A River Running Purple
transforming again and again
Normally, I put news and updates at the end of a post. This week, I begin with them.
After lots of recent travel, I am looking forward to less movement and more stillness, less speaking and more listening. And while I do love preaching, I am ready for less sermons and more stories. For today’s reflection, I share the sermon I gave this last Sunday, the last one I’ll give as part of this season of my life. Change is in the air.
This summer I’m going back to the classroom and can’t wait to dive into this new learning experience. (Got your attention? Stay tuned for more details.)
Wednesdays at the Well will continue flowing. I absolutely love our weekly conversations. In June, I’ll be telling some PRIDE stories. July will be filled with more light-hearted words inspired by sunshine, warmth, water, and some of my favorite places in Michigan. And in August, I plan to debut the birth story of 10 Camels, how we got started and where we are heading.
And this Friday is our May Field Trip. We’re going deep into our imagination to allow our sense of smell to guide our listening. Wednesdays at the Well is free AND for those who are able to support this work with a paid subscription, 10 Camels offers Friday Field Trips, an extra serving of words and water. Become a paid subscriber or upgrade your current subscription to save a seat.
Thanks for being here! Scroll down to wade on in.
With Water and Wonder,
Rebecca & 10 Camels
A River Running Purple
A Sermon Stirred by Acts 16.9-15
I live close to the Detroit River. The perfect spot for my water loving soul. I was born near the Flint River and played along her banks, long before a water crisis made them infamous.
Rivers are not my favorite place for swimming, but river trails are definitely my preferred place for wandering. There’s something about rivers that stirs me. That calms, centers, and connects me to God.
The scripture began with a vision Paul has leading him to the banks of a river. The Book of Acts, though it follows the Gospel of John, is a continuation of the Gospel of Luke. The author of this two-part series is traditionally identified as a Gentile physician named Luke, who likely had some relationship with Paul. Acts isn’t a Gospel. It isn’t a letter. It is a story. A story of the church. A story that continues to be relevant and challenging to us today.
Throughout the early churches, people were questioning what it meant to be Christian and to be a church. Questions like, what do we believe and why? How do we organize? What’s required for membership? For leadership? Who is qualified to speak? What about women? How do we interact with our neighbors, especially those who believe differently than us? How do we engage with politics and government? Do we really have to care for widows and orphans? The poor? The foreigner among us? What about our enemies?
Sound familiar? Like the early church, we are still wrestling to figure it all out.
This story drops us in the middle of Paul’s second missionary journey. Paul, along with Silas and Timothy, is traveling throughout Asia Minor, when he has the vision of a man crying out calling him to Macedonia.
Philippi was a Roman Colony within Macedonia with a very small Jewish community. Small enough that there was no synagogue. Establishing a synagogue usually required at least ten married men. Because of this, the Jewish community of Philippi met outside on the banks of the river. Biblical archeologists suggest it was customary for such places of prayer to be located outdoors near running water.
Paul, Silas, and Timothy head to the river early on the Sabbath looking for a small group of Jewish men to share the Gospel with. Imagine their surprise when they encounter this group of women. It’s not clear why the women were there. Lydia is the only woman known by name. Lydia is described as a worshipper of God, but is not Jewish nor is she (yet) a convert to Christianity.
She’s from Tyathira, present day Turkey. She’s an outsider in Philippi. Away from home and from her people. She is a business woman. A dealer of purple cloth. In the ancient world purple cloth was a luxury. It was expensive because of the intricate process of creating purple by collecting and extracting dye from snails. Wearing purple then would be like wearing Prada or Gucci now. Lydia and her customers were wealthy. She is the head of her household. She is thriving on her own.
There’s not much detail of what all went down at the river. Paul preaches. The women respond. The women are baptized. It’s almost too simple. I admit, I’m skeptical when things are too simple. More than once I’ve been approached while walking on the river by very friendly people who offer me a quick and simple way to live forever. They ask, “do you know Jesus? Will you let us pray with you to repent of your sins and accept Jesus into your heart?”
We’ve overcomplicated the Gospel and we’ve oversimplified what it means to follow Jesus. The Gospel is Love. The Gospel is Peace. The Gospel is Justice. Following Jesus is not easy or simple. Never has been and it’s especially not today.
It’s hard to speak love as hatred rises.
It takes courage to seek peace in times of escalating violence.
It’s risky organizing and advocating for justice while global leaders fight for economic power and military position.
I’m pretty familiar with this text. I’ve read it. Studied it. Even preached it before. Something about it is different this time. An image that I can’t get out of my head.
A group of women—in a country not their own, not members of a particular faith tradition, challenging social norms about work and wealth and gender roles—are gathered at the river. And a group of unknown men, with a vision from God to save them shows up unexpectedly.
This scene, how does it make you feel? I feel the tension of my own vulnerability and privilege. It makes me a little anxious. As queer person, called to ministry, who was forced to choose between authenticity and ordination and who chose authenticity, I’ve had to get creative in how I live out my calling. I’ve had to navigate anxious moments when people show up to tell me they have a vision for me or a word from God for me. Just recently I had such an encounter.
It’s been just over a year since I published Unraveling, a collection of poems telling my story of coming out and leaving ministry in the United Methodist Church. I’ve been traveling around the country to churches sharing my story.
A few Sundays ago, I preached at a church. After the service, a young man came up to me. He was visibly anxious. I was trying not to be. He was a first-time visitor. What brought him there? Did he come with a vision prepared? He seemed to have rehearsed a script.
“Your sermon” he began, “does not sit right with my spirit.”
After an uncomfortable silence, he continued, “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, but I do not agree with you. Gay bashing is wrong, but so is homosexuality.”
More silence. Reaching for his phone, he says, “There’s some scriptures God wants me to share with you to show you why.”
I knew I wasn’t going to engage him. I didn’t want it to escalate. Calmly and firmly, I replied, “I know all those scriptures and don’t need to hear them again.” And I walked away. And he left. That moment hasn’t fully left me.
I try to put myself in Lydia’s purple shoes. They’re tight. Hard to walk in. How would Lydia describe that encounter? What would the other women have to say? How do we go from visions shared and hearts opened to Lydia and her whole household being baptized by these traveling evangelists?
I sat with it and then I saw it. The river running purple. Lydia’s life and faith becoming part of the story. Our collective story.
Purple is the color of dinosaurs and Teletubbies, LGBTQIA+ pride and royalty. For artists and dreamers, it is a color of creativity and imagination. Purple is the color of Alice Walker’s Womanist wisdom. Purple is the subject of songs and poems. One of these poems, by Jenny Joseph, hung on my grandparents’ bathroom wall in Flint, next to a framed sketch of the outhouse along the river where my grandmother was raised. As a kid, the outhouse made me grateful for indoor plumbing and the poem made me giggle.
It’s called “Warning” and it begins,
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
…
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit. (©Jenny Joseph, 1962)
I long understood this poem to mean that when I got old I wouldn’t care anymore about others’ opinions, that I wouldn’t be afraid to be and do unconventional things. Now, I read it a little differently.
It’s an invitation to live in the moment. To not wait until we are older to do something bold and wild. And what if it’s not just about us as individuals, but us as followers of Jesus? What if this poem is saying, don’t hold off any longer, live into our vision now?
Living the vision is not us going down to the river to pray for the conversion of our neighbors. Living the vision, requires an expanded perspective on conversion.
Lydia is often referred to as the first European Christian convert. Christianity’s history of conversion is not pretty. It’s actually quite horrific. The Hebrew and Greek words translated to mean conversion, aren’t explicitly about a forced religious experience. They refer to a marked moment of change. Turning away from one thing and toward another. Turning to faith for the first time or from one religion to another. Methodists celebrate John Wesley’s heart being strangely warmed as a conversion experience. Conversion can also be an experience of going deeper. Deeper into your beliefs. Deeper into the living waters of creation and connection with God.
Lydia was not a faithless, godless woman before Paul showed up. The story tells us she was already worshipping God. What if her baptism wasn’t about conversion in that strict literal sense, but rather about her going deeper into the river of life? Bringing family and friends along? Adding the color purple to the palette of our vision?
Thomas Merton, a catholic monk, theologian, and poet believed, “We are not converted only once in our lives but many times and this endless series of conversions and inner revolutions leads to our transformation."
A significant transformation in my story, didn’t come from a vision cast by a stranger on the river or in a church narthex, but from the gentle nudge of the Spirit; offering a glimpse of what life could be if I quit hiding in a closet, if I stepped into the light of who I am. That vision was so compelling I said yes. Yes, I am ready to be me. This turning came with great cost and consequences. Loss, grief, rejection. It also brought unbelievable joy and liberation.
Right now, it’s the Gospel in need of liberation. Christianity, specifically in this country, is being used to further a nationalist agenda, to build a society that looks nothing like God’s vision for humanity. The Spirit is calling us to conversion, to transformation. To acknowledging how we got here and committing to turning this thing around.
The same Spirit that fell on Jesus and Lydia and even Paul falls fresh on us. Reminding us that the time to do something wild, to learn to spit, to wear purple is now. It’s urgent. Our vulnerabilities and our privilege influence our understanding of urgency and the way we respond to urgent matters.
Some can afford to wait. Others die in the waiting. Listen to the people of Ukraine and Gaza, those in Missouri and Kentucky devastated by tornadoes, or those still recovering from last year’s hurricanes and fires, families losing access to healthcare and food assistance, the trans community being used as political pawns, immigrants living in fear and locked away in detention centers. They’re telling us it’s time.
We are being called to the river. Not to convert those we see as outsiders or others. Not to deliver a word or a warning to some unsuspecting stranger about their eternal future. But to go with humility, with compassion, with resources, with a story, and with a desire to transform ourselves and communities right here and now. Honest, real, raw stories have the ability to change institutions, to unravel personal shame and systemic injustice.
The church took a lot from me when I answered a call to come out. The world can take a lot from us when we choose authenticity over approval, but you know what cannot be taken from us? Our story.
I know the transformative power of storytelling, for the one who tells it and the one who listens. I’ve experienced how stories heal and connect and turn us. I know how water stirs new life and ushers us deeper into divine presence.
I also know there’s no room for stories in trying to convert someone. But the natural outcome of storytelling is mutual transformation.
What is your story? How and where and why are you telling it? How are you incorporating storytelling into worship and programs, meetings, planning, and budgets? How are stories shaping the questions you ask about what it means to be a church? How is your story making space for God’s vision to flow? When is the last time you took your stories down to the river?
When our stories and the river meet that’s where the transformation happens and where vision becomes clear. Or as Lydia might say, that when God’s love starts running purple.
Amen.
What a delight to read this powerful piece. Stories and purple and rivers and I am grateful for you and your words.
Thank you for telling your story.