PAST SERMON 2010
by Reverend Judith Alltree, delivered on Sunday May 9, 2010,
at The Church of the Holy Spirit.
Acts 16:9-15
“LYDIA”
Have you ever had a vision, when you know God is asking you to do something, and you don’t know why but you know you must do what He asks. One writer referred to this as “the moment of intersection between human obedience and divine initiative” (p. 476, Theological Perspective: “Feasting”). St. Paul had his heart set on traveling to the east to bring the Gospel message to the people of what we know as modern day Turkey, Iraq and Iran. Then he had a vision of “a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” (Acts 16:9) And so, instead of turning right, he turned left across the Aegean Sea to the eastern most edge of Europe, in Macedonia, where he met Lydia and the course of Christian mission changed: this meeting became “the moment of intersection between human obedience and divine initiative”.
The fact that this meeting was even included in the book of Acts is remarkable – or should we say divine - except that Luke has always shown us throughout his Gospel, and again in this, his second book, that he is a great supporter of women. Where most biblical writers refer to women as “the wife of…” or “the daughter of…”, Luke names them: Mary, Mary Magdalene, Salome, Tabitha, Dorcas, Lydia, among others, and gives them not only their names, but adds details of the lives of some of these women: who they were, what they did, all of which was highly unusual. In two short verses, Luke has provided us not just the name of this significant convert to Christianity, but much of her personal story as well.
We know Paul met many women during his travels throughout the households and synagogues of the Middle East, but these would have primarily been Jewish women. Lydia, significantly, was a Gentile.
Remember, as well, that it was a sin “before God”, according to Jewish law, for Jew to even enter the home of a Gentile, or to have any kind of “intimate” communication with a Gentile, such as a meal. God chose Paul on purpose for this mission: to be “an instrument … chosen to bring [Jesus’] name before Gentiles…” (Acts 9:15a) Paul, the former persecutor of Christians, was now called by God to, effectively, defile himself by his contact with Gentiles, but to do so in the name of Jesus Christ and the Gospel. So this day, after arriving in the far eastern corner of Europe, Paul did not seek out the synagogue as he had done so often before, but he sought out a private place near the river where he supposed those who wished might go to pray, and so he met Lydia.
Who was Lydia? In his sparse way, Luke has given us significant information about Lydia, her work, her life circumstances and her beliefs in two verses. We know she is from Thyatira, another Roman city in Macedonia, but at the time she met Paul she was living in Philippi. She was a dealer in purple cloth – purple and crimson dyes for cloth were much prized by the wealthy Romans, and were also the official colours of the government toga in Rome. It was a material which was both difficult and extremely costly to extract from the shellfish that produced it. Having mastered that craft, we know that Lydia herself would have been extremely wealthy, when you consider that one pound of this purple dye would cost upwards of $1000 dollars in present day Canadian currency. When you further consider that the average person may have lived on the equivalent of about $100 per year, most often much less, you can imagine what it would have been worth then. However, because there were, in the Roman Empire, thousands of people who wanted this dye, and could afford it, because few people had the skill to extract it, Lydia would have had a large and constant market for her rare skills.
From all this information we can deduce that Lydia would have been a part of the upper end of the social spectrum, however, even women in the upper end of the social spectrum were considered to be second class citizens if they were not married.
And that brings us to another deduction: it appears that Lydia was the head of her household, not her husband, son, brother or father. In fact, there is no mention of a husband in Luke’s account; after being baptized she prevails upon Paul and his companions to stay at a place she identifies as “my home”. Had she been attached to a male in some way, she would have identified this home as belonging to the man of the household, not as her own home.
All of this is unusual, and interesting, and makes her named entry into this story more intriguing, but the most significant thing about Lydia is she is the first European convert to Christianity. This is Paul’s first mission to Europe, and the church in Philippi will be the first one founded on the European continent when Lydia’s household are all baptized, and become the first group of converts in Europe. Jesus’ message to go into all the world began with a Gentile woman named Lydia, whose heart God opened up to hear all that Paul would say to her that day.
Men may have run the country, but women ran the household, and it was in the homes of places such as Philippi, Ephesus (in Turkey) and Corinth in Greece that the first churches were established in the homes of women such as Lydia who heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ from Paul. In fact, house churches led by women existed almost exclusively until the 4th century, when the emperor Constantine appropriated the Church for his own purposes.
Lydia is also remarkable for her immediate response to Paul’s preaching: on her conversion, she invites him and his companions to share hospitality in her home. “One of the marks of faithfulness among believers is a willingness to share and provide for the needs of others...” (p. 2 of 3, Christian Standard “Sunday School Lesson”, May 12, 2007) Her invitation, however, was also a challenge to Paul when she says: “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” (Acts 16:15) Although he did not want to be accused of accepting profits from his preaching from this new convert to Christianity, he did not “decline such a generous and faithful woman desiring to minister to their needs in such a practical way” (ibid). Through her offer, Lydia began what has become a hallmark of Christianity throughout the ages: hospitality, the offering of ones home as a safe haven to strangers.
As we approach the day of Pentecost, which is our own special Feast Day, we can be thankful for the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of both Paul and Lydia. Stubborn Paul, in his determination to travel to Turkey and beyond, was actually prevented from doing so by the Spirit, and, through his obedience to the vision from God, traveled to Macedonia. Lydia, a seeker of the Lord, was led by the Holy Spirit, and went to the private prayer place, away from the people, where she met Paul, in a “moment of intersection between human obedience and divine initiative” and became the first European person – man or woman – to be converted to Christianity.
It is entirely fitting that today, on Mother’s Day, we remember Lydia: a woman of strength and courage, independent and successful in her own right as a woman, and yet on hearing the Good News, became a willing servant to the Lord, Jesus Christ.
AMEN.