The seller of purple
We heard in the second lesson about the meeting between Paul and a woman called Lydia in the city of Philippi. And we were told that Lydia was a dealer in purple cloth. Now, on the whole I prefer modern translations of the Bible, but they let us down a bit here. The old Authorized Version, sticking closely to the Greek, says that she’s a seller of purple. Just that. A seller of purple.
What does purple mean to you? What does it say? Maybe it makes you think of the first line from that poem by Jenny Joseph - "when I am an old woman I shall wear purple, with a red hat, which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me". A dramatic colour, but a dangerous colour. Easy to go a bit over the top.
It’s that moment in every episode of Changing Rooms where the designer prises open the lids of the paint tins and the participants gasp in horror - because almost invariably one of them is a violent shade of purple, especially if Laurence Llewellyn Bowen’s involved. It’s not a colour you can ignore, purple.
The cost of purple
These days we’re used to being able to get any colour we want. If you’re attracted, rather than repulsed, by the decor on Changing Rooms you can take your purple cushion cover into Homebase, they’ll scan it into a machine, and mix up a paint exactly the same colour. If you want a shirt or a blouse in a shop they have all of the colours in all of the sizes.
It didn’t used to be like that. Dyes were natural, not synthetic, and the dye for purple was made from a juice found in minute quantities in shellfish. It took thousands of crustaceans to make a yard or two of purple cloth. So it was very expensive, worth its weight in silver it was said. It was a statement of status and wealth, the Gucci handbag or the Rolex watch of Roman times.
Lydia
And that’s what Lydia is selling. She’s selling purple; purple cloth, purple robes, the power of purple. She’s not local. She’s from Thyatira, a town well known for making purple cloth. She seems to be the head of her household, there’s no husband around, even though she’s a travelling trader. And if she’s a seller of purple, she’s not poor, because she couldn’t have afforded her stock.
She’s not Jewish, but she believes in God. She’s what the Jews knew as a ’Godfearer’ - someone who worships in the synagogue, but hasn’t coverted completely to Judaism.
But to have a synagogue you need ten men who will meet together to say prayers. Phillipi, it seems, doesn’t have a synagogue. If there’s no synagogue, then any Jews that happen to be in the town or passing through know to meet near the river on the sabbath to pray. That’s where Lydia goes, and it’s where Paul and Silas go too.
Paul
So here is this rich, confident woman, meeting Paul for the first time. Who was never rich, and must have been anything but confident at that point in his ministry.
It had all started so well. Paul and Barnabas had travelled through Asia, founding churches and setting people on fire for the gospel. But they had come back to a less than rapturous welcome from the Jerusalem church, who wanted to know why they were baptising Gentiles. Then Paul had fallen out with Barnabas, and set off on his next journey with Silas instead.
In a way which he doesn’t explain, Paul felt the Spirit had forbidden them to go back to Asia. Wherever he tries to go he feels he is rebuffed, until finally he is called in a dream to Macedonia. He goes to Philippi, on the outer fringe of the Jewish diaspora, where he finds no synagogue where he could preach the gospel; so he goes to the river probably looking for Jewish leaders, and finds ’only’ women.
"The Lord opened her heart"
And there he meets Lydia. Lydia who has had her heart opened by the Holy Spirit, so that she can hear the message of God. Remember this verse: " The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul."
It is excruciatingly difficult, sometimes, to talk to people about our faith. We get tongue-tied, we feel foolish, we feel that no-one could possibly be convinced by what we have to say. And that’s quite right, they can’t. But they can have their hearts opened by the Spirit, just waiting for a Christian to put into words, or better still into actions, the meaning of their faith in Jesus. We don’t have to convert people, the Spirit does that. All we have to do is speak honestly and openly about what faith means for us.
So Paul, who seemed this time to be on a mission that was going nowhere, meets the woman who will be the lynchpin of the church in Philippi. Other churches give him nothing but grief, the Philippians are a constant source of support for him, financial as well as spiritual. His letter to them is one of the warmest of the epistles. He’s founded a church in what seemed an unlikely place, and it’s been one of his success stories.
Listening to the Spirit
And it happened because he listened to the Spirit, heard and obeyed when the Spirit said "no", went where the Spirit called him, and met Lydia the seller of purple, whose heart the Spirit had opened.
Sometimes - not all the time, but sometimes - there is a reason why things don’t seem to go right. The house sale that falls through. The job offer that doesn’t come. Sometimes it just is what it is, and we have to cope and try again. But sometimes it seems that it really is God’s providence; that he has a plan for us, and is just waiting for us to see it, listen to the voice of the Spirit, and follow.
Jerusalem to Rome
Lydia, the seller of purple. Is this just a story of Lydia and Paul, or is it more? The book of Acts is a journey; a journey of the gospel from Jerusalem to Asia and then on to Rome. And here, near the middle of the story, as Paul leaves Asia for the first time, he meets Lydia the seller of purple.
Purple wasn’t just an indicator of wealth. It was a symbol of political power. The more important you were as a Roman senator, the more purple decoration you had on your tunic and your toga. The emperor, and only the emperor, would wear a toga made entirely of purple cloth. Purple was the colour of the Roman elite.
And here, as the message of the gospel crosses the Aegean and moves towards the heart of the Graeco-Roman world, here the imperial purple and the message of the kingdom meet.
But they don’t meet on a battlefield. They don’t meet in a trial of strength - ’my God is more powerful than your God’. How can a faith that’s based on a God who humbled himself to be a man, who was prepared to die for humanity because he loved us so much, who was prepared to submit to torture and degradation and humiliation - how can a faith like that truly be spread by power politics and strength of arms?
No, the battle between Roman power and the message of the gospel meet in the heart of a woman. A woman who sold luxury goods to the elite and the powerful, but who knew there was something more to life. A woman whose heart was prepared by the Holy Spirit to hear the call of Jesus, and to follow him.
