Purple - Sixth Sunday of Easter
Author: Pastor Scott Schul
May 25, 2025
In today’s lesson from
the Book of Acts, we meet a most intriguing and impressive person named
Lydia. St. Luke, who authored both his
Gospel and the Book of Acts, includes an interesting detail about her. Lydia was “a dealer in purple cloth.” What’s the significance of that?
Well, where do you get purple? Here in 2025, it’s pretty
simple. If you need some purple cloth,
there’s a store for that. Want to
incorporate some purple into your next art project? Simply select a purple pen or marker. Paint and colored pencils likewise come in
every conceivable shade of purple. Want
to add some purple to your cooking? Just
grab those little bottles of red and blue food dye and mix them together, or go
old school and add some blueberries to your batter. If your passion for purple is such that you
want to dye your clothes purple, did you realize that Amazon offers seven pages
of products for that purpose? Purple is
pervasive. If that’s your favorite color,
you’ve got a world of options.
But in the day of the
early Church, acquiring purple was a very different and much more difficult
undertaking. It started with three
different species of mollusks or sea snails that one could gather in the
Mediterranean. It’s estimated that it
required about 12,000 of these snails just to produce one ounce of dye. The process was very hands-on and time
intensive. First you’d remove a gland
from those thousands of mollusks you’ve gathered, and then you’d put them in a
big lead pot filled with salty brine and cook for ten days. It was a hot and very stinky process. But the effort was rewarded with a dye so
powerful that archaeologists have recovered purple fabric created with these
dyes 3,000 years ago that even after all that time has not faded and remains just
as beautiful today.1
Given the time and
complexity of the ancient process of producing purple, it was, as you can
imagine, a very expensive product, one that quickly became associated with
royalty, the rich, and the powerful. Accordingly,
anyone who was a dealer in purple, as Lydia was, would likely have personal
wealth, resources, and a position of influence.
In the two Biblical
books Luke authored, he only mentions purple two times.2 One is in today’s passage in Acts 16. The other is in the 16th chapter
of Luke’s Gospel. Jesus tells a story
about a rich man “dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously
every day” in contrast with a man named Lazarus who is covered with sores,
hungry, homeless, and impoverished. The
twist in the story is that it’s Lazarus, not the rich man clad in purple, who
is the true spiritual giant. It’s
Lazarus, not the rich man adorned in purple, who at death is carried to heaven
by angels.
This leads us to a question
far more interesting than where we get purple. The intensely personal question we really need to tackle is this: what are you going to do with your purple? Your purple is all the things of worth you
possess. It includes your money, but
it’s far more than that. Purple
represents your gifts, talents, physical and mental abilities and capabilities,
your skills and training. Another part
of your purple is your personality, your network of friends, your family, your
experiences, your faith, and even your curiosity. Your “purple” represents everything you have
that you can use either to advance your own interests or the interests of
others. What are you going to do with your purple?
Jesus’s story in Luke’s
Gospel makes it clear that we are spiritually impoverished, and even eternally endangered
when we hoard our purple for personal gain, pridefully lord it over others, deploy
it to exclude or marginalize other people, or use it to advance ourselves at
the expense of others. That was how the
rich man in Jesus’s story used his purple.
But Lydia in today’s
reading from Acts offers a very different model. Her purple didn’t turn her inward in acts of
self-worship. She didn’t shun others; she
formed community with them and had a heart open and obedient to what God and
God’s missionary, St. Paul, had to say to her and ask of her. And after Paul baptized her and her entire
household in the stream outside of Philippi, what did she do? This strong and faithful woman offered her
home and her resources to Paul and his companions in the service of Christ and
his Gospel, and dear Lydia’s conviction for Christ was so strong that it’s
clear she was not going to take “no” for an answer.
Two thousand years
later, the rich man in Luke 16 is largely forgotten. We don’t even know his name. All the purple in the world wasn’t enough to
make his memory or his worldly accomplishments eternal. But Lydia remains a beloved and treasured
pioneer of the early Christian Church who has the honor of being the very first
convert to Christ in all of Europe. Near
the stream where she and her household were baptized there stands a massive and
incredibly beautiful church called the Baptistry of Saint Lydia. It’s covered in stunning murals and icons
portraying events in Paul’s ministry, including of course Lydia’s baptism.
I had the honor of
wading in that stream last October when I led a group of pilgrims from Grace to
Greece so that we could walk in Paul’s footsteps. In those vibrant, rushing waters, the
pilgrims affirmed their baptism as I drew a watery cross upon their
foreheads. It was a highlight of our
trip. I think all of us felt the spirit
of Lydia’s enduring strength, commitment, and faithfulness as we stood in those
waters. During her life, Lydia was a
pillar and foundation of the early Christian Church, and now that she’s in
heaven, she remains a model for all of us to emulate.
That brings us back to
our question. What are you going to
do with your purple? Everyone
hearing these words has God-given gifts, resources, talents, connections, and
more. Everyone has purple. What are you going to do with yours? Usually when you hear a question like that,
the next words out of the pastor’s mouth are encouragement for you to donate
money to fund our ministries. And indeed,
that’s always going to be a need for a church with a breadth of ministry as
broad as Grace Lutheran.
But there is equal need
for something even more precious than your money, and that’s your time. Every ministry team in this church could use
additional volunteers. Ushers, communion
assistants, video and sound techs, gardeners, offering counters, Super
Wednesday and funeral meal servers, choir members – the list is endless. Do you feel the Lord opening your heart, as
the Lord opened Lydia’s heart? What are
you going to do with your purple? See me
or Pastor Hetrick and we’ll connect you.
Now, let’s take an even
wider view. Did you know that on any
given Sunday, about 40% of the Allegheny Synod’s 102 congregations do not have
a pastor to proclaim God’s Word and administer Holy Communion? Some of them cannot afford a pastor, so they
use authorized lay worship leaders. But
we don’t have enough of them either. So
if you’ve been waiting for a sign from God that you’re being called to go to
seminary or at least to become an authorized lay worship leader, you’ve now
received it.
Friends, as a woman in
1st century Greece, I’m sure many voices conspired to tell Lydia all
the things she couldn’t do. At times
maybe the loudest of those voices came from Lydia herself. But by God’s grace all things are possible… and
Lydia, the dealer in purple from Philippi, became a means by which God worked
miracles. The same is true of you. Don’t listen to those external and internal
voices that say “no.” Focus on God’s
eternal “yes.” What are you going to
do with your purple? Amen.
Sermon text: Acts 16:9-15
Citations
1 See, e.g., https://exhibitions.kelsey.lsa.umich.edu/ancient-color/purple.php;
https://www.timesofisrael.com/purple-from-holy-temple-objects-traced-to-snail-guts-at-3000-year-old-haifa-factory/
2 I’m grateful to Fr. Tom Hart, OSB for this insight about Luke’s symbolic and rhetorical use of purple.
Gospel Text: John 14:23-29
23 Jesus answered [Judas (not Iscariot),] “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.
25 “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. 28 You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is
greater than I. 29 And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.”
BACK