The First European Christian: Lydia

 Third Saturday of Lent

Lectionary Texts for Saturday:

OT: Exodus 20:17

NT: John 4:27-42

Lectionary Texts for Sunday:

OT: Exodus 20:1-17

Psalm 19 (UMH 750)

Epistle: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Gospel: John 2:13-22

If you have been reading the lectionary texts this week, you'll note that this Sunday has readings that were in our weekly lectionary. We've been reading the 10 Commandments one at a time. Sunday's OT is all 10. We've also read this week the other Sunday lectionary readings. As we continue, let's notice whether this is a pattern with the two lectionaries.

For today's Acts Bible Study please read Acts 16:11-15.

As we have noted, Philippi was a major Roman city in Greece. It was bilingual, Greek and Latin. Paul is a city boy. He skips any preaching in the small port town of Neapolis and heads straight for Phillippi. As is his usual practice, he looks first for Jews. Apparently there is no synagogue there. He hears of a Sabbath meeting place at the river outside the city. He and his travel companions go there and encounter a woman named Lydia with her family. She is apparently a widow.

Lydia is an international businesswoman, dealing in the business of luxury clothing. Purple cloth is expensive, the dye produced by rare snail that inhabits a small area on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor (Turkey). Lydia was originally from Thyatira in Asia Minor, not far from the coastline. She is clearly a woman of considerable wealth. Her house can readily accommodate Paul and his three companions as well as her family and servants. She is a believer in God, either born Jewish or having adopted the Jewish faith. She comes to faith in Christ through the preaching of Paul. She and her whole family and servants are baptized.

I've been to that river several times, to the place where tradition says Lydia was baptized. There is a small shrine there. It's just a couple of miles outside Philippi. As you might expect, people still go there to be baptized. 

Christianity attracted women, including wealthy women, from the beginning (cf. Luke 8:1-3). Unlike virtually all the other many religions of the Roman Empire, it was co-ed, family oriented, and had women in leadership roles. It cut completely across lines of class, language, and gender. It also sought growth. The experience of Jesus was powerful and freeing to these early Christians. Not only was there gender equality, there was also slave and free equality (cf. Galatians 3:27-28). In the highly masculinized culture of the Roman Empire, Christianity had feminine values: peace, non-violence, care, nurture, love, gentleness, sharing (cf. Galatians 5:21-23). These values would bring it into unwanted conflict with Roman culture, as we shall see in our next Acts study.

It might be worth my nothing that Christianity made its way into Africa (the Ethiopian eunuch, Acts 8) before Europe (Lydia, Acts 16). From the beginning it was an international, intercontinental religion. 

 

Lord of all peoples,

We give you thanks for your servant Lydia, for the church in her house, the first church in Europe, for the aid she gave to Paul and his companions, as they and she carried the message of your son in Philippi and beyond. In His name, Amen.

Faithfully,

Christian