She was a “dealer in purple cloth.” 

So of course, Lydia has always been one of my favorite women in the Bible. Her name is mentioned just twice, here in the book of Acts, and her cameo appearance requires only three verses (one of which we may hear next week). Apparently, I am not the only fan of Lydia, because I have discovered there are plenty of “Lydia Detectives” who have tried to learn more about her.

There are not many clues in the text for these detectives, but that hasn’t stopped them from making attributions about her. 

The author of Acts notes that she was a “worshiper of God.” Maybe she was Jewish. Or maybe not.

She was praying with other women at a place that was outside the gate and near the river. Maybe there wasn’t a synagogue in Philippi.

She was from the city of Thyatira, a place well known for purple dyes. 

She was a “dealer in purple cloth.” The cloth might have been dyed with Tyrian purple, created by a laborious method using the glands of sea snails. That was an expensive luxury product and would imply that she was wealthy.

The cloth might alternatively have been dyed with the simmered roots of madder plants, which produced a less rich purple color and was more modestly priced. A dealer in this kind of cloth might not be so prosperous.

She had a household. It is unusual to have a woman named as having a household, but not entirely unknown. Maybe she was a widow.

While I thank the Lydia Detectives for uncovering facts about life in first century Philippi, I am not grateful for the ways those facts have sometimes been embellished.

I have a little collection of books about women in the Bible, and Lydia is colorfully described in them: 

From 1929’s Girls of the Bible: “That girl is as good at business as a man.”

From 1933’s Women of the New Testament: Lydia was an elect of the Lord. He had penetrated her heart with conquering grace.

From 1955’s All of the Women of the Bible: “Because of her unique place as the first Christian convert in Europe, Lydia remains a sacred memory, even today.”

What I love about Lydia is not that she may have been a pious rich woman with a stash of purple fabric; I love that her story is like our story: Gather, Listen, Speak, Act. For me, Lydia’s story is particularly about listening.

Lydia is not the only listener here. Paul has been listening to divine voices ever since his dramatic conversation on the road to Damascus, which is recorded earlier in the book of Acts. Since then, he has been traveling as a missionary, establishing communities of faith. What he had heard, just before his encounter with Lydia, was that he was forbidden to speak the word in Asia, that he was not allowed to go to Bithynia, and that he was needed in Macedonia. 

I’d love to know how Paul listened. The plea to go to Macedonia came in a dream, but I don’t know if the other directives were the same. Did the instructions come as words, as images, as intuitions, as unexplained certainty, about what he was to do and where he was to go next? 

I’d love to know how you listen, how your heart is opened—to God, to the Holy One, to the Spirit, to the voice of the universe, to Jesus. I think of this as being “radical listening”—way beyond what our ears can do by themselves.

Perhaps you, like me, listen in more than one way. My criterion for recognizing a holy word, a true word, a spiritually wise word, maybe even a word from God, is that it is new, and I know I didn’t think of it myself. 

Sometimes that word comes from another person’s mouth. The year before I want to seminary, my friend Katherine and I drove to Berkeley to visit the Pacific School of Religion. As we got in the car and started back north to Seattle, she said to me, “Give me one reason you aren’t going there.” There were some reasons, and it was complicated, but her question made my worries and doubts subside enough that I could hear my call to ministry.

Sometimes that word comes in a mental experience of completion, of clicking together. Ideas, observations, beliefs come together to bring clarity to a deep spiritual and moral understanding. Sitting in this sanctuary, listening to a sermon about James Cone’s book The Cross and the Lynching Tree. The preacher echoed Cone’s assertion that the mass incarceration of Black men in America is simply the modern version of lynching. And what I heard, in that moment, was that we are still doing it—we are as racist and white supremacist as folks were during Reconstruction after the civil war, we just wrap it in criminal justice. That is a holy truth.

I will confess that sometimes I hear a divine voice in occurrences that could easily be described as coincidences or happy accidents or superstitions. Hearing a cardinal’s song on a tough day. Finding the owners of my childhood home in their driveway when I stopped by, and having them invite me in for a look around. Needing one more yard of fabric, and finding it in the store. These are reminders for me of God’s presence in the small, sweet moments.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus promises us reminders: “The Holy Spirit . . . will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” (John 14:26) 

As it happens, two of the things he reminds us of in this passage are not small, not sweet, and pretty impossible right now: “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14:27) 

Seriously?

What kind of person would have an untroubled heart right now? What kind of person would be fearless? How can Jesus ask this of us?

Here’s what I would like to be able to say: We just need to be like Lydia and let God open our hearts to listen eagerly to the Gospel. Then we won’t be troubled and afraid and we can get about the business of fixing the world.

Seriously? Yeah, no.

Here’s what I can say: Let’s go all-in on radical listening: listening to other people (especially those that make us uncomfortable), listening to the earth (including those qualities that feel dangerous), and listening for the Divine (even those words that seem pompous and unreasonable and impossible). Radical listening is listening for what is new, and what we haven’t already thought of ourselves.

Radical listening for what is new is our vocation as Easter people. We believe that God can make things new. Let’s listen for what we believe.

Radical listening for what is not our own thought draws us into community, because we cannot figure this out individually. We need each other to radically listen.

So maybe Lydia got it right after all. No matter what kind of dye she sold, or whether she was Jewish, or whether she was a widow, or whether she was the first person converted to Christianity in Europe. 

She did this: she listened.