Occasionally I like to start a sermon with a little quiz, and usually you do pretty well shouting out the correct answers.  So, 'do you feel lucky?'  If so, let me quiz you on paint colors.  Because there are some bizarre names out there.  As a rank amateur at DIY I simply wouldn't guess the color of any of these paints.  So here goes. All from the Sherwin-Williams catalog.  What color is:

Animated coral                                                         (pink)
Alexandrite                                                                (turquoise)

Enigma                                                                      (purple)
Nomadic desert                                                        (gray)
Foothills                                                                     (purple-gray)
Grandiose                                                                 (green-brown)
Inner child                                                                  (pink)
Neighborly                                                                 (white)
High strung                                                                (green)
Inverness                                                                   (green)

The choice of color for your walls or your car or your clothes says something about you.  Colors often have a meaning.  The color green symbolizes natural things, care of creation and so on.  White symbolizes purity; red means passion; and then there’s purple.  Purple is the color of royalty.  It’s a rich, luxurious color.  Back to the Sherwin Williams catalog, there are shades of purple called ‘Lavish lavender’, ‘Majestic purple’, ‘Mauve finery’, ‘Indulgent’, ‘Queenly’, ‘Baroness’, and ‘Grandeur plum’.  (I’m not making this up – they really are called that.)  And that tells you all you need to know about the regal color purple.  So it was in New Testament times too.  The higher up the political ladder a Roman senator climbed, the more purple decoration he would have on his toga.  And the emperor’s toga was made entirely of purple cloth.  Back then dyes were made from natural substances – plants, minerals, even parts of animals.  And the dye for purple was made from a juice found in tiny shellfish called murex.  It took thousands of these little crustaceans to dye a yard of cloth.  So it was very expensive.  In fact it is even said that cloth dyed purple was worth its weight in silver.  Befitting a Roman nobleman.  Purple cloth was a statement of status and wealth. 

Now in today’s first lesson we read about a time when Paul, on one of his missionary journeys, met a woman named Lydia in the city of Philippi.  And Lydia was a dealer in purple cloth. ‘Lydia, O Lydia, say have you met Lydia.  Lydia the dealer in purple cloth.’  So we know immediately that she is a wealthy person.  She is a businesswoman.  A merchant of purple cloth needed a lot of money to buy the dye from the shellfish, and would then make big profits selling the fabric to the ruling classes.  She probably had servants.  She had a big house – big enough, we read, to offer Paul and his team of missionaries accommodation during their stay in the town. 

There are a few other things we learn very quickly about Lydia.  One, she is the head of her household.  So it’s likely that she is a widow, or even possibly a divorcee.  It’s pretty certain that she has no husband because if she had she wouldn’t be the head of the household – he would have.  Two, she believes in God, but is not a true Jew.  She’s described as a ‘worshipper of God’. That’s a term used for Gentiles who believed in the God of Israel but who did not fully covert to Judaism.  We get no clue as to why she did not convert, but we do get the idea that she is a person who tries to live according to God’s laws revealed in the Old Testament, and who prays and worships.  We know she prays because that is why she is at the river.  People who could not meet in a synagogue for some reason met at the river to pray.  And that’s where Paul finds her.

And there’s a third thing we know about her.  She had a heart that was open to receiving more of God.  She had gotten so far in her faith, but she hadn’t settled for that. So when Paul and Silas turn up to preach to the women at the river she listens.  And not only does she listen but she responds to their message.  She believes in Christ and turns to him.  Then she is baptized, along with her whole household, which would have included children who were still living at home and servants.  And incidentally she becomes the first European convert to Christianity.  And as nearly all of us here this morning can trace our ancestry to Europe we are, in a way, spiritually related to Lydia.  But she doesn’t stop there.  Faith without action, as St James reminds us, is dead.  It doesn’t exist.  You can’t profess the faith of Christ without it showing in your life.  True conversions produce new lives.  And so Lydia demonstrates her gratitude to God by opening her home to the evangelists.  She says, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.”  Well they did, and they did.  And there in Philippi, thanks in part to Lydia’s hospitality, a Christian church was born and flourished.

Now, you may not feel that you have much in common with Lydia.  Let’s see … Successful trader in exquisite fabric to royalty in 1^st Century Greece.  Anyone see themselves in that description?  Well let me draw out a couple of similarities between us and her.  And let me also point out how Lydia calls to us over the millennia and across the ocean to live a life more like Christ.

1          Like Lydia, we believe in God and we worship.  Obviously we do because we’re here.  But let’s also be like Lydia and not settle for where we are.  You see, Lydia could have been down at the river that day, heard Paul and Silas preaching but ignored them.  She could have just carried on doing what she was doing.  She could have closed her ears and mind, satisfied in the knowledge that she was a believer and she was fine, thanks very much.  That attitude we see in the Pharisees that Jesus condemned so roundly.  That belief that they’d arrived spiritually and they had no need to grow or change; there was nothing they needed to learn because they knew it all.  Lydia could have taken that attitude.  But she had an awareness that there was more.  Yes, she believed in God and she tried to do right by him, but she was aware of her need to move on to a greater knowledge and deeper discipleship.  She’d come so far, but there was more she needed.  There was more she might discover about God.  There was more she could experience of his love and life. 

It’s easy to get into a rut in the Christian life.  After many years of being a Christian, and being a member of the same church we can become a bit too comfortable, we can settle down, and go through the motions.  We can fall into the habit of going to church because that’s what we do.  We can pray because that’s our habit.  We can serve in some way because we always have.  We can lose some of the energy and the passion that brought us to Christ in the first place.  And we can lose sight of the fact that the Christian life is a journey.  On a journey we make progress.  We have our destination in our minds and we go with purpose.  We, the Christian Church, are a pilgrim people, always on the move, edging closer and closer, day by day, bit by bit towards our final destination.  It’s good to be reminded of that.  One day we’ll reach our destination (it’s described beautifully  in the second reading today from Revelation).  On that day we can rest in God’s presence.  We will then see face to face, and experience what it is we now can only imagine.  But that’s not just yet a while.  Today we’re called to move a little bit closer. 

When we were designing of the Mission Center you may remember that we were hoping to have several white drapes hanging from the ceiling, suspended by all four corners.  There was an acoustic and aesthetic purpose for that idea, but also a theological one.  I wanted to give a subtle hint of a tent.  Because we are nomads in this world.  The Old Testament people of God were people of the tent – wanderers, sojourners, people with no permanent home, but always on the move, going forward in faith into new and better things with God.  Now, financial constraints meant we never did the hangings in the hall.  But nonetheless, we’re still a pilgrim people.  We have no permanent home here, we’re just passing through.  We’re on a journey with God.  Our task today is to discover a little bit more about God, and change a tiny bit more into the likeness of Christ.  And change doesn’t often happen without effort.  Growing in our faith demands that we do something about it.  God can change us without our permission ,but it’s unlikely that he will.  So let us do like Lydia and let’s go out of our way to grow in our faith and discipleship.

2          The second similarity between Lydia and us is that God has blessed us.  Not with great wealth, like her, but with other things.  We each have time, gifts, skills, experience, homes, relationships.  We have each been touched by the generosity of God.  If we were all to list things we are thankful for the list would go on all day.  Let’s be like Lydia and use those gifts for God’s kingdom and the blessing of other people.  Lydia did not hoard her riches for herself.  She didn’t guard her material possessions as being given by God for her own pleasure.  Instead she threw open her doors and welcomed Paul and his companions not just for dinner but for the duration of their stay in Philippi. 

The other day I read this hard-hitting little story written by Lois Cheney in 1969.  Once, a man said, "If I had some extra money, I'd give it to God, but I have just enough to support myself and my family."  And the same man said, "If I had some extra time, I'd give it to God, but every minute is taken up with my job, my family, my clubs, and what have you - every single minute."  And the same man said, "If I had a talent I'd give it to God, but I have no lovely voice; I have no special skill; I've never been able to lead a group; I can't think cleverly or quickly, the way I would like to."

And God was touched, and although it was unlike him, God gave that man money, time, and a glorious talent.  And then he waited, and waited, and waited.....And then after a while, he shrugged his shoulders, and he took all those things right back from the man - the money, the time and the glorious talent.  After a while, the man sighed and said, "If I only had some of that money back, I'd give it to God. If I only had some of that time, I'd give it to God. If I could only rediscover that glorious talent, I'd give it to God."  

And the man told some of his friends, "You know, I'm not so sure that I believe in God anymore."

This Mother’s Day we’ve spent a few minutes reflecting on one of the mothers of the Christian Church, Lydia.  Her story inspires us to achieve great things.  Not to settle for where we are, but to move on with God.  We are challenged by her example of using her gifts as a way to bring God’s blessing to others.  But challenged in a good way.  Her call, and ours, is costly.  She embraced change, and change is always hard.  Yet, the story of our mother Lydia is ultimately one of hope and encouragement.  Today as we honor all mothers so we recall a woman who gave birth to a church and nourishes us by her example even 2000 years later.