Easter 5 Acts 16

As is always the case, it seems, some of my colleagues among the clergy are refusing to celebrate Mother’s Day or will limited their celebration to a prayer petition. Their reasons revolve around the fact that this is not a religious holiday. Many also express sensitivity for those who have no reason to celebrate: children of abusive mothers, childless women, etc.

While I am always concerned about those who might be upset about a motherhood emphasis, I’ve always believed that we all have opportunities to find good mothering from other women in our lives and provide mothering to others in important ways.

Furthermore, while the holiday may not be strictly Biblical, we are provided with models of God-pleasing mothering in Scripture. One of those models is lifted up in our first lesson today.

I want to make clear here that in lifting up mothers and Mother’s Day, I am not supporting any single image of them. For those who feel so called and are able, mothering by being a stay-at-home mom who lives out the 50's image of a wife and mother is a blessed vocation. Spending the majority of one’s time raising children and creating a welcoming atmosphere can be true ministry.

At the same time, the woman who takes on work outside the home in addition to caring for her home and family deserves our affirmation and support. God gave each of us gifts and recognizing that one has gifts that need to be shared with a larger group is important too.

And the woman who does salaried work because she is the sole or primary source of income for her family deserves sainthood. The woman who spends her days on her feet serving meals in a restaurant, cashiering in a store, doing the thankless tasks in offices, institutions or hospitals for little more than minimum wage and then comes home to do all the work of the home should be given special recognition.

Finally, there are all those women who either did not choose to raise children or were unable to have them. How often their mothering instincts are satisfied by mentoring others - both adults and children. Some of the best teachers, social workers, nurses, pastors and other care-givers, as well as, friends I’ve known were single women who channeled their mothering needs into other relationships.

I’m not sure into which of the latter two groups Lydia fell. Obviously, she was a working woman. We are told that she was a "dealer in purple cloth". From this brief description we can rather safely assume that she was a business woman of some status rather than a person who did physical labor. Since purple cloth was highly valued she probably made a good living. This would indicate that Lydia was independent, strong and intelligent.

She was also courageous. Philippi where Paul meets Lydia is over two hundred miles from Lydia’s home in Thyatira. Getting to Philippi would have likely required a trip of many weeks or even months by both land and sea. There is no indication that Lydia had a husband at this time, and women of the ancient world rarely traveled on their own, so Lydia was an exceptional woman.

She lived her own life as a professional, but also had the care of a household. We don’t know from this reference to a household whether she had children or other relatives with her or the household was made up of servants. In either case, she surely had mothering type responsibilities.

Most important though, we are told that Lydia was a worshiper of God - presumably, a Jewess, that she took time to listen to Paul’s teaching and that God was able to help her come to belief in Christ. Then, as a result, she welcomes Paul to her home, has her household baptized and provided for Paul and Silas during the rest of their stay in Philippi.

There is an interesting quirk in our lesson. The vision that is described at the beginning of the lesson is of a man begging Paul to come to Macedonia. Somehow and for some unknown reason, Paul never meets up with that man as far as Scripture tells. After staying with Lydia for a few days, Paul gets into trouble healing a slave girl and is thrown into prison. After he is released he moves on to Thessalonica. I’ll leave it to your reflection why there was a man in Paul’s vision and why the story took the turns it did.

Asides aside, we learn some really important things about motherhood, womanhood and just plain Christian living from Paul’s encounter with Lydia.

First, God calls and celebrates who we truly are. God doesn’t have some rigid mold that He expects each of us to fit. God can use the mother who gives all her time and energy to family, the mother who balances job and family, the childless woman, the happily healthy, the neurotic and the disabled of either gender. God can use us best when we live as authentic human beings who are open to His word.

Second, each of us has a household for which we are spiritually responsible - maybe even more than one household. These household may be made up of family, friends, co-workers, fellow members, even strangers. Like Lydia we are not meant to keep our spiritual experiences or our faith to ourselves. We are called to bring others to hear the Good News and be baptized. We are called to use our wealth, position and influence to be Christ to others.

Third, it is our privilege to provide a welcome to Christ and those who come to us in His name. No, this isn’t a bid for invites to dinner. Rather, the immediate and primary response we are to have to being baptized is wanting more. Lydia surely made her offer to provide housing for Paul in order show her thanks, but just as surely she was seeking to learn more from Him.

Whether baptized in adulthood like Lydia or many years ago as infants, our primary response to being baptized is to be a desire to continue to grow. We grow by Bible study, worship, witness, service, and working through the questions and struggles of our faith.

It is by these means also that we can best celebrate Mother’s Day. May we each be the best mother or mother substitute we can be.