“Where has Jesus gone? Lydia’s voice”

Karen Sloan 18/10/2020

Readings - Acts 16:14-15, Letter to the Philippians 2:1-5, 4:8-9, Galatians 3:25-28

What do I want to say today, that I haven’t said in the past few weeks. Mm, good question, I was agonising over it when I heard the Soul Search program on Radio National.  They were reporting on the 100thanniversary of the Baháʼí faith.  When a leader was interviewed and asked to share what their faith was about, I stopped, not literally, because I was in the car.  This is what she said..

“Our foundational teaching is about the oneness of humanity, humanity is like one family, and just as a family is diverse so are the peoples of the world.  But they can unite and work together, for the betterment of all. If you think back to the 1920s this was quite a radical and revolutionary message,  because at that time it was believed we were not equal, racially, ethnically or by gender. It was radical because our other teachings include that there is equality between men and women.  In fact the early Baháʼíleaders which started in the 19thcentury were women.

Wow, now I don’t want to concentrate on the Baháʼí  faith, but I thought that sounds so like Jesus and the early Christian movement. It sounds so like what we are called to do as followers, to be inclusive and love one another.  Yet sadly I feel much of Christianity today has been lost in rules and regulations and doctrines, or focusses on going somewhere else, so that how we live as a faith community looks a lot different.  Maybe that’s why I had to stop the car!  Where has Jesus gone! 

If we go back to the 1stcentury, people were hearing the welcoming nature of the gospel or good news, firstly from Jesus, a Jew, and then from his followers.  And surprisingly many of these early followers and leaders were women. How would we feel if suddenly we are not worthless but worthy, we are loved rather than unloved, we are included instead of excluded, and we are embraced rather than abused.  This was in a Roman world totally driven by blood, and guts, and violence and slavery and abuse and hierarchy.  Women, the poor and the disabled  and slaves were see as not really human.  Down with the animals in many places. 

It would seem a pretty radical and revolutionary message. We are all to be included in God’s divine embrace.

If we hear it with ears of the first century then the Jesus call is compelling, particularly if we hear it from a women as a woman.  

Today we will be looking at Lydia.  Again a woman from the New Testament, from the early years of the Jesus movement, and a follower of Paul.  We heard her referenced in Acts, and she is credited with starting the church in Philippi. The Baháʼí faith have their women and we have ours.

I hadn’t really heard much about Lydia until she appears in the book “Damascus”, by Christos Tsiolkas and in Joan Chittister’s book, which I have already mentioned in previous weeks.  Both give us an insight, one using fiction, of how women were treated at the time.  

I think there is a level of truth in both. So let’s go exploring again.

But firstly we need to acknowledge that while in the 21stcentury there are many places where women are still treated badly, very badly, my own experience is of a white western women, educated and feisty.  I have always worked in a male dominated area, after studying, and have little experience of total subjugation because of my gender, maybe I had my eyes closed but I don’t think so.  I married later after having started a research career, and married a man who saw marriage as a partnership, and of course he could cook, a helpful addition. And I have belonged to the Uniting Church, and more particularly Wembley Downs, where I have been able to exercise my gifts reasonably unrestrained.

But many women not much older than me, have experienced something different.  Different in the church where they have had to fight to have their voices heard, and many who were not given choices about the passion they would like to follow.  I count my sister as one. And different in the workplace as the “me too” movement has highlighted.

And if we go back further we end up at a time when women were not counted, did not have  a vote, were bought and sold.  And where to be an outspoken women was to lead to lots of trouble.  Serious trouble.  

If we look to the time of Jesus we will see the life of a women was not an easy one.  Families married you off early, that’s if they could afford to keep a girl in the first place.  Many left them to die in the woods.  Once married you cared for the household and was the child bearer, and if you survived, the child rearer.  If you were lucky you married a man who was gentle and kind, if you were unlucky you were in torment most of your life.  And on top of this there was such a hierarchy, so if you were a slave and a women, so much worse.

This is how the novel Damascus portrays Lydia’s early life.  Working hard and marrying early, to be taken to Philippi never to see her family again.

In the novel Lydia has children, and follows the pagan Gods.  However  when she has to give up a baby daughter to the forest because girls were deemed expendable, she embraces the Hebrew God, becoming a God worshipper or God fearer, a gentile adherent to Judaism rather than a full convert.   She finds  the Gods of her own upbringing seemed capricious and demanding in contrast. But then she meets Paul and the call of the Jesus way pulls at her, the inclusive loving way, where all are called brothers and sisters.  All life is precious even baby girls and particularly women. 

Let’s hear what Paul says to her…

“There is a world coming, Lydia, a kingdom of the Lord, where there will be no cruelty, no injustice.  That world is coming soon.”
And in that instant his voice no longer seemed thin and effete but strong and stirring.  I understood that an offering had been made, one so strange and unexpected, one so astonishing and world-shattering, that I was afraid to move, to breathe, to utter a word.  No man had ever before spoken to me so directly: not my father, my brothers or my husband.  It was as if the veil separating men and women had been torn away; as if we were man and man and not man and woman.(p.76)

When Lydia has another baby girl, this time with deformities, she is again ordered to leave her in the forest, which this time she cannot do.   So she becomes an outcast as her daughter grows, a marginalised person in a world of marginalised people. Eventually she leaves and follows Paul. Like many, she’s attracted to a religion that promises to love and respect all, the weak and female included.  Having seen the alternative, it’s hardly surprising that she wants to be baptised and become a member. And she does.

So this is a grand tale within the life of the early Christian movement.

But it is also  a novel, and the  Lydia Tsiolkas brings to life is an amalgamation of all the Lydias who lived at the time. A common name and a common plight.

But what about historically, well historically there were some women who were leaders even in the world of the pagans, and certainly women feature in the Jewish religion.  

And this applies to the Lydia who we heard from the book of Acts , which the writer of Luke wrote around 90 AD.  Luke’s gospel and the book of Acts, in fact one book which then got separated, was written by the same person. Joan Chittister’s book focuses on this Lydia, who seems to have been a real person, a real women and a real leader.

Let me give you a summary…

In Luke’s account Lydia is a business women in Philippi, a city in Macedonia, the northern region of modern-day Greece,with no husband, either being divorced or widowed,  and appears to have had a large  household which she managed. She sold purple cloth, which was seen as a luxury, as the colour of purple was quite rare and difficult to make, probably to the wealthy. She had travelled from her birth place, Thyatira, a wealthy town known for its trade guilds and purple dye to live in Philippi. 

According to Acts, Paul started a new mission in each new city by connecting with the local Jewish population, and he did this in Philippi. Paul and his companions, including Silus, had already spent a few days in the city when, on the Sabbath day, they went in search of a Jewish place of prayer.

It seems that while Philippi did not have a recognised synagogue they did have a prayer-house located down near the river. Paul may have been surprised to see a group made up of only, or mainly, women at the prayer-house, yet as Luke recounts,  “they sat down and began to talk with the women who had gathered.” . One of these women was Lydia.

Lydia is identified as a “God-worshipper”, sometimes translated as “God-fearer” as was the case with our fictional Lydia.  It is well documented that some Gentiles were attracted to Judaism and in some parts of the Roman Empire, where women could play prominent roles in their Jewish communities.  Yet somehow Paul’s message spoke to her in a different, more freeing way. Her heart was open to the God of Jesus,  so she converted to his way.   A way which focussed on love, of God and neighbour. And where the first will be last and the last will be first. 

Paul and his party may have spent several weeks staying with Lydia but her hospitality and her benefaction of Paul and his ministry required courage. As Margaret Mowczko writes, “having a group of foreign men stay in her house may have potentially caused scandal. Hosting meetings where they worshipped a new Jewish messiah, and not an emperor or any of the ancient and socially-respectable pagan gods, could have ruined her reputation and her business. Receiving Paul and Silas into her home after they were released from prison and asked to leave town was brave”. As was the fact that other women followed her, women with little power or control.

Lydia is the only Philippian convert who is named in Acts, and we know that the Philippian church met in her home. Many scholars agree that the church that was formed in Philippi, the church to whom Paul addressed his letter to the Philippians, was in all likelihood founded and then led by a woman named Lydia. Which is pretty amazing in the first century!

So, we have two different takes on Lydia, one fiction and one based on some historical evidence.  On course I want to believe that she was a working woman, a leader amongst men, and stood out of the crowd.  That she lead others, both to the inclusive call of Jesus but to the loving and just ways of his followers. Encouraging people, but especially other women to find their voice, their passion and their love for themselves. 

But I also know that at that time, a woman’s lot was not easy. We don’t have much to go on. 

I think even if she was a mother who in the end saves her daughter by entering the forest, as Tsiolkas imagines, being feed by those who were Jesus followers, the message is the same.

Jesus call was for all to be included in the kingdom of God.   That there should be no barriers between men and women, black and white, slave or free, that we are to set people free from the injustice that surrounds them, and to embrace love and life and community, not just for some but for all. For we are all marvels of creation and children of God.

And it was a message given and received by all who followed. Especially Paul. We heard it in the Galatians reading this morning..

So what happened, because church history tells us something got lost in translation.…

For many, many years, the church as I have said in previous sermons, decided that the voice of women could not be heard, and I know that even by the later letters of Paul, not written by him but by his future communities they had become less inclusive.

What happened to that inclusive voice that both Lydias heard.  That both Lydias responded to.  The voice that I responded to.  That many women have. 

It has been covered in red tape, hidden, such that terrible things can happen not only to women but to our ingenious brothers and sisters, migrants, refugees, gay and transgender people, and the poor and disabled, the mentally ill, under the guise of Christianity. That from the pulpit misinformation and violence against minorities, and this particularly means women,  has been acceptable, either by not speaking out, or by actively encouraging it. And if you think I am exaggerating then look at the history of America, Germany and South Africa and even our own.  

But all is not lost, it’s never lost.. Which is why I have some purple balloons around.

I am the beneficiary of lots of Lydias, lots of leaders who have spoken out, fought for their rights and the rights of all marginalised people. People who are in this church and many others, but also people who wouldn’t step a foot in a church.  Who hear the call of Jesus in the other and the dispossessed even if they couldn’t name it as that. Who teach us how to live with and for others, and to love ourselves. To feel the nudge of a universal spirit that is found in all, everywhere.

But I am also the beneficiary of the Lydias who by their action, by their sacrifice, by their love, display the courage of Jesus, in a society that doesn’t expect it. Who go to the forest with their daughter and sons, because that is what they must do to care and protect them. 

Sometimes, I think,  the church is a hinderance to the message of Jesus. To the spirit of God moving in the world.

So what to do about it, in the 21st century.

Well, perhaps we need more women leaders, like the Baháʼí faith.  Just  a thought. 

Amen

We are going to now listen to a song, a little cheekily called , Where did Jesus go.