Acts Chapter 16: This Week In God's Word
And I Know That I Am
As a child, I used to sing this song with my grandmother’s
church choir, I’m Saved And I Know That I Am. My adopted
brother would turn to me and tell me not to sing that song
because, after all, I was not saved. He was saved but I wasn’t.
I wasn’t saved because no one had ever heard me speak in
tongues. Or fake it, as I suspect many of the faithful did back
in those days. From, perhaps, age eight, I’d begun searching for
God. I was keenly and vividly aware of His call upon my life and
I struggled to make sense of the cryptic and impenetrable King
James bible Mommy Young—what we called my grandmother—had given
me. My mom was saved, Mommy Young was saved, my brother was
saved. But I was kind of like a Christian groupie: on the
outside looking in. 43 years later, I have never, to this day,
heard the plan of salvation articulated by a black pastor from a
black pulpit. In my experiences, black churches invest
tremendous time and energy in pageantry—the music, the ceremony,
untold millions of dollars wasted in decorations, pews and
carpet—but routinely miss the point of their existence. They
fail and fail miserably at making disciples. They shroud the
conversion
process in secrecy, never simply articulating
how this is actually done but instead handing off this
crucial task to pulpit workers who shuffle seekers off into a
corner and away from the church pastor, whose voice they are
responding to. It is kind of a bait and switch, these seekers
ensorcelled and spellbound by a great orator, finally convinced
to come forward, only to be handed off to someone with varying
levels of experience and training. What these pulpit workers
often lack the most is anointing. They’ve been trained to fill
out forms and perhaps ask the right questions but they have no
power and no authority with which to deliver seekers from their
darkness. I’m Saved And I Know That I Am. But nobody,
nobody at all in the black church, has, from those days to
these, ever once told me how to know God. Go down the aisle and
shake someone’s hand. Join the church. Then they drown out even
that feckless invitation with hollering and singing, loud drums
and ear-piercing Hammond organ strains.
Beloved, people arrive at your church with a story. We should
hear it. We should want to hear it. A stranger in your midst is
an opportunity to hear their story. I promise you, they have
one. I am fascinated by this woman Lydia, whom the bible refers
to as a “dealer in purple cloth,” and “a follower of God.” She
either would not or could not convert to Judaism for some
reason, but she apparently desired, above all else, a
relationship with God and to walk with Him. Lydia was a God
Groupie. A hanger-on. Around the club but not in it. I’m
Saved And I Know That I Am. The apostle Luke wrote these
words about her:
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 woman who had gathered there. A certain woman
named Lydia, a worshiper 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. [Acts 16:13-15]
I found this online and am unsure of the author, but rather than
rewrite this or generate my own commentary (which would read a
lot like this), I’ll just repost these observations:
Here we meet Lydia. I believe Lydia is one
of the most misunderstood women of the Bible. As a child in the
church, I was taught that Lydia was a rich woman who financially
supported the church The basis for this teaching was the
designation of “a dealer in purple cloth.” This, however, is
only one element in the description.
The first piece of information the text provides is the location
of the story. Paul encounters this group of women “outside the
gate by the river.” At the time, there were two types of purple
cloth available. One, made from shellfish, was a luxury item,
legally available only to imperial families. The other was a
vegetable-based dye which required ready access to fresh water.
The malodorous process equated to “knock-off” brands of today,
and. far from making its producers wealthy elites, it forced
them outside the city gates. Not incidentally, the area most
known for this designer knock-off industry was Thyatira. Put
simply, Lydia worked in a smelly, hot manufacturing job that
relegated her to the outer rim of the town.
In fact, Lydia was probably well aware of the consequences of
being on the fringe of society. The name “Lydia” was not even a
person's name. Lydia was a place. The only people who had place
names as personal name were slaves. These were people who did
not even merit a name, but were instead simply called by the
place from which they had been taken.
Despite her economic condition, Lydia was a “worshiper of God.”
A “worshiper of God,” also called “God fearer,” was a Gentile
who had determined to follow after the Jewish God yet, due to
the requirements of Jewish law, were unable to convert. Lydia
was looking for a relationship with God as she gathered with
others beside the river.
Finally, we have the detail that Lydia had a household. Was she
married, single, or widowed? We don't know, but we do know that
she had a household which was baptized. More, she was able to
invite Paul and his companion to her home. Lydia may be the one
or one of the ones who was “sharing in the gospel from the first
day” in Philippians.
Whatever else Lydia may have
been, I believe she was a survivor.
It seems unlikely she was married at that time. Scripture
strongly infers that Lydia was head of her household, which
would be impossible if she were married. She would not invite
the apostles but would say something more like, “I will ask my
husband…” A wife does not invite a group of strange men to spend
the night in her home. Lydia’s oppressive and tedious labor
would certainly embarrass and humiliate her husband. She may
have been a widow, but widows were usually seen to by their
relatives or townsfolk. I might better speculate (this is not in
scripture) that she was divorced or perhaps abandoned by a
husband. Perhaps she was never married. Perhaps Lydia was a
lesbian. It is beyond arrogant to assume that, of the millions
of people referred to in the bible, Christians assume not one of
them could possibly be LGBT. That, of the multitudes following
Jesus, not a single one was gay. This is what we believe, or, at
least, what we put into practice. And it is shamefully ignorant
and stupid. If you believe Jesus never once preached to a gay
person, you’re an idiot. If you believe, Jesus never once
touched, healed or blessed a gay person, you are an idiot. It is
not a realistic conclusion. On the other hand, Jesus never
interviewed people before He healed them, before He blessed
them. He simply “went about doing good,” [Acts 10:38] without
concern for such matters. Which is not to say Lydia was not
heterosexual, but it is to not exclude that possibility from her
story.
Whether you believe this or not, the Holy Bible, as we know it
today, was heavily edited over the millennium. These editors
were exclusively men. It is likely the exclusively male authors
of the scripture also thought stories or events featuring women
were worth less notice than those festering men, and therefore
many fascinating stories involving women arrive to us, today, as
fragments bereft of much detail, context or even conclusion. Why
was Lydia mentioned at all? What happened when Paul’s
party—likely mostly if not exclusively male—arrived at this
presumably single woman’s home? Who was in Lydia’s family? Were
there adults there or simply children? How would Lydia know
these supposed men of God, who were preaching what amounted to
heresy to the Jews, would not steal from her or beat or rape
her? Would you, as a single woman, invite a group of male
preachers you just met in some shopping mall home to stay at
your house> You preachers: if you met Lydia in some parking lot
and she invited you to sleep over her house, would you go?
This is a very strange story. It was not unusual for someone
within a town to offer food and lodging to travelers. But this
was outside of town and Lydia was likely among the lowest dregs
of that town’s social strata. I’m fascinated to hear the rest of
that story, but either Luke did not write it or some bozo
thought it was uninteresting or unimportant.
The New Testament has no completely autheticatable chain of
custody. This means the New Testament, mostly a collection of
handwritten documents passed along, recopied and distributed by
the Christian faithful, lack the kind of documentable history of
the Old Testament, which was zealously preserved, authenticated
and protected by Jewish priests (although there evidence of
tampering even with that.
The New Testament is, pretty much, whatever we are told it is.
From the ancient editors to huge committees, called synods,
where learned old men would sit around a table and vote on what
scripture is more reliable and, therefore, included in the
biblical canon, and which were not, to the modern scholar of
today who either affirm or question those choices, you and I and
mama ‘nem, essentially, take somebody else’s word on what the
New Testament actually is. Where’s the rest of this story? One
presumes there is no rest of the story. Lydia was just a bit
player in the Book of Acts, but she prompts what should be a
fascinating discussion on who she ultimately was and why her
story was there in the first place.
Moreover, when I look around church Sunday morning, 90% of the
women I see—the mothers, the grandmothers—are survivors. It’s
written all over their faces.
Marissa Alexander, whose images accompany this meditation,
is certainly a survivor. She certainly has a story. These women
hold their head up in dignity, but each one has a story. Each
one is, in her own way, Lydia. A worshipper. A God-fearer who
carries the burden of our ignorance and neglect. The head of her
household. The strength of Samson, the endurance of Job. A story
that should be told.
Christopher J. Priest
20 May 2012
editor@praisenet.org
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