A Certain Woman Named Lydia
Acts 16:9-15
Easter 6C
May 5, 2013
Easter 6C
May 5, 2013
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
The New Testament
was written from an apostolic point of view.
The events and controversies of the ministry of Jesus and the life of
the communities in the New Testament are told through the eyes of the
apostles. What the apostles do and what
happens to them are set in the foreground.
The apostles are the New Testament’s heroes, its major players and its
main actors.
Both before and
after Jesus was murdered, the apostles were sent into mission. The very word apostle means “those who are
sent.” They preach the good news of the
new thing that God is doing through Jesus that is erupting into the life of the
ordinary folk of Roman Palestine and then the ordinary folk of the Roman Empire
at large. Marvelous things happen. The apostles perform signs and wonders that
show just how powerful this new thing that God is doing really is. The apostles are wandering preachers and
wonder workers.
At first glance it
looks like the apostles are doing the work of spreading the good news all by
themselves, but this isn’t the whole story.
If we back light the scene as we read the accounts of the ministry of
the apostles we can discover the rest of the story. I’ll show you what I mean. When Jesus sent out the Twelve, he gave his
wandering preachers instructions:
“Take
nothing for the journey—no walking stick, no bag, no bread, no money, not even
an extra shirt. Whatever house you
enter, remain there until you leave that place.
Wherever they don’t welcome you, as you leave that city, shake the dust
off your feet as a witness against them.” [1]
These instructions
are especially important because they aren’t just a record of how the Twelve
went about their mission. They were also
the rule for the wandering preachers of the early Jesus movement.
If we read these
instructions carefully we notice that wherever the apostles go, they are to
rely on householders who will offer them a place to stay and meals to eat. In other words, without the hospitality of
the householders, the mission of the apostles would be impossible. The householders are indispensible partners in
the spreading of the good news.
The early Jesus
movements, at least the ones that are represented in the New Testament, were
made up of two kinds of people. The
first kind was the wandering preachers who owned nothing and were constantly on
the move. The second were the householders
and their households who supported the ministry of the wandering preachers with
their hospitality. The wandering
preachers preached and demonstrated God’s new thing. The householders hosted God’s new
thing.
In the story told
from the point of view of the wandering preachers, though, the wandering
preachers come off as the great heroes and the householders almost
disappear. But both have to do
their part or the mission just doesn’t happen.
As we back to the
story in Acts, one of the householders steps out of the shadows and into the
spotlight. Her name is Lydia and there
are several things that we can note about her.
She is a “God-fearer,” a gentile who was attracted to the Jewish
religion. God-fearers were often an
unofficial part of the synagogue. If
they were highly placed in society, they might take on the role of patron to
the synagogue, providing some protection from the general level of mistrust that
gentiles sometimes felt toward Jews.
In the second place,
we notice that she was a merchant. She
dealt in purple dye which came from a sea snail called the Spiny
dye-murex. Purple was expensive and no
one but Roman citizens were allowed to wear purple cloth. Roman citizens were required to wear a
toga edged in purple on ceremonial occasions.
Philippi, where this story takes place, was a Roman colony, settled by
retired legionnaires, so the city had a large number of Roman citizens. Philippi was a good place to sell purple. It is likely that Lydia was what we might
call upper middle class.
Last and perhaps
most important of all, Lydia was a woman, a woman who was a well-off owner of a
business. She was almost certainly a
widow. Only if she had married and then
been widowed, would she have been allowed to own property. That is also the only way a woman would be
allowed to head a household. A household
was a bigger thing than ours are today. Normally,
the head would be the pater familias, the father of the family, and the
family would include his wife and his children (including any children by
previous marriages). But the household
also included any male and female slaves and any freedmen or freedwomen who had
been their slaves and their husbands, wives and children. Slaves, freedmen and freedwomen and their
children would have been employed in her business. Lydia was a female pater familias. She owned a profitable business. In her world she was a lucky and accomplished
woman.
Lydia listened to
Paul’s preaching, embraced it, and was baptized, together with her entire household.
Notice that the next thing that happened
was that Lydia asked Paul and his fellow traveler or travelers to stay at her
house. She acted as a host and sponsor
of Paul’s ministry. Paul preaches and
does wonders (and we’ll hear about one of them next week). She provides him with a place to stay, food
to eat, and an introduction into her circle of social connections. These are valuable things to Paul. In return she gets something that she needed:
honor and prestige. She gets Paul’s
affirmation of her faith and the prestige that comes from being a patron of the
newly formed Christian assembly and its members. The church will most likely meet in her
house.
There are other
householders mentioned in the New Testament.
You can find them listed at the end of letters from apostles to
congregations. Prisca and Aquila are a
married couple mentioned in Romans who host a Christian congregation. They appear again in 1 Corinthians along with
a householder named Stephanas. Another
woman householder is mentioned in Colossians.
Paul honors them by including greetings for and from them for the simple
reason that he needs their favor in order to do his work and he knows it and he
knows they know it, too.
This is the pattern:
wandering preachers supported by hosting householders. This was a partnership, even if the
wandering preachers got better press than the householders.
In the early days of
the Methodist movement in this country the same pattern emerged. Our congregation’s story is an example. One rainy night in September, 1851, Rev.
Albert Bishop knocked on the door of the home of Philip and Hannah Morse, one
of only three houses in Decorah. Rev.
Bishop was a circuit rider. When Hannah
came to the door, Rev. Bishop asked, “Does Brother Morse live here? I am a
missionary seeking the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” It’s an odd way to introduce oneself. You can read her reply in our church
directory.
Circuit riders, like
Rev. Bishop, were appointed to a circuit rather than a place. Bishop’s circuit included Winneshiek and
Allamakee counties. He would ride to a
settlement. He would preach. He would organize the converts into
classes. He would identify, recruit and
train lay preachers, teachers and other leaders. He would celebrate Communion. He would baptize infants and unbaptized adult
converts. Then he would ride to the next
settlement. When he had finished his
circuit, he would start again.
Of course, circuit
riders have gotten all the press. We
think of them as the heroes of early Methodism.
And they were heroes, but they were only in town four or five days a
month.
The householders
like the Morse’s don’t figure largely in our stories, but they were Rev.
Bishop’s indispensible partners in ministry.
And not just because they provided the circuit rider with a place to
stay and meals to eat. Eighty percent of
the time, Rev. Bishop was somewhere else, in Monona or Lansing or on some trail
in between. Lay people did the weekly
preaching. Lay people led the Sunday
school classes for adults as well as children.
Lay people did the bulk of the pastoral caring. Lay people organized relief for families who
had fallen on hard times. Lay people
buried the dead. Early Methodism could
not have happened without the ministry of the baptized.
Wandering preachers
and hosting householders were the pattern in early Methodism as they were in
the early days of the Jesus movement.
Both in the early
Jesus movement and in early Methodism, the pattern gave way eventually to
resident clergy and householders who became more the objects of ministry
than partners in ministry. The
attention and focus of ministry turned from communities to congregations.
I haven’t done a
thorough study of this, but I have a theory.
The wandering preacher and hosting householder pattern seems to be the
most effective way to engage the culture with the good news of the new thing that
God is doing. And so I wonder. If we really want to be effective in our
ministry, if we want to have a real impact on our community, if we want to matter,
is this how we do it? Have we been
missing half of the picture? And has the
other half been in the hands of a certain woman named Lydia?
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