Easter 6 – C

May 9, 2010

The Rev. Dorian McGlannan

It just might surprise the average church-goer how many clergy types are hooked on thrillers and murder mysteries.  If you think most of us have read the “Mitford” series, you are sorely mistaken but put a good mystery in our hands and we might not come up from under until we have finished the book.  I have sometimes wondered about this and mused about whether anyone has done a study on what the various professions pick-up for recreational reading.  I have come to my own conclusion that it has to do with the need for total escapism – something which a good mystery provides.  In the midst of my illness and need to spend more time than usual in a horizontal position, I have become hooked on various mini-series including the one which is now become a total addiction – the “Midsomer Murders” of which there are some fifty odd episodes. I didn’t used to be like this, addicted to screen entertainment but people do change when confronted with life’s challenges. At any rate, as I was working on this week’s sermon it suddenly occurred to me that the clergy fondness of detective stories might have as much to do with the art of Biblical studies as with a need for escapism.

Such is certainly the case with the story of Lydia, which is fleetingly told in today’s reading from Acts. This woman named Lydia is quite the heroine among Bible readers who are searching for the all too infrequent mention of women leaders in the early Christian community.  You can easily gloss over her story if you are not paying close attention, because her story is told in all of two verses.  Nonetheless, a great deal of information is provided in those two verses and the Biblical detectives of the world have done their work in terms of filling in the blanks.

So let’s do a bit of sleuthing together because I suspect you will be amazed at how significant even a mere possessive pronoun can be.  First we are told that Lydia is a worshipper of God.  Noting from other places where this particular phrase is used, we can deduce that Lydia was not actually a full-fledged Jew but someone who was attracted to the synagogue. The fact that she is listening to Paul is significant; something is stirring in her spiritual life.  The next thing we learn is Lydia is a dealer in purple cloth.  The word dealer has nothing to do with what one might think of when hearing that word today; rather it tells us that she was an independent businesswoman who bought and sold purple cloth.  The detail about purple cloth lets us know that she was handling high end goods because purple cloth was an expensive commodity in Biblical times. Only the rich and famous wore clothing made from this kind of material.  The next section about the Lord opening her heart to listen eagerly is fairly straight forward – God is converting her.  It also lets us know that this story of the risen Christ is new to her. The next verse lets us know that she and all of her household were baptized.  We don’t know who is included in Lydia’s household; all we do know is that a husband is not mentioned; from what these verses tell us, we can only assume that Lydia was in full charge of her household. The focus of these two verses is entirely on Lydia.  Lest we forget, having a woman cast in a role beyond that of being property was extraordinary in Biblical times.  The story of Lydia along that of other women such as Tabitha, Eunice and Priscilla allows us to know that the first century church had a diversity of leaders including women.

The other important thing to remember is that Paul has a reputation  for being a bit of a misogynist.  There certainly are some rather severe statements about women that would not be tolerated in much of today’s Christian world, well at least among Episcopalians, but the problem is that the Pauline authorship of some of the letters in which these statements are found is highly debatable.  In other words, some of the more challenging statements were probably written by someone else.  This story of Lydia and Paul counters the conventional notion that Paul’s primary mission with regard to women was to ensure that they kept their heads covered in church and were obedient to their husbands.

 We then encounter a very important verse that lets us know about the importance of early Christian hospitality; Lydia invites Paul and Silas to her home.  Here, again the fact that she states: “Come and stay at my home” indicates that she is in charge of her home.  The other important piece of information gleaned from this story confirms what we know from several places in Acts and Paul’s letters and that is the phenomenon of house churches.  We know that being a Christian was a dangerous business in the first three centuries after Jesus had been raised from the dead and so the earliest Christian met in small groups in people’s homes.  They knew each other intimately and took care of each other’s daily needs as well as spiritual needs.

This whole idea of hospitality seems to have been largely lost in the modern world in the northern parts of our country at least.  I hear from our former Music Minister that it is quite different in the south.  The one consistent observation I hear from people who live in this part of SE Michigan is that it is a very difficult community into which to break if you are not a native Michigander.  And I’ve actually heard this same sentiment from people who have lived here all of their lives.  After living here for five years, I have come to think that it has more to do the large number of extended families that are in this area which means that often one’s time for socializing is spent with family.  This phenomenon does however make it very hard on those who move into the area without any kind of personal connections, and that is where the church plays a critical role.

Welcoming people and taking the time to get to know them is perhaps the most important work we can do.  Not everyone who darkens the doors of our church wants to develop friendships here.  Some people truly need to just have a place to worship and perhaps to heal.  But the vast majority of people long for connections.  We have become much better at this and many people have told me that our community is closer than ever before.  Nonetheless, I feel that I need to do a gentle reminder that we must be very intentional about welcoming the stranger.  We need to share the gift of human connection that so many of us have come to cherish.  This is particularly true of the many groups which we have in our midst.  All of us know how easy it is to slide into the comfort zone of our current friendships.  But we also know deep in our hearts about the Biblical imperative to reach out to the stranger.

In the early Christian community, hospitality was not a casual thought or a mere suggestion; it was a core value of the emerging church.  Lydia reminds us of this core value of the need to be welcoming and the need to be inclusive rather than exclusive.  As we ponder this story of Lydia, let us consider ways in which we might incorporate her sense of hospitality into our lives.