Once a year, we take a moment to think about our mothers and it’s a good thing. I think about my mother who was able to live under the same roof with my older brother and eventually with my sister-in-law until she passed. She was never in any danger of being homeless or with no one to care for her.
It’s interesting to me that almost every time we have a sidewalk tea reception, I think about our neighborhood bag lady. With her traditional old lady haircut and walking with a cane, she comes by shouting, “God bless you and give you good health!” Then she would pick up 2 or 3 char siu bows for her bag.
Today I wonder if our neighborhood bag lady is a mother herself. We know she had one. If we had a sidewalk tea today, the bows could be her Mother’s Day lunch. I don’t even know her name.
Bag Lady Syndrome
Did you know that nearly half of all women fear life as a bag lady? Maybe that’s the reason why we keep our distances from our neighborhood bag lady—she symbolizes what we fear. Forty-six percent of women suffer from what is now called “Bag Lady Syndrome.”
Women might have good salaries, money in their purses, decent savings and investments—but still they are afraid that they will wind up broke, forgotten and destitute. Bag ladies.
According to The Washington Times (August 23, 2006), a recent survey of almost 2000 women reveals that 90 percent of them feel financially insecure. While 46% are troubled by a “tremendous fear of becoming a bag lady,” this anxiety actually increases as income rise. Among those with annual incomes of more than $100,000, 48% of women fear a life of destitution.
What is going on here is that women have complicated fears about money. They fear failure, or making mistakes. They fear they are expendable. Because of this, women are twice as likely as men to set aside a secret stash of money. Two-thirds of the women surveyed said that the best thing about having money is the sense of security it brings.
Men might crave the power or status that comes from money. But women like the sense of security that it brings. Women don’t want to end up as bag ladies!
Lydia
Our Scriptures introduce us to an apparently successful woman, Lydia. She’s a financially secure resident of the city of Philippi. She owns a business and a home. She’s a “dealer in purple cloth” (16:14), and comes from the well-known textile city of Thyatira. The color purple is significant because purple clothing is the mark of wealth and royalty in the Roman world—to be dressed up in purple is to boast of influence and power. Lydia has a close connection to the rich and famous, and there is very little chance that she will wind up broke, forgotten and destitute.
Does Lydia fall victim to the bag lady nightmare? Acts doesn’t say. What today’s passage does describe is how she responds to the preaching of the gospel. And based on her response, we can come to a critically important conclusion about her.
Lydia is motivated by faith, not by fear.
Paul and Silas
Paul and Silas arrive in the city of Philippi, a Roman colony in the district of Macedonia. While in Troas, a port city on the Aegean Sea, Paul sees a vision of a man of Macedonia, and this vision convinces him that God wants him to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to the Macedonians. So Paul and Silas go from Troas to Samothrace to Neapolis to Philippi. On that Sabbath day, they go outside the gate of Philippi by the river, looking for a place of prayer, and they sit down with a group of women who have gathered there. They begin to talk, and one of the women listening to them is Lydia.
Acts tells us that the Lord opens her heart to listen eagerly to what is said by Paul.
If Lydia were suffering from the “Lady Bag Syndrome,” we would expect to see it now. She has good reason to keep to herself. The bag lady nightmare could cause her to clutch her possessions tightly. Fear of loss might inspire her to run home and protect her secret stash of money.
But she doesn’t have any of these fears. Instead, she responds with faith, generosity and hospitality.
Lydia asks for baptism for herself and her household, and then insists, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home” (v. 15). Lydia prevails upon Paul and Silas, and they follow her home. In time, Lydia’s house becomes a center of Christian worship and outreach in Philippi, and Paul develops a close and loving bond with the church members there.
Our Fears Today
It’s tempting to say that this sermon is directed at women because today is Mother’s Day. Such a focus would be misguided, since the bag lady nightmare afflicts more than just mothers—in fact, it affects more than just women. It affects all of us—women and men alike.
Each of us can wake up in a cold sweat, terrified that we are broke, forgotten and destitute. Each of us can have our own frightening vision of being wiped out financially, robbed of stability and security, and condemned to a life on the streets. By the way, Warren Lee is leading a seminar on “Stocks and Bonds” on May 23rd!
If it’s not financial fear, it very well could be another kind of fear. What do you fear today? Fear that we’ll lose our good health, fear of a life-threatening illness, fear of failure, fear of learning something new, fear of dependency on our children, and so on. Our fear of life and being a bag lady are nightmares.
The antidote, however, is not a tighter grip on our possessions or our lifestyle. It’s not a better vault for our secret stash of money that we need. It’s not a fear-driven attitude that causes us to hold back, play it safe, distrust strangers, and thereby close ourselves off to surprising good news that God is putting before us.
No, the way to wake up from the bag lady nightmare is to choose faith over fear. Lydia chose faith in Jesus Christ and did not worry about her purple cloth stash of money. The way to find real peace and security is to practice generosity and hospitality.
This can mean:
*Make a donation to the church’s Day Camp program in the name of your mother so that more of our community kids can attend.
*Volunteer your time and the abilities that you have to assist others in need at senior centers and social services.
*Teach at Friday Night School by sharing your gift of speaking English by simply conversing with our students.
*Buy Lanna Coffee so that you will reduce prostitution and human trafficking in Thailand and around the world.
*Make a special donation to the One Great Hour of Sharing Offering to help the hurricaine victims in Greensburg, Kansas.
For me to practice generosity and hospitality, the next time I encounter our neighborhood bag lady, I am going to ask her what her name is and I will tell her what mine is.
Ultimate act of Hospitality
This is a real story of Vicki McGaw, the director of Christian Education at a church in Cleveland. One day, she was attending a church meeting and struck up a conversation with a woman. Vicki learned that the woman’s husband, Bob was in dire need of a kidney transplant. As they talked, both became teary-eyed.
And then Vicki asked the woman, “What do I need to do to be tested?”
Vicki had a clear sense that this was what she needed to do. Although she had never met Bob, she immediately made the decision to donate one of her kidneys to him.
She was tested for compatibility, and ended up being more of a perfect match than any of Bob’s family members. The surgery took five hours, and was a complete success. Vicki returned home in two days, and resumed her job in five. The following Sunday, her pastor told the congregation about Vicki’s generosity. It was an “ultimate act of hospitality,” he said.
Bob has also recovered well, and he is enormously grateful to Vicki. His family calls her a “miracle from God.” The entire experience has had an impact on the congregation. The pastor of the church observed, “I’ve witnessed something unexpected. People are saying that they see God in their lives. They know it was no coincidence. Vicki was a match for Bob and the generosity and compassion she displayed were extraordinary. They know God was involved.”
Vicki McGaw is not a victim of the bag lady nightmare. She has chosen faith over fear, and practiced extraordinary hospitality instead of ordinary self-concern. “I really felt this is what God put me here to do,” she says. “A person can find 20 million reasons not to do something, but there is usually one reason that sticks with you as to why you should.”
Trading Nightmare for a Dream
So, what is it that God has put you here to do? Where is God at work in your life…right here, right now?
What is the one thing that you should be doing as a disciple of Jesus Christ, as you put your faith into action?
Each of us is being given an opportunity to trade a nightmare for a dream. If we follow the examples of Lydia and Vicki, along with countless other people of faith, we will find ourselves moving from anxiety to serenity, and from a life ruled by fear to a life shaped by faith.
The particular path we follow will be different for each of us. It might mean opening our homes, as Lydia did. It might be opening up our wallets, our purses, even our stash of money in a vault to help another. It might mean turning over our calendars so that it can be filled with volunteer service to meet human needs. It might even mean opening our God-given bodies, as Vicki McGaw did. It might mean for me to show more compassion for the homeless and destitute in our city and in particular to our neighborhood bag lady.
Whatever you open your life up in faith, the point is to practice hospitality and generosity, in line with what God is doing in your life.
Only then, does the nightmare end, and the dream of discipleship begin.
Let us pray.
Gracious Lord God, teach us to not be afraid of pursuing the dream of whom you have created us to be—a compassionate and caring people. Just as Lydia was opened to believing Jesus Christ in her life, we pray that we will also know the Lord in our hearts so that our entire households will come to know you. Forgive us all when we hold back and deny generous hospitality to those with greater needs and empower us to be your faithful disciples in all the earth. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.