Bothell United Methodist Church… it is so so good to be with you! I had the privilege of going to seminary with your lead pastor, Pastor Joe, and so I’ve known about this incredible community of faith for years now. My parents live part-time just a few minutes from here in Bothell, so it’s a town I’ve come to love when I am here visiting them, and I’m just so thankful for the opportunity to be with you today. Thank you for your warm welcome this morning.
Let’s ground ourselves with a word of prayer…
Holy Spirit, thank you for meeting us here, for being in this place where two or three are gathered. Open our hearts and our minds to the good news as we spend time with your word to us in Acts. We are here. We are listening. Amen.
2 years ago, I had the privilege of traveling with my family to Italy. My parents, two of my siblings, my spouse, and I traipsed all through Rome, Florence, the Tuscan countryside, ending in Milan, eating as much pizza and pasta and gelato as humanly possible as we made our way from museum to art gallery to massive stone marvels like Rome’s Colosseum. It was the vacation of a lifetime.
And - I remember being periodically jarred out of vacation mode by moments where I learned on museum placards and monument signage of the horrific violence and oppression that made “wonders of the world” like Rome’s Colosseum possible. The Colosseum, after all, was a stadium where the elite of the Roman empire would brutally murder those they decided were “criminals” and “outsiders”, not just for sport, but for the kind of political theater that would send a clear message to the common folks up in the stands: step out of line from the empire’s program of total world domination, and you could be fighting for your life inside this stadium next.
Just steps away from the Colosseum, we visited another huge stone structure, the Arch of Titus, which stands at the entrance to the Roman Forum. Inside the arch is a stone carving called the "Spoils of Jerusalem", picturing a Roman military parade carrying off the most sacred items from the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, including a menorah. Rome had stolen these precious treasures from the temple after utterly destroying it and killing tens of thousands in 70 AD to squash powerful Jewish resistance to Rome’s oppression. Luke wrote the book of Acts some time after this had occurred, so the shadow of this horrific trauma covers much of what he wrote. And that treasure, looted from the decimated Jewish temple in Jerusalem, is what literally paid for the construction of Rome’s huge torture chamber, the Colloseum.
My family ran across quieter versions of the Roman empire’s legacy of violence during our vacation too. I remember on a bus tour that took us wine tasting in the Tuscan countryside, our Italian tour guide explained that many vineyards and their accompanying houses had been built originally as homes where Roman soldiers could retire on the empire’s dime - with one condition. As long as they lived there, they had to personally police Rome’s borders, making sure none of those folks Rome had deemed “criminal” or “outsider” were allowed in. This was the way an empire so geographically vast could be controlled by such a small group of people hoarding all the resources. That’s how empires keep ticking in general, even as they kill and consume so many precious lives for the profit of just a few. Empires offer common folks just enough to get by (which is usually not enough to get by), as long as those folks continue to quietly, obediently play their part in the death machine.
I could not get these memories of Rome out of my mind as I encountered Lydia this week. Here’s what Luke tells us about her:
Paul and his companions meet Lydia in Philippi, a Roman colony, which means it was a place where Rome was extracting resources to keep the richest people in their society on top after stealing the land from the people who originally lived there.
Luke also hints that, somehow, Lydia seems to be the head of her own household, even though the Roman empire depended on the family unit being led by a man and enslaving people in their household, like an empire of total domination in miniature.
Luke tells us Lydia was a dealer in purple cloth, a luxury good in ancient times. This meant she was likely rubbing elbows every week with the wealthiest Roman citizens, her customers, possibly even gathering up a decent amount of wealth for herself along the way. I wonder if that’s how Lydia got away with deviating from Rome’s “traditional family values” as the head of her own house, bringing in some wealth of her own. Maybe as long as she obediently kept the empire’s luxury goods market humming along, she could have those few scraps of dignity for herself.
Luke also tells us that Lydia was a “worshiper of God,” a term for non-Jews who had chosen to become involved in the Jewish community. That’s why Paul and his buddies find her at what’s called a “place of prayer” on the Sabbath, probably another word for a Jewish synagogue. At synagogue, Lydia would have heard stories of Jewish resistance to previous empires read aloud from the holy scriptures every week on the Sabbath. Stories of God liberating the Hebrew people from enslavement in Egypt. Stories of God delivering the people from captivity in Babylon. Stories of God helping a young boy named David slay a giant named Goliath and empowering ancestors like Esther and Deborah to defend God’s people from tyrants and powerful armies. I wonder if these were the stories that kept Lydia coming back to this riverside synagogue week after week. Maybe she was hungry for these stories of a God who would not leave God’s people under the thumb of an empire forever. Maybe these stories reminded her that, to this God, she was worth so much more than whatever she contributed to Rome’s extractive economy to stay alive.
And here come Paul and his friends. They sit down with Lydia and the other women gathered at the riverside synagogue. They have time to talk. But did you notice that, besides Lydia’s response to Paul and his friends, we don’t get any of the words Paul actually spoke to Lydia and the women who were gathered there? We know Lydia was listening, because the author tells us that twice. But I found myself perplexed this week when I saw that even though the editors of my Bible entitled this section “The Conversion of Lydia”, we don’t get any of Paul’s actual words to Lydia that helped bring about that kind of response.
Then I remembered that if we back up a bit to verse 10, Luke tells us that Paul and his companions were “convinced that God had called [them] to proclaim the good news” to whoever they found once they got to Macedonia. “Proclaim the good news.” As someone who grew up in the church, I confess I’ve gotten used to tuning this phrase out a little because I assume I know what this means from my earliest days in Sunday School: to tell people that “Jesus died for your sins and if you believe that, you will be saved.” But that’s not what this Greek verb here, euaggelizo, meant to the folks who wrote the New Testament. Before this word ever got associated with what we might think of now as “evangelism,” it was a political term, originally used to honor Roman emperor Augustus, announcing and celebrating the quoteunquote “good news” of his rise to power. But here and in the gospels, that political euaggelizo word is turned upside down, used intentionally to push back against the Roman empire, bringing news not of a greedy tyrant who was coming to power so he can keep hoarding all the resources the people were meant to share, but rather, just the opposite: the good news that a liberating God has chosen to live among the oppressed, and that this God has come to bring “down the powerful from their thrones and lift… up the lowly…” to fill “the hungry with good things…” and send “the rich away empty,” as Mary put it in her song when she learned she would give birth to Jesus.
So, the good news we can assume Paul was sharing with Lydia that day was that the Roman empire and its systems of oppression will not win the day. The good news Paul shared with Lydia was that the God of liberation has the final word in the story. And this God has come to flip the ways of empire upside down.
You see, while the empire’s “good news” meant draining the land and the people themselves of resources so a few people at the top could get rich,
God's good news was about the arrival of a world where every being has what they need to thrive.
While the empire’s “good news” meant a “peace” where people suffered quietly under threat of violence,
God’s good news meant real peace, which comes when the swords and spears of war and genocide are turned into gardening tools that cultivate life.
While the empire’s “good news” said you have to earn your few scraps of dignity by cooperating with the daily indignities of living under occupation,
God’s good news says abundance and grace and love are for everyone, everyone, everyone, and you cannot do anything to earn them because they are already yours.
We don’t know for sure what happened in Lydia’s heart, mind, and body that day, because Luke doesn’t tell us. What we do know is that Lydia went all in. She and her entire household were baptized. She apparently “prevailed upon” Paul and his friends to come and stay at her home. And if we would have read all the way to verse 40 today, we would have encountered Lydia’s home one more time as the place Paul and his friend Silas go right after they are released from prison. It was at Lydia’s house that they saw and encouraged their new siblings in the faith, I’m imagining after a good meal, before they finally moved on to the next leg of their journey. What we know is that Lydia went from sitting and listening, to committing the entirety of her life, her family’s lives, and her home to this movement that sought to flip empire on its head and build instead a world where everybody belongs.
I wonder if Paul’s sharing about this good news finally broke some kind of dam in Lydia’s spirit that day. I wonder if the pressure had been building as Lydia went back and forth from her daily life as a businesswoman where Rome told her she was only as valuable and safe as the number of luxury goods she could sell, to the synagogue, where the Jewish scriptures read aloud each week were constantly telling her about a God who would never let empire snatch God’s people from God’s hand. And so perhaps when she heard Paul share the good news that God created us not for man-made scarcity but for God-given abundance, not for quiet suffering under oppression but for collective flourishing, maybe it finally clicked that she personally had so much to gain by being a part of that world. Maybe that’s the day that she started to smell, taste, and touch just how good it would be to be that free, and it helped her fear of defying empire melt away long enough for her to say, “Yes, this is my fight too”. The good news of this liberating God had been there for her all along. Perhaps what the Spirit did that day was make it so that Lydia could no longer unsee it. She could not go back. The good news was too irresistible. So, with joy, she went all the way in.
Beloveds, here are our action items for this week:
Number 1. Spend some time reflecting on your relationship to today’s American empire, the one we live in right now. What stories are the powers that be telling you about who you are and what you are worth? What false promises of security, safety, and belonging have the powers that be made to you, on the condition that you’ll cooperate with the systems that keep some people poor and some people rich, that call some people “criminals” and other people “citizens”, that are using our US tax dollars to bomb and starve the people of Gaza to death, that push some people out and keep some people in? Reflect: Do you believe that systems that create this kind of a world can really make good on that promise of “security” and “safety” for anyone, including you?
Number 2. Spend some time reflecting on what the Spirit is doing in you: As we wake up to new headlines every day about executive orders meant to keep us locked in fear, as the price of groceries goes up while paychecks and Social Security checks stay the same, as the list of people with targets on their back increases every day… listen for the Spirit’s movement in you as someone who is a part of this world. What do you feel the Spirit prompting you to do in response?
Number 3. Take a step inspired by Lydia. Consider what “going all in” means for you in this moment of rising fascism, of horrendous political repression, of US-funded genocide. If you are one of the folks here who has been impacted by oppression long before this moment in time, what would it look like for you to talk more openly about that lived experience here in this community of faith? What would it look like for you to tell the truth about what empire has taken from you, to share your story with folks here that you trust? If this is a time when you are feeling newly afraid and impacted by what’s happening in our country because of the layers of privilege that have protected you up until this point, or if you still feel sheltered by privilege in these days, consider: what is your personal stake in building up a world where everyone, including you, is more free? What action can you take that will help bring down tyrants from their thrones and feed the hungry with good things? How can you and your household commit your tangible resources to be in solidarity with those at the top of the empire’s hit list, which today may be somebody else, but tomorrow, could also be you?
Friends, this passage invites us to follow in Lydia footsteps, to finally embrace that the good news isn’t just for someone else. It is for us. To understand that when we commit the entirety of our lives to solidarity with the most oppressed, we are all made more free. May the Spirit help us to smell, taste, touch, and see how beautiful it would be to be a part of a world where everyone has what they need to thrive, and may that send our worst fears about defying empire packing. May we open up to the Spirit in a new way today and, like Lydia, take the leap and tumble head first into the work of building a world no empire can destroy, a world where all of us belong.
Please pray with me…
Holy God, reveal to us the lies empire has told us about who we are. Remind us whose we are: beloved children of a God who created us for abundance, a God who refuses to let us go. Speak to us about the particular call you have placed on each of our lives in days like these. Show us how we too, just like Lydia, can go all in to build your kin-dom on earth. Amen.
