Last
week, Tabitha. This week, Lydia. Stories
in the Acts of the Apostles of two “mothers” of the church.
As
many of you know, we at Rutgers Church follow a list of prescribed scripture
passages for each Sunday of the church year, a list that’s used by many
Protestant congregations.
This
list is called the Revised Common Lectionary, and, over a three-year cycle, it
seeks to lead congregations through most of the four gospels and a selection of
passages from the other books as well, a selection that presents the broad range
of biblical themes and issues.
Before
there was the Revised Common Lectionary that’s now used, there was a first
version of it, prepared around the year 1980.
Those distributing that first version requested that churches test out
the listing and then, based on their experience, suggest modifications to it.
Now,
unfortunately, that first Common Lectionary included neither last week’s story
of Tabitha nor this week’s story of Lydia.
Indeed one of the principal criticisms that emerged during the testing of
the original lectionary was this: Why
have you omitted so many of the biblical stories about women, especially since
there are so few to begin with?
Among
the Old Testament passages, it was said, we don’t find the stories of Hagar
and Leah and Rachel and Dinah and Tamar. And
where are Shiphrah and Puah, Miriam and the daughters of Zelophehad, Rahab and
Deborah, the Queen of Sheba and Huldah the prophet, Vashti and Esther, the
nursing mothers in Isaiah, the “capable wife” in Proverbs, and the beautiful
Shulammite woman in the Song of Solomon?
And
among the New Testament passages, it was said, we don’t find the accounts of
the women who provided money for Jesus’s ministry and the woman bent over for
18 years. And, from Acts, where are
the Samaritan women baptized by Philip, and Rhoda, and Tabitha. and Lydia, and
Priscilla, and, from Romans, the names of the many women acknowledged by Paul to
be leaders of the church? Where are
they, it was asked.
Well,
to the credit of the committee that devised the Common Lectionary, they swiftly
corrected many of their omissions. Hagar
is now there, and Leah and Rachel—if not Dinah and Tamar.
Miriam made it, if not the daughters of Zelophehad.
Deborah is included, if not Rahab. And
although there’s still no Queen of Sheba or Huldah or Vashti, at least we now
have Isaiah’s nursing mothers, the “capable wife,” the Shulammite woman,
and Esther. And of the New
Testament women noted as missing, the Revised
Common Lectionary now gives us at least the women who provided money for Jesus,
and the woman bent over for 18 years, and Tabitha, and Lydia.
Still, it’s shocking that many of the great women leaders of the
earliest Christian churches remain unincluded and, therefore, largely unknown to
churchgoers. I mean, how many of
you know about Priscilla and Phoebe and Junia and Persis and Tryphaena and
Tryphosa and Julia and Nympha and more than just two of the many
Marys?
But
at least, as I said, we’ve recovered Tabitha and Lydia, and for these two
weeks in May, we’re rejoicing in that.
Today,
the story of Lydia, the first—the first person on the continent of Europe to
become a follower of Jesus and to be baptized, and the first person to establish
a house-church in Europe. Lydia!
A wealthy Gentile woman, a prominent “mother” of the early church, a
person whose name, like Tabitha’s, is actually rather strange.
“Lydia”
is not the name of an animal, like “Tabitha,” the “gazelle.”
But “Lydia” is the name of a geographic region in Asia Minor. So our protagonist’s name is somewhat like that of the
fictional 20th-century
American adventurer Indiana Jones.
But
in Lydia's time and place—the first-century Mediterranean world—those most
likely to be given a geographic name as their own arenot international
adventurers, but slaves, called by the nameof the place from which they came.
So, travel with me now, back to the first century, as we relive Lydia's
story.
When
Luke, the author of Acts, introduces us to Lydia, she’s no longer a resident
of her native province in Asia Minor. She’s
now living on the European continent, in the part of Greece called Macedonia, in
the city of Philippi, which is largely a colony for retired Roman army veterans.
And Lydia is no longer a slave, but a freedwoman.
How
she’s come to be free is unclear, but a number of Roman slaves possess
marketable skills that enable them to buy their freedom.
Lydia’s skills lie in the purple-dyeing industry, for which the region
of Lydia, in Asia Minor, is a center, and when she’d been freed, she’d gone
into that business on her own, as a number of other ex-slaves had done.
There’s
a lot of money to be made in purple-dyeing, for only aristocrats can afford the
best of that color. The finest
purple dye has to be gathered drop by drop from certain marine snails, most
notably Murex brandaris, and you need 12,000 snails to make a gram and a
half of raw dye. Murex bandaris produces a deep blue violet dye that, unlike others,
is colorfast and permits the washing of garments. Various shades of purple and red can be produced from it
through blending and other processes that remain the trade secrets of the
dyers’ art. A pound of wool dyed
with a favored purple may be sold for 1000 denarii,
an amount that takes an ordinary laborer three years to earn.
And a whole cloak of such material costs two to three times that amount,
up to nine years labor. Of course, cheaper imitations are also available, made from
animal, mineral, or vegetable dyes.
Lydia,
as a trader in purple-dyed cloth, buys and sells a wide range of qualities of
dyed material—including, of course, the very best.
Whatever her methods of conducting business, she’s apparently good at
it, for this former-slave-turned-businesswoman has been able to establish a
prosperous household of her own.
But
Lydia is more than just "a successful businesswoman."
She has a spiritual side to her as well.
She’s one of the Gentiles who’re attracted to the monotheism and
noble ethics of Judaism. The New
Testament often calls such people “God-fearers.” They’re a group of
Gentiles steeped in Jewish teaching about God’s high expectations for
humankind and about God’s justice being tempered wondrously by mercy.
As
a “God-fearer,” Lydia regularly gathers on the Jewish sabbath with others
who’re like her, mostly women. To
do so, she travels about a mile west of the city, to a spot near the Gangites
River that Luke calls "a place of prayer," by which he perhaps means
“a house-synagogue used mainly by women.”
One
particular sabbath, Lydia encounters there the apostle Paul and his
companions—Silas, Timothy, and perhaps Luke himself—all of whom have just
arrived on the European continent after a largely disappointing missionary
journey through Asia Minor.
The
women welcome Paul and his party into their prayer service.
Paul, as a visiting rabbi, is invited by them to teach, and, rather
amazingly, Paul, contrary to his inborn patriarchal predisposition agrees to
speak with this group of women. Lydia
listens eagerly to Paul's preaching about Jesus Christ.
Right then and there she accepts Jesus as the Messiah who’s been longed
for by Jews. And immediately thereafter she’s baptized by Paul in the nearby
river—she and all her household, both family and servants.
So here we see Lydia, who’s doubtless decisive in business, responding
just as decisively to Paul’s offer of quite a different sort of good thing.
And,
as Luke tells it, Lydia and the others of her household become the first
followers of Christ on the continent of Europe.
Following
her baptism, Lydia urges Paul and his companions to accept the hospitality of
her home for the duration of their stay in Philippi, and that home of hers
swiftly becomes the local house-church, the place where the developing Christian
community, encompassing persons of both genders and of every social class and
ethnic group, gathers for meals and the worship of God.
Thus,
Lydia—whose entire household is also baptized—opens her home for the
spiritual well-being of others and becomes a true mother-figure for all the
Christians of Philippi. Moved by
the warmth and depth of her conversion experience, Lydia, a Gentile ex-slave,
now provides, out of her prosperity, the meeting place for the expanding church
of Philippi. As the contemporary
author Kathleen Norris suggests, only those “at home in themselves” can
offer their home to others. (Amazing Grace, p. 267)
Truly, now, after her baptism, Lydia is “at home in herself.”
Luke
doesn’t go on to describe Lydia as one of the spiritual
leaders of her community. Perhaps
she wasn’t, but perhaps she was. Luke
is, after all, a rather slippery source who tends to confine the women in his
narratives to roles of hospitality and passive learning, so in approaching
Luke’s description of Lydia’s roles one needs to suspect that Luke may not
be telling us everything.
But
even if Luke is correct that Lydia’s role in establishing the Christian
community in Philippi was one of hospitality alone, hers was a role of utmost
importance that must not be minimized.
First,
in that role Lydia defied Roman convention by inviting persons of both genders
to gather together as equals at her table, where the Lord’s Supper was
celebrated and the good news was preached.
Now, one great advantage of using houses as the first Christian churches
was that the home was seen as a woman’s preserve.
Therefore, socially, it was uniquely situated to be suitable as a place
for welcoming women guests as well as men.
Still it definitely went against Roman social convention for women and
men to eat together at the same table.
Second,
Lydia defied an even more entrenched Roman convention by
allowing persons of differing social classes—from aristocrats to slaves—to
gather together socially and to dine together at a common table.
Elsewhere in the Roman world, there took place among the classes
virtually no social mobility or mixing. But
Lydia, a wealthy ex-slave, invited persons of every social class to come
together at her table.
And
finally, Lydia, supported by Paul, defied an entrenched Jewish convention,
enforced not by Paul but by many others among Jesus's first apostles.
Lydia invited persons of differing ethnic groups to gather together under
one roof and to dine together at a common table—Jew and Gentile alike, kosher
and non-kosher.
In
all three of these ways, we see in Lydia’s example of hospitality the good
news of Christ’s inclusive love beginning to penetrate a number of barriers,
both social and religious.
Lydia
helped the Christian communities of the first century to blaze new ground by
beginning to overcome the human barriers of class, ethnicity, and gender.
The
early church, to be sure, was not a perfect institution.
It was not God’s reign come in fullness upon the earth.
In many places the full inclusion of women and the full welcoming of all
social classes was strongly and, I'm sad to say, all-too-effectively resisted.
But
in homes like those of Lydia and many other Christian women, the first
house-churches offered a significant foretaste of the fullness of God’s reign
that has not yet come on earth—when all the barriers to community that we
humans erect will have been overcome, when God’s community on earth will have
been allowed to become fully inclusive.
This
significant foretaste came to exist, first, because of God's word faithfully
proclaimed and, second, because of the faithful witness of women like Lydia.
Here’s
to Lydia—the first—and to all those like her.
Let
us pray:
O
God, help us to recall and retell and celebrate the stories of the women of
Ancient Israel and the Early Church. And
create in us a spirit like that of Lydia—open to Your word, eager to receive
and act on Your good news, and decisive in implementing here on earth a full
measure of Your inclusive love. In
the name of the Risen Christ, we pray. Amen.
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