Women's Work
May 9, 2010
9During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. 11We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, 12and 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. 13On 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. 14A 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. 15When 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.
Acts 16:9-15
I used to watch a TV show called Sliders. It came on about 15 years ago and you probably haven’t heard of it before, because it wasn’t very good and it didn’t last very long. But I watched it. Sliders was a science fiction show, which normally is not my favorite genre, but Sliders appealed to me because it was a little bit different. The premise of the show was that there are millions of alternate universes, and a select group of people were capable of “sliding” between those universes. So, the show was really about imagining what our world would be like if certain things had happened differently in the past. For example, in one episode, the sliders traveled to a reality in which the Allies had lost World War II and so the Nazis were still in control of the world. And on the show, that’s the kind of scenario that was being played out all the time--What if John F. Kennedy had never been assassinated? What if dinosaurs had never become extinct? What if Christopher Columbus had really landed in India instead of the Bahamas?
Each episode explored a different possibility. And I liked it because to me, it is fascinating to contemplate those “what if” kinds of questions. I think that from time to time all of us speculate on what our life might be like today if certain things had happened differently in the past. Now, that’s not the same thing as saying we’re dissatisfied now or that we have a lot of regrets; it’s just human nature to wonder about how our life would have changed under different circumstances. I mean, just imagine for a moment that there had never been a World War II. Most of you in here would never have come to the city of Portsmouth or met your spouse, and you certainly wouldn’t be sitting here in Park View Baptist Church today.
So, I think that by asking those “what if” kinds of questions, we can better understand our current situation. Because sometimes, we can only appreciate what is good in life by imagining our lives without it. I was reminded this week of a quote from Mark Twain. He was once asked the question, “What would men be without women?” And his response was, “Scarce.”
I thought that was a fitting remark for a Mother’s Day sermon. But there is another “what if” scenario that I want us to think about this morning, and it involves our passage of Scripture from Acts. I have now been preaching from the book of Acts for the last five weeks. And in our typical Protestant division of the New Testament, Acts is listed as a book of history. That makes sense because Acts is full of interesting little historical tidbits like the one we heard last week about how Christians first got their name.
But I’ll tell you, as a pastor, I find Acts to be a challenging book from which to preach. Because even though some of these stories are very interesting at a historical level, that doesn’t always translate to great sermon material. Now, I happen to be very interested in history, and I know some of you in here are as well. But to me, hearing about stuff that happened almost 2,000 years ago isn’t the same as hearing a good sermon. I mean, I think it’s fun to go to a museum, but in my mind at least, that’s not the same thing as encountering the living word of God. And that’s what I think a sermon is supposed to be. So, the challenge with a book like Acts is to make the history come alive to us, to take these stories that are 2,000 years old and to find within them a relevance for the year 2010.
That’s the challenge for us this morning. I’d like us to reflect on this 2,000 year old story from the book of Acts, which at one level seems to be a pretty straightforward piece of history. But I want us to delve a little deeper and see if it might have something to say to us today.
This story from Acts, Chapter 16 is chronicling one of Paul’s missionary journeys. Paul is in Philippi, one of the most important cities in the Roman empire. And on the Sabbath day, Paul and his companions head down to the river, where they come across a woman named Lydia. Lydia is an interesting character for a couple of reasons. First of all, she is described as a worshipper of God. That tells us that she was of Greek ethnicity but that she already believed in the Jewish God. We are also told that Lydia is a seller of purple, which suggests that she was a woman of some means. That status is confirmed by the fact that, following her conversion, Lydia invites Paul and his companions back to her own house. Verse 15 says that it was “her household.” And since a husband or son is never mentioned in this passage, it is probable that Lydia was an independent woman and quite possibly wealthy from her trade in the expensive purple fabric.
That’s the story. And like I said, it may be quite interesting from a historical perspective but for our purposes here at Park View Baptist Church in the year 2010, it seems to be a little lacking in significance. So, what I want to do is to apply the “what if” scenario—What if this event in Philippi had never occurred? What if Paul and his companions had never met Lydia and had never been invited back to her home? Of course, we can’t really say for sure what might have happened. But that’s why we have an imagination. So, let’s use it right now.
For starters, if Paul had never gone to Macedonia and met Lydia, we might all be Muslims right now. Because Lydia is the first Christian convert in Europe. Remember that before this point in time, the Christian faith was confined to a very small area in the Middle East. And if Christianity had not taken root in the West, the Roman empire might very well have been evangelized by the Muslims a few hundred years later.
You say, “Well, that’s stretching things a bit, isn’t it, pastor?” I don’t think so--look at the passage of Scripture right before this one. It says in verse 6 of Chapter 16 that Paul wanted to go to Asia, not Europe. But the Holy Spirit stopped him. Instead, in verse 9, Paul is given a vision to go to Macedonia. That’s where he meets Lydia. So, Lydia quite literally becomes our mother in the faith. She is the first person in what you and I think of as the “Christian countries” to accept Christ.
But that’s not all. If Lydia had never invited Paul and his companions back to her house, the church as we know it might not have started. Down in verse 40 of this chapter we are told that Lydia’s home became the site of a house church. You know that letter we have in the New Testament addressed to the church in Philippi? Chances are it was written to the church meeting in Lydia’s home. So, without Lydia, you and I would be missing one of the great books of the Bible.
But I think it’s even bigger than that. This passage in Acts records a moment that precedes almost everything else we think of when we picture Christian history. Without Lydia, there might not be a St. Peter’s or a Cathedral of Notre Dame or a Westminster Abbey. Because this one church, meeting in Lydia’s household, was the starting point for every other church in Europe. Before there was a pope and before there was St. Augustine and before there was Martin Luther and before there were Pilgrims and before there was Billy Graham, there was Lydia. Lydia is where the story of Christianity in the West really begins.
So, I think that as we look at the story of Lydia this morning, we have a lot to be grateful for. But on this Mother’s Day, I also want to reflect on what this story from Acts has to tell us about the importance of supporting women in ministry. This is a topic that you have heard me discuss from time to time, and it’s one I happen to feel very strongly about, but I have never preached a sermon specifically on this topic. So, this morning, on Mother’s Day, I thought what better time would there be to celebrate and to affirm the many ways that women have contributed to the life of the church.
You see, I happen to believe that God calls both men and women to be fully involved in ministry. And I don’t think that women should be accorded a lesser status in the church, just because they happen to be women. You say, “Well, preacher, doesn’t it say in the Bible that women are to remain silent in church?” Why, yes it does. 1st Timothy, Chapter 2, verses 11 and 12 say, “Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent.” No wiggle room there, right? It’s pretty straightforward. And if we take the Bible literally, that’s the end of the discussion.
But I don’t think we take the Bible literally. Nobody does. I think you and I tend to pick and choose the parts we like, and then we use them to justify whatever we want. Because if we’re going to take 1st Timothy 2:11 literally, we’ve also got to take 1st Timothy 2:9 literally, which says that a woman should not braid her hair or wear gold jewelry. Uh oh…some of y’all in here are in trouble. But I wouldn’t worry too much. Because I’ve never heard that rule enforced before, even in the churches where women are kept silent.
So, there seems to be a curious disparity in the way we read the Bible. Some parts we take literally and some parts we don’t. And since almost the time of Lydia, people have been using texts like the one I just read to justify a male-dominated church. Oh, they might bend a little bit and say it’s okay for a woman to teach Sunday School, or to watch the babies in the nursery, or maybe even serve on a few committees. And if you talk to some of the old-timers in the church, and even some of the most fundamentalist conservative men, they will readily agree with you that the women of the church do the lion’s share of the work.
But we have to whisper it. Because if we said it out loud, it would undermine our whole male-centered theology. And that’s the hypocrisy at work, that we will allow women to teach Sunday School, or work in the kitchen, or keep the nursery, but we can’t give them any real power. For heaven’s sake, don’t them become a deacon or gasp!—God forbid, a pastor. Because even though we all know they do most of the work, we have to pretend like it’s the men who are in charge. We have to justify a male-dominated hierarchy or else us men will lose control.
There is a word for that kind of thinking—it’s called sin. I believe that it is a sin when we refuse to recognize the accomplishments and the gifts of 50% of our church simply because they happen to be female. And I believe that it is a sin to distort the biblical text and to use it as a justification to treat women like second class citizens. Because as the story of Lydia shows, God can use strong, independent women to accomplish his purposes. And another one of my “what if” questions is—if Lydia had been around today, would the male-dominated church in our own time have ever allowed her to serve in such a position of importance? Would they even have accepted the invitation to start a church in the home of a woman? Because it seems to me, that in many ways, we have gone backwards on this issue over the last 2,000 years.
I think of the girl that I met in college, who told her pastor that she felt God calling her to be a preacher only to be told that she must be wrong because God doesn’t call women to preach.
I think of a woman who had already been ordained for 10 years when she was asked to renounce her ordination so that she could continue to serve on the mission field, doing exactly the same work as before, but without the same title and recognition that a man would have.
I think of the lady who was on the staff at my home church in Douglasville, Georgia, an educated woman who did the same work as any other minister on staff, but who was not allowed to take the title of minister. Instead, because she was a woman, she was called director and given a smaller salary than the men.
I think of the pastor at the recent Norfolk Baptist Association meeting who complained because they had women ushers collecting the offering at the host church.
I think of Julie Pennington-Russell, who was called to be the lead pastor at First Baptist Church of Decatur, Georgia, which was a Southern Baptist congregation. And yet, after she was called, the Southern Baptist Convention refused to take the mission offerings that the church collected because they had committed the offense of calling a female pastor.
And I think of the female deacon here at Park View Baptist Church, who told me that if our church closed for some reason and she was forced to find another congregation, it just wouldn’t feel right for her to stop being a deacon. This woman told me that if she had grown up in another church, being a deacon probably wouldn’t have mattered as much, because she would never have known what she was missing. But because she has been a deacon, she cannot now imagine having to attend a church in which they might refuse her the opportunity to serve where she feels God has called her.
You say, “Well, preacher, why are you telling us all these stories? We here at Park View have a long history of supporting women in ministry.” And that’s true. We’ve been ordaining women deacons here since 1988. We’ve had several women to serve on staff in ministerial capacities. And I think we have a lot to be proud of.
But I think we also need to remember this morning just how unusual our church really is, even today in the year 2010. Because the stories I just told you are not stories from 2,000 years ago. They are stories from today. And even though our own congregation may be supportive of women in ministry, the church in many places continues to deny women the opportunity to use their God-given talents. That is why I believe that we have a responsibility to be vocal about supporting women in ministry. Because it’s not enough just to be satisfied with how our church does it. Park View may be ahead of the curve on this particular issue, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore it. We are called to be a witness to the rest of the church.
Now, don’t misunderstand me--My point this morning is not to argue for some kind of female affirmative action. I don’t think that we need women deacons or women pastors just so we can say that we have them. My point is that God can use whomever God chooses to do his work. And that includes women. If you and I place limitations on who can and who can’t do God’s work, I believe that we are trying to place limits on God. Now, maybe one day we will get to the point that when a woman stands up behind the pulpit to preach, the first thing we notice about her will not be the fact that she is a woman.
But we’re not there yet. So, until that day comes, I think we need to continue to hear the story of Lydia. I think we need to be reminded of how important the ministry of women has been to the church since the very beginning. And I think we need to be intentional about saying that we fully support women serving in whatever capacity God calls them to serve, whether it is as a teacher, a nursery volunteer, a missionary, a deacon, or a pastor. Because what would the church be without women? Scarce. AMEN