It has been quite a week. I was in Newcastle from Monday until Thursday for the National Cathedrals Conference. It was great and I will tell you more. But since returning it has been full on! The tide of emails is relentless and other more enjoyable things have come along. The result is I hope you don’t mind if this week I share with you the sermon I have been preaching this morning at St Luke’s Woodside. That is a church just south of South Norwood, so on the outskirts of Croydon, a place I hadn’t been for quite a while. And, as you will read, I was quite excited when I read the readings for the Eucharist this Sunday. The readings the parish used were Ezekiel 37:1-14, Acts 16:9-15 and John 14:23-29.
I love Lydia. Now that sounds like something that someone would carve into a tree, or nowadays, I suppose, put somewhere on social media. But I mean it, I do love Lydia. One of the things that I really love about the Acts of the Apostles is that you keep being told the names of wonderful people who were members of the early church, people just like you and me, members of congregations who Paul or Peter encountered as they took the message of the Good News out, beyond Jerusalem, beyond Israel, beyond Palestine, to the places where the story of Jesus had not yet been told. The Acts of the Apostles is littered with the names of friends we didn’t know we had.
The other week we heard of Dorcas, Tabitha, the seamstress. We heard of Simon the tanner. And we’ll hear more names, women and men who were there, the church, our sisters and brothers.
But I love Lydia because she was my forerunner. Lydia was the first person in Europe who we know was baptised, converted, brought into the body of Christ, the first name in the European baptism register if you like. There’d already been people from North Africa, people like Simon of Cyrene and his sons Alexander and Rufus. The father had been there at the crucifixion itself, helped carry the cross and certainly by the time the gospels were written every one knew of his sons. There’d been people from Syria, people like Ananias who lived on Straight Street in Damascus – it’s still there, I’ve been to his house. There’d been people from modern day Turkey but there hadn’t been anyone from Europe until Lydia, so I love Lydia.
She was probably a woman of high status. The cloth that she dealt in was for the wealthy. The dye she’d have used to make the purple cloth was expensive and so it was used to mark out the leaders in Roman society, on their togas, on their robes – after all why do you think bishops wear purple!
She probably employed quite a lot of people, those we heard referred to as her household, her extended family. She may have been a widow, because in a highly patriarchal society she’s able to invite everyone in Paul’s party round to her place to stay – or maybe she just had a very tolerant and, for those times, modern husband who didn’t mind her making such decisions.
But whatever her back story was, she was part of a prayer group. Somehow Paul heard that they held their meetings outside of the city, perhaps because it would be frowned upon if they actually met more openly. So out alongside a river, under the shade of some trees, Lydia and her friends gathered to pray. And then Paul and his companions turn up.
What they knew about Jesus we don’t really know – it would seem not that much because as soon as Paul started speaking Lydia’s heart was opened to the Word and she believed in a way she hadn’t before. And there and then she was baptised.
I love Lydia and Jesus loves her too.
We’re getting towards the end of the Easter season. Next Thursday is Ascension Day and it isn’t long until Pentecost. So in the Gospel for today we hear Jesus speaking to his disciples about his departure and about the sending of the Holy Spirit. But before he tells them that Jesus says something to them and to us that’s so important
‘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.’
Jesus loves Lydia and Jesus loves you and so does the Father and the divine abides with us and we abide with the divine. Just as in that vision of Ezekiel that we heard in our First Reading, the Spirit of God comes to us, brings the dry bones of our life to life, so that we will know the Lord and live in the Lord.
When the bishop comes to Confirm people, as they lay their hands on our heads they say to us
‘God has called you by name and made you his own.’
Those are powerful words. The valley was full of dry bones, a vast number, but God breathed life into each one of them. God loves Lydia by name and that’s why we know her name and God loves you by name and makes you God’s own. You’re not just one in a crowd, one other in a vast army of people but known and loved and blessed and valued and held close to the heart of God.
That has to affect how we treat each other. If that’s how God feels about the person sitting next you right now, and the person in front of you, and the person behind you, if that’s how God loves each one of us then we too have to love each other, with all those things that make each one of us so special – and that includes our ability and our gender and our colour and our heritage and our sexuality and our age. Because each of those things is so precious to God, each of those things God wants you to be and fully to be.
I love Lydia, Jesus loves Lydia, God loves Lydia because God loves you. And as the beloved of God we keep the words of Jesus and do as Jesus would have us do. Part of that is doing exactly what we’re doing now. We don’t need to find a stream outside the city wall at which we can gather, no trees we can shelter under for our prayers – we have this house, this home for the people of God in Woodside and we have a table.
Because God loves us so much he gave us his Son and because Jesus loves us so much he gave us his self – in bread and wine, his body and blood, our food, our life, our peace, our wholeness. And with empty hands and just as we are we come forward to receive all that Jesus has to give us.
Dean Friedman had a hit back in 1978 with a song called ‘Lydia’ and in it he sang these words
Lydia, if you only knew how much I love you. Did you know that I love you?
Perhaps Lydia does know, well she knew that God loved her, whether she could have imagined that two thousand years later a bunch of people in south London would talk of her, who knows. But we know her by name and share in the same journey and eat the same meal and share the same life – the life that brings dry bones to life to live Easter, now, today and always – whoever we are, whatever we are called.
God, you call me by name, you make me your own. May I live in the knowledge and strength of your love. Amen.
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