May 9, 2010                                                                                      

 

Scripture:         Acts 16:9-15

 

Sermon:           “Divine Motherhood”

 

            Turning our hearts and minds now to the word of God, let us read together the scripture lesson for the day.  Turn with me to the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 16 where we will read together verses 9 through 15.  You can find that easily on page 181 of the New Testament in the pew Bible.

            Happy Mother’s Day, by the way.  Happy Mother’s Day.  I say that to all mothers in the church.  Here that applies to the women who have given birth and raised children as well as all the women of the church that raise us in the faith.  You’re all mothers here.  And we celebrate you all on this day.

            It just so happens that the scripture lesson for the day is about one such woman in the church.  Her name was Lydia.  It appears that she was a mother in the sense of actually having children and raising them in her home.  And she is also one of those women in the church that is a mother to all by virtue of her leadership and spirituality.

            Goodness knows that if it were up to the men the church would never have gotten very far.  The New Testament is full of examples of women that made the spread of the gospel possible.  Some were women of financial means that could host communities, or churches if you will, in their homes.  Some were widows.  Some were wives.  Some were mothers.

            There’s evidence, of course, if you will read in between the lines, that women were fully in leadership of these first churches.  Some have been named as deacons, which is a Greek word for minister.  Phoebe was one such woman.

            And while the church has been quick to point towards a few passages that have been difficult for women in the life of the church, there are quite a few others that challenge our view of what the church ought to be like with men and women together.  Are you with me?  “Women should be silent in the churches,” it says in 1 Corinthians 14:34.  Now, I could spend quite a bit of time with you about what this means.  It could be that Paul is actually quoting the Corinthians back to themselves in order to argue against it.  Wouldn’t that be something?  The very verse used to argue against women leading in the church might be part of an ancient argument in favor of women in leadership.  But, I won’t do that today.

            Let’s suffice it to say that in that very letter to the Corinthians, Paul said, “when women pray or prophesy they should cover their heads.” (1 Corinthians 11:5)  Now, what is it to pray or prophesy in the church?  It’s public leadership in the form of speaking.  Prophesying’s just another word for preaching.  Paul doesn’t seem to have an issue with it all.  He just asks that they were something on their head in the city of Corinth because over at the pagan temples there were women with shaved heads that served as a sort of, well, for lack of a better word, prostitute.  He didn’t want the church to be confused with that kind of thing like was happening in Corinth.  But, women leading the church?  Paul seems to assume that it was already happening and working out quite well.

            This is the man who gave us these words, after all:  “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

            Now, you see?  I’ve already gone to preaching and we haven’t even read the scripture!

            This is the word of the Lord:

 

            During the night Paul had a vision:  there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”  When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convince that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.

            We set sail from Troas and took straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony.  We remained in this city for some days.  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 women 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.

 

            She prevailed upon us.  Have you ever been prevailed upon?  I like that.  You kind of get the picture of the kind of person this woman Lydia was.  She prevailed upon Paul and Silas.  She just overpowered them in her insistence that they stay at her house.  She prevailed upon us.

            What was happening is that Paul was doing his missionary work of spreading the gospel as far as he could manage.  He’d arrive in a new place and usually look for a gathering of Jewish folks in those places.  There might be a synagogue where he’d go and speak.  Synagogues were often close to the water for various reasons.  Or, there might be a common place where Jewish folks would get together on the Sabbath.  Paul would start there because the good news about Jesus was a Jewish story.

            Well, here in Macedonia, which is somewhere just north of Greece, Paul started out looking for a place where the Jewish folks would gather on the Sabbath.  Maybe it was a synagogue.  But, there was a woman there named Lydia.  She’d come on that day from her home town of Thyatira.

            It’s a little fuzzy here, though.  Isn’t it?  We don’t know just what was going on in her family.  Was she married?  Or, was she widowed?  The story says that she was very interested in what Paul was saying and that because of her belief in Jesus that her entire household got baptized.  Is it talking about children?  Is it talking about a husband?  It has to be that there were either children involved or a husband, and maybe both.  She and her household were baptized.

            That’s when she prevailed upon Paul and Silas.  “You come and stay at my home.”  Didn’t she just say that in a way that you can’t argue with?  “You’re staying at my house.”

            Lydia was a woman to be reckoned with.  I like her.  She’s kind of tough, isn’t she?  She was a business woman—a dealer in purple cloth, the Bible says.  It wasn’t her husband, if she even had one.  She was the dealer in purple cloth.  She was the one in her house that made decisions.  You know men like to joke with each other about who wears the pants in the house.  Well, it was Lydia.  She listened to the preaching of Paul and she made the decision that this was going to be her faith.  And that decision stood for the whole family, didn’t it?  The whole household got baptized.

            Now, some folks say that it is the man’s place to be the spiritual leader of the household.  Have you heard that?  Well, you try telling that to Lydia.  She’ll prevail upon you!  I think I’d like to be there to watch.  This is a tough girl.

            Sometimes there isn’t a man in the household to be a spiritual leader.  You know how it goes.  Men are flighty sometimes.  And they don’t tend to live as long, either.  Even if that was some sort of divine ideal for how the family ought to be, everybody just following the faithful lead of a godly man, well, there’s just a lot of folks making do with what they’ve got.  And what they don’t have is a man that’s doing those things.

            I kind of get the idea that maybe we’re supposed to be in a partnership together when we get married and have families.  I just happen to know from experience that the men folk are, well, a little more flawed at such things.  I live with one.  I should know.

            But, it just may be that God uses whatever there is available to get the job done.  And more often than not, it’s women that God has available.  Like Lydia.  She’ll do.  She’ll do quite well, thank you.

            We have all around us these women who have been our spiritual guides throughout life.  I say that they are our mothers in the faith.  They’ve taught how to pray.  They’ve opened the Bible to us in Sunday school.  They’ve been the quiet leaders behind the scenes in days when folks believed you couldn’t appoint them to an office.  And they’ve been elected leaders, elders, deacons, preachers, pastors, you name it.

            Now, read the Bible closely and you’ll see that it was the case early on that the women were right there alongside the men in all of the leadership.  Lydia was not the only one.  It just took a little time for the men to start getting exclusive about things in the church.  Men do that.  It’s a power thing.  I don’t really find any evidence that Jesus wanted the church to be the way it became with regards to women.

            All of this could be preaching to the choir, of course.  We’re a church where women are fully a part of everything that takes place.  I don’t need to make a case to you.  We’ve even become the first church body to elect a woman to its most visible office.  Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins was elected as the General Minister and President of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada.  I know it’s not quite the same thing or on the same scale, but she is like our equivalent to the Pope in Rome.

            Of course, my wife Julie is an ordained minister, too, which is why you never see her around here.  Preaching to the choir.

            But, we live in a culture that still doesn’t quite get it to the importance of women.  And the church is still fighting it, even among Disciples.  You won’t find too many women in high-paying, high-profile pulpits around the country.  And over half of our seminary graduates are women.  So, it’s still important for us to talk about.

            Women, more often than not, are the ones who lead us to God.  Men do it, too.  I’d like to think that I am leading you that way, too.  But, we don’t always acknowledge it like we should that women demonstrate something of who God is to us as well.  We don’t even always know that there is a divine motherhood that is just as important to experience as divine fatherhood.

            We talk about God all the time as if He had a gender.  And that’s not a terrible thing.  But, only creatures that need to reproduce have a gender.  I learned that in a science class.  There’s only male and female because that’s how you get more of them.  And God is God.  I am that I am.  You can’t put a gender on that, really.

            So, you pray to “Our Father” and that teaches you something about your relationship to God.  There’s the Father and the Son, of course.  And that teaches you something about the relationship between Jesus and God.  They’re close.

            But, then you go and get born from the Spirit.  Some folks say you get born again.  You’re born of water and spirit, it says in the gospel of John.  (Chapter 3)  And, by golly, there isn’t a man I know who’s ever been able to pull that off.  It happens to be that the central experience we have as people of faith, being born again from above by our awakening in the faith of Jesus Christ can only be understood by motherhood.

            Mother’s Day, then, in the church, celebrates that we are learning more and more every day of how close to us God is always because we are surrounded by women who live out the very image of God among us.  Happy Mother’s Day to all of you that have shown God to me.

 

 

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)