Sermon for the 25th of May - Sixth Sunday of Easter
Lectionary Readings for Easter 6
Ezekiel 37: 1-14
The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’ Then he
said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.’
So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
Then he said to me, ‘Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil;then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.’
Psalm 67
May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known upon earth, your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you. The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, has blessed us. May God continue to bless us; let all the ends of the earth revere him.
Acts 16:9-15
During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. We set sail from Troas and took a
straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshipper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.’ And she prevailed upon us.
John 14:23-29
Jesus said, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me. ‘I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, “I am going away, and I am coming to you.” If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.’
Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter
Here we are, still living in the radiant light of Easter, our joyful celebration of the Resurrection of Christ. That inbreaking of God into history changed the world, forever. Jesus vanquished death by rising from it, and so set us free. In two weeks we will celebrate the culmination of the great Fifty Days of Easter on the Feast of Pentecost, as we pray that our spirits will be set on fire by the gift of the Holy Spirit. As the spirits of the believers then also experienced---tongues of fire that rested upon them and transformed them.
So today, in the church's calendar, we are in-between those two great feasts, those two great celebrations. We are still reading and meditating on the newly emerging life of the Christian community in the aftermath of Easter, that emerging community in Jerusalem that was not yet called The Church. What did they call themselves? Believers, disciples of the risen Jesus, followers of The Way---it is fascinating to contemplate how their growing awareness that they were being called into a new and vital way of life must have made them realise that they would be also come to be identified by a new name. That new name would be Christians.
Our required reading in the lectionary, in these days, is The Acts of the Apostles, Book II of the Gospel of Luke. It is Luke's record of what happened after Easter. What a birth it describes! How did those first witnesses to the Resurrection remake their lives? How did they begin to attempt to make sense of a world they now saw with radically different sight? How did they begin to live radically transformed lives, together?
We have some clues. In this book of Acts. We have some stories, of some individual figures who played critical roles in the drama of the new life that was developing in them and among them and all around them.
In the dominant narrative of Acts of Paul's missionary activity---without whose life's work we would not be here---woven within and alongside the dominant narrative of Paul, the names of several female co-workers emerge. There are not many; the mentions they are given by the writer of Acts are brief, but they are preserved in memory there, because their love and commitment and help to the emerging church was crucial.
An individual's name appears in our reading for today. Lydia.
Her name, Lydia, may simply be derived from the place from which she came, Lydia. The city of Thyatira was in the Roman province of Lydia. Just as my own last name, English, simply comes from an Englishman having gone over to foreign soil and become known as John or Jane the English, then Jane English.
Lydia is distinguished, as an individual, in these ways: she is a worshipper of God, and she is a dealer in purple cloth. As to the first, it meant that she was a Jewish sympathiser, with a heart that was already open to the God who would speak to her in the appearance of Paul that day. As to the second, it meant that she was probably a widow (otherwise her husband would have run the business) and wealthy, so, unlike most women in that day and this, she had the freedom to go where she wished, listen to whom she pleased, and respond in the way she chose.
Why was she wealthy, in all likelihood?
Purple dye in ancient times was made from predatory sea snails harvested from the Mediterranean, called Murex trunculus. It is estimated that the crushing of the shells of twelve thousand snails would yield no more than 1.4 grams of pure dye, enough to colour only the trim of a single garment. Extracting this dye involved not only tens of thousands of snails but days of highly specialised labour. It was greatly prized in antiquity because the intensity of the purple hue did not easily fade, but instead became brighter with weathering and sunlight.
Because this colour was so extraordinarily expensive and time-consuming to produce, the cloth coloured by it became associated with power and wealth. The most senior Roman magistrates wore a toga praetexta, a white toga edged in purple. The even more sumptuous toga picta, solid purple with gold thread edging, was worn by generals celebrating a Roman triumph. By the fourth century AD, sumptuary laws in Rome had been tightened so much that only the Roman emperor was permitted to wear the colour purple. By the ninth century, a child born to a reigning emperor was said to be porphyrogenitos, "born to the purple."
So Lydia oversaw an extremely complex and lucrative business.
Aside from Lydia, there are not many women in the New Testament described with even these brief lines.
Other names, other female figures, evoke our speculation: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, Rhoda, Damaris, Salome, Junia, Chloe, Priscilla, Phoebe.
We can only be sure that they stand in for countless other women who devoted their lives to the building up of the early church. They offered their own homes for worship; they served as both deaconesses and, I believe, as presiders at the liturgy of the eucharist; they distributed food to the poor; they travelled and preached and witnessed, some with their own lives. We honour Perpetua and Felicity, Blandina, many other early female martyrs of the faith.
Though the names of most of those first women disciples are unrecorded and unrecognised, the qualities of character they tirelessly used in the nurture of the church are embedded in the tradition we inherit.
When we read of Lydia and her crucial interaction with Paul, we can honour all those other faithful women whom he and other male apostles met along the way.
They are not lost.
In the case of Lydia, her brief meeting with Paul can be compressed into six words: She urged us, and she prevailed.
Lydia was free that day, and her heart was open. She listened to Paul's words, and she responded with all that she had to give him.
The encounter of Lydia with Paul proved to be one of an acceptance of welcome and hospitality that endured beyond just a few days. It was the kind of welcome and hospitality that we, as Christians, continue to offer all who are seeking God in the Jesus Paul proclaimed.
Warmth and welcome.
John's Gospel for today begins with these words and meditates upon them:
Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.
The Spirit of Jesus who is One with God comes to dwell in the hearts of all those who show warmth and welcome in his name. The word of Jesus that we try to embrace is the same as the unqualified warmth and welcome we can offer to all of God's beloved creatures, many of whom are lonely and lost. Who are cut off from others because of mental illness, wrong turnings, loss of various kinds in the lives they have been given. That is why we are here, to show warmth and welcome to all who walk through these doors. We are also asked, as Christians, to show warmth and welcome in the harsh world out there, where injustice seems to prevail and the bombing continues in Gaza and the people of Ukraine are held hostage to a hostile power and innocent children die in Sudan in a civil war that does not end. Every act of warmth and welcome tips the balance of good and evil in a world that contains much suffering.
So we take heart from the story of Lydia, dealer in purple cloth. Who urged and invited, who prevailed. Who gave of her wealth to the infant church, to shelter it and help it to grow.
May the Spirit of the loving God also guide us in the ways we can offer warmth and welcome in our world today, that love and peace may prevail.
Amen!