September 01, 2026
• Rev. Mindie Moore
Run It Back Week 4
August 30, 2026
Acts 16: 6-10
One of my favorite movies of all time is The Sound of Music (SLIDE). Growing up, I knew EVERY word (I probably still do if I'm honest). I studied abroad in Salzburg, Austria in college and that decision was ABSOLUTELY influenced by my love of this movie. I went on the singalong bus tour while I was there and would hang out in the garden where they filmed "Doe a Deer" on any random Wednesday.
There are so many iconic scenes, quotes, and songs in The Sound of Music. And one of the more famous quotes comes from a scene pretty early on in the movie. Maria, played by Julie Andrews, who is training to be a nun...isn't doing so great. She's caused all kinds of problems, her friends have sung a song about how awful she is, and she finally has a talk with the Mother Abbys about whether this is really going to be her future or if she needs to find a different plan. To help discern this, Maria is sent out to explore the real world by being a governess for the Von Trapp family, setting up the rest of the story.
And as she leaves the Abbey...fairly heartbroken and unsure of what the future holds, Maria says to herself in a moment of prayer: "When the Lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window."
Now, admittedly, this line is cliche city. It might make us cringe a little bit, or feel kind of like we feel when we hear something like "everything happens for a reason"...that kind of relentless optimism that can sometimes be less than helpful.
But—maybe a more generous read on a line like that is that it IS a reminder of something that is often true: that (SLIDE) a closed door is not always a dead end. And that God can still be at work, even when we find ourselves in a moment where our plans don't work out or we're facing option B.
We see this in the story we heard today from Acts 16. As a reminder, the book of Acts is an account of how the Church began, after Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. And there are these different groups of people trying to take the message of Jesus to all of these different places. There's a lot of traveling in this book, there's exciting moments of growth and miracles...and there is also a great deal of disappointment. There are a lot of closed doors that show up in the book of Acts.
In the chapter we read today, we're with Paul and his companions. And these are guys who have some really well thought out plans. They know where they want to go, they understand who they want to reach, they have a really compelling and important mission that they're trying to live out. One of the cities that they hope to go to, Bithynia, is sort of the IT place. It's thriving, growing, it makes me think of when churches build in these corn fields surrounded by new housing developments. It's that sort of vibe and it makes SENSE that this is where they would want to be. Any good church planter would!
But for some reason...they can't go there. Their plans will not work out. The text tells us that:
6 They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. 7 When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them...
So it feels pretty clear. There's something supernatural, the text says it's the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, and this supernatural thing is giving a firm and clear NO. Now, we don't know WHY. It doesn't tell us that. We never get the reason, we just know the results.
And I have to tell you, that feels pretty true to life. I would guess you and I could name more than one time in our lives where we've had a closed door moment like this. A time where we want something so badly, where we've planned and prepared and prayed and we know where we're going and how we will get there. We are READY and SET!
But then for some reason...we don't. It doesn't work and the door closes in our faces. And now, all of a sudden, we realize that we can't keep moving in the direction we were sure we were going. We might find ourselves stuck, grieving, or afraid to try again.
This is one of those unfortunately universal human experiences that we all have in common. Which is a bummer, but I guess the upside is that not one of us is alone. And if it's true that no amount of prep or planning or faith or getting it right is enough to stop us from running into a closed door every once in a while, then MAYBE what that means is that we might need to shift our understanding of what a closed door means for us.
Because a closed door doesn't automatically mean we've failed. It doesn't mean our story is over. It doesn't mean that God is done with us or that our time will never come. It doesn't mean our stories are somehow worth less than they were before that door closed. These are all really loud things we can believe...but I hope we won't hold on to any of that.
In fact, I wonder if instead of sinking into whatever gets us stuck, I wonder if we could be on the lookout for the possibility that a closed door can bring: (SLIDE)
It could be an invitation to rest.
It could be an invitation to discern.
It could be a chance to consider a new way forward.
It could be a moment of protection.
Maybe a closed door contains more possibility than we can initially understand. And maybe the idea of a "window" opening somewhere, to go back to my Sound of Music quote, maybe that is simply about the chance to be open to these possibilities.
With this group in Acts, they make an intentional choice to do a pretty significant pivot once they hit these closed doors. Paul has a dream where he meets this man from Macedonia who tells him to come there because they need his help. Paul shares this with his group and off they go! It says they went, being convinced that God had called us.
I think this is so interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is just the element that the Holy Spirit plays in this whole story. I don't know if you noticed that as we've talked about it, but there's very little what I will call "independent human-based decision making" happening in these verses. Everything they do is being influenced and directed by what they sense the Holy Spirit is doing.
If you read more of the book of Acts, you will very quickly find that this dependence on the movement of the Holy Spirit is not unique to chapter 16. It's ALL over this book as it tells the story of the beginnings of the Church. This was a crucial part of what it meant to have faith for these early Christians.
And I don't know what your understanding of or relationship to the movement of the Holy Spirit looks like. What I tend to find is that unless someone comes from a couple of very specific theological traditions, we're probably not thinking about the Holy Spirit much at all. It's kind of that mysterious third piece of the Trinity that seems kind of scary and out of control and we don't really know what to do with it.
It might be helpful for us to understand that our contemporary mindset of the Spirit is so very different than what these early Christians would have understood. For them, this piece of who God was is this vital and living thing. The Spirit was a continuation of Jesus' work on earth that was happening now through them and around them. Some of the folks we meet in Acts had been with Jesus when he made this promise that we find in John 14, where he's talking to the disciples about the fact that he's not going to be with them forever. This is what Jesus says: (SLIDE)
26 The Companion,[b] the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I told you.
27 “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I give to you not as the world gives. Don’t be troubled or afraid.
Jesus says that the Holy Spirit is going to teach them everything and guide them in every decision. That's a pretty significant thing! And when there ARE disappointment, when closed doors DO show up, they aren't going to have to navigate those things on their own. There's this holy presence that is going to be with them every step of the way.
When we face our own closed doors, I wonder what it could look like for us to seek out the movement of the Spirit as we try to understand what comes next. I want to put up those possibilities about what a closed door could be on the screen again: (SLIDE)
It could be an invitation to rest.
It could be an invitation to discern.
It could be a chance to consider a new way forward.
It could be protecting us.
Maybe looking for the Spirit's guidance in the face of a closed door is as simple for us as taking these four possibilities (or you can fill in your own that make sense for you) and having some really intentional time of prayer and discernment around them. To know that no matter how stopped in our tracks we find ourselves because of a closed door, no matter what grief is causes, that we have this very concrete way of entering into discernment with the Holy Spirit.
And that's the second interesting thing I think about when I read that line that the disciples made their next move "being convinced that God had called them." It's that element of discernment in action.
If you were with us in January, we spent that month talking about discernment. We had groups that went super in depth about the topic, we used Ruth Haley Barton's book Pursuing God's Will Together, which is a great book if you want to do more of your own study on this. And in THIS story in Acts, discernment is CRUCIAL. Only Paul is directly privy to this vision from God. So his friends have to decide if they are going to believe him or not and if they are going to act on what they believe.
They have to listen to each other. They have to pay attention to the nudges that the Spirit is giving them. They have to do this together in their community. And as they practice discernment, as they look for the work of the Spirit, it creates this powerful unity between them that lets them take the next step, away from the closed doors and into a new and unexpected possibility.
Who are the people that you have in your life to do this kind of discernment work with? Who are the people, who when the door you thought was a green light just won't open, that you can trust to help you navigate whatever comes next?
You might have 5 people who come to mind immediately. Or you might find it a bit challenging to name them. Maybe this community, here at St. Luke's can be a place where you find those people if that's something you're missing. In just a couple of weeks, a bunch of stuff is going kick off...groups, classes, serving opportunities (it's all in this catalog!). Maybe that's where you start to build that sort of community.
I want to share just one more thing about closed doors and what could waiting for us beyond them. And I can't preach today without talking about an amazing human who the world said goodbye to this past week—Dolly Parton (SLIDE).
There are so many great stories about her, and one of my favorites is what I would consider to be a closed door moment that she had to navigate.
In 1974, after releasing her song, "I Will Always Love You," Dolly was approached by Elvis Presley. He wanted to record her song! According to the New York Times, she told Elvis' manager that, "This is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me as a songwriter!"
But then...came the closed door moment. Elvis' manager explained that for Elvis to record the song, Dolly would have to give up half the music publishing rights to him. This was a big deal, because these rights were what determined how much each artist would receive in royalties for the song. This was a normal practice for Elvis, then the biggest rock n roll star on the planet.
Dolly couldn't and wouldn't do it. She would not give up her copyright to her songs. She said she cried all night over this decision and this missed opportunity that came because of it.
Let me share with you directly from the New York Times:
Presley never recorded "I will Always Love You"which meant that Parton lost out on what could have been substantial royalties, even at a reduced rate. But her determination was proved out when Whitney Houston recorded the song for her 1992 movie "The Bodyguard". The single went to No. 1 for 14 weeks and the soundtrack sold over 19 million copies...
By maintaining her full ownership in the song, Parton said, "I made enough money to buy Graceland."
There was disappointment in her story—but there was also possibility. Same thing with this story in Acts. The disappointment that Paul and his friends felt with their failed plans was real.
AND, I want to tell you that so was the possibility that was waiting for them beyond that disappointment. Listen to this—when they arrived in Macedonia, they ended up spreading the gospel in Neapolis, Philippi, Amphipolis, Appolonia, Thessalonica, Beria, Athens and Corinth before returning to Asia and planting the church in Ephesus. Then they went back to Jerusalem! Wow!
Their story was not over because of a closed door. And our stories aren't over either. Let's pray.