Readings for the Feast Day of Lydia of Thyatira
This reflection was shared at Sacred Saunter Outdoor Eucharist on Saturday May 21, 2022 at Sequoia Park in Eureka.
The Hebrew word for “heaven” (shemayim) is a combination of the words “listen” (shema) and “water” (mayim). So according to Hebrew language, heaven is like listening to water. This should not surprise us since we know that “listening to the sound of trickling water and watching the movement of water actually increases creativity, reduces stress, and even accelerates our natural healing processes.” Water in motion creates negative ions, which not only purify the air, but, when they reach our bloodstream, actually increase our levels of serotonin, thus relieving stress and anxiety and increasing energy. Today’s saint was a woman whose livelihood was directly dependent upon life in water – she made her living by selling cloth that was dyed with the purple secretions of sea snails. When we first meet her, she is in “a place of prayer” by a river, by running water. She obviously enjoyed the heaven of listening to water and it was this heaven that primed her to listen wholeheartedly to Paul’s message.
Lydia likely urged her household to hear Paul’s life-giving message with the same enthusiasm of the woman in Jesus’s parable who found what she was missing. When Paul sensed Lydia’s deep listening he was moved to baptize her and her entire household. And Lydia, now known to many as St. Lydia, is recognized as the first European convert to Christianity. And Paul’s message to Lydia was that the same Spirit that hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation, that same Spirit that courses through the river of life in Revelation came to us in the person and presence of Jesus Christ. And Christ offers us more than just negative ions. All the health benefits of listening to running water are mere shadows of the eternal benefits that come from listening fully to Christ, whose words of love form us like us stones in a stream, rolling us towards heaven, towards shemayim.
Lydia of Thyatira – Coworker of the Apostle Paul (May 21)
Lydia is a woman mentioned in the New Testament who is regarded as the first documented convert to Christianity in Europe. Several Christian denominations have designated her a saint. The only reference to her is in Acts 16:13-15.
Lydia was most likely a Greek Macedonian even though she lived in a Roman settlement. She was evidently a well-to-do agent of a purple-dye firm in Thyatira, a city southeast of Pergamum and approximately 40 miles inland, across the Aegean Sea from Athens. Lydia insisted on giving hospitality to Apostle Paul and his companions in Philippi. They stayed with her until their departure, through Amphipolis and Apollonia, to Thessalonica (Acts 16:40-17:1). Because these encounters and events take place “in what is now Europe,” Lydia is considered “the first ‘European’ Christian convert.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 