She sold purple cloth
This week has felt different: on Monday I was caught in my first traffic jam for 3 months; McDonalds re-opened; more children went back to school; there was a new lead in the Madeline McCann case; Donald Trump had peaceful protestors dispersed with tear gas just so he could pose outside a church with a Bible – the NRV – the Never Read Version. And the killing of George Floyd continued to spark outrage around the world. More on that later.
How was your week? Are you grateful to get to the end of it? 
2,000 years ago, Paul was in lockdown – prison, possibly in Rome, more likely Ephesus. The charge? Being a follower of Christ. No-one notices those who believe in God – they’re harmless.  But Christ-followers, those who seek to follow what Jesus Christ did, they’re different. Radicals. Once again, an abuse of power, a miscarriage of justice. Just as they had done with Christ Himself a few years earlier.
Prison is always tough. Back then, it was even tougher. Inmates had to rely on friends and family to send in their food. No friends, no food. Back in the day, Saul (as he was called then) had known power. He’d built quite a reputation for persecuting Christians. Now, as a follower of Christ, he was power-less, unable to even feed himself.
So, now in chains, Paul was writing to the church in Philippi to thank them for what they had sent him. He wrote, in verse 3, “I thank God every time I remember you”
Some of you have relied on others bringing you food during your lockdown. Like Paul, you’re really thankful. Others of you have been the ‘buddies’ that have shopped for neighbours, family, church members. You’ve not just brought groceries, you’ve brought them joy too. It’s been so great to see and hear of so many reaching out to one another. #GrowingCommunirty  Like Paul, I’m thanking God for all that you – all of you - are doing.
Philippi was a major city in northern Greece. It was captured by the Romans and made part of their Empire. They wanted it for its gold, minerals and spices. History has shown, Empires are never about doing good to others.  They are always about using / abusing power to exploit, subdue, and extract.
Philippi was a very special place for Paul. It was the first place in Europe that accepted his message about Christ. You can read about it in Acts 16.
On the Sabbath, Paul had wanted to gather with others for worship, as was his habit. We’re the same. What he found was a group of women down by a river. One of the women was Lydia. And, it says, she sold purple cloth.Two things stand out:
First, Lydia was a woman. Paul was teaching women. Only they had shown up. Where were the men? In a sexist, patriarchal world, people would have expected – the women would have expected – Paul to have cancelled the gig. But Paul wasn’t like that. Christ was for all. And all always means ALL.
Second, Lydia sold purple cloth. She was in the fashion retail business.  She was an independent woman, a successful business woman – in a man’s world. 
But it gets more complicated. She specialised in PURPLE cloth. She sold purple cloth. She was colluding with Empire – the Roman Empire. The people that wore purple were Romans. The invaders. The subdue’rs. The exploiters. Maybe she reasoned, you can’t turn the clock back.  Maybe, because she was privileged enough not to have experienced the brutality of Roman soldiers, it just never occurred to her that her privileged experience wasn’t everyone else’s. Her business, her privilege, her wealth was only possible because of the Empire and what it had done to others.
It says she believed in God but then it also says, “The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.” Maybe, like Lydia, you’ve always had a hunch there is Some Thing, Some One out there. You might even have called it God. But it’s always felt like a piece or two of the jigsaw was missing. Now, as we talk more and more abut Jesus, it’s like the final pieces are coming together. And what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. A Christian disciple.
For Lydia, it suddenly clicked. She needed to follow Christ – and whole-heartedly. This was far more than just a slight adjustment in her thinking. She and her household – she had staff, told you she was a big deal – were baptised. There and then. Talk about coming out. Everyone would know. Family. Neighbours. Customers. Romans.
She then says, verse 15 of Acts 16, “If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my house.”  IF you consider me a believer – if you can see that I’m changing. Lydia now see things for what they were. She wasn’t just thinking her personal, private religious views had changed. This Jesus was changing EVERYTHING. Being a follower of Christ is not just about your belief in God. It’s what you’re like as an employee or employer. It’s how you vote. It’s what you do with your money. How you spend your time. How you value the person on the checkout… It’s total, all-life discipleship. And Lydia knew, if she was to follow Christ, she could no longer be part of the system of Empire. 
The uncomfortable truth is that Empire isn’t just what the Romans did. It’s what the British Empire did too. We in Britain invaded other countries, subduing and exploiting them for their gold, minerals and spices.nIt’s no coincidence that Colonial countries like Britain are wealthier today than the countries they / we invaded.
And that brings me to the killing of George Floyd in the USA. Whilst we’re all rightly appalled at the killing of a black man, this time not by Roman soldiers but U.S. police officers, the roots of this go back to Empire. We who are privileged not to know such oppression – we, who don’t have people tighten the grip on their handbags as we walk past; we, who aren’t more frequently stopped by the police; we, who just happen, statistically, to have better health and wealth outcomes than others not because of what we’ve done but simply because of the skin colour we were born with ; we, the privileged ‘sellers of purple cloth’ - need to see that being a follower of Christ changes everything. It’s no longer enough to be NOT racist. We all need to be ANTI-racist.  And it starts with each one of us questioning our unconscious bias, or calling out our plain ugly bias in us.
I’m only too aware of the irony here; I’m as ‘white privileged’ as you get: brought up by two supportive and present, high-achieving parents; private school educated; worked at Coutts & Co…
It’s not enough to think that’s just how things are. If I am serious about being a follower of Jesus Christ, then I need to start thinking like Christ; turning over the tables of exploitation like Christ; standing up for those others brutalise; not walking by on the other side…
Jesus wasn’t killed because He preached a few edgy sermons. He was killed because what He stood for – what He did - threatened the very basis of Empire. It’s the difference between Empire and Kingdom. God’s Kingdom – the Kingdom of God - is DIFFERENT. So, the Empire killed Him, literally. That’ll put an end to all that Jesus stuff. Except, three days later, God raised Him from the dead. 
No wonder, locked down in prison, Paul was both thankful and joyful for those who had turned their back on Empire and “Caesar is Lord”, and instead followed the way of Christ – “Jesus is Lord”.
But change doesn’t happen quick enough.  Paul was confident, in verse 6: “He who BEGAN a good work in you, will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Deciding to follow Christ is often a moment. Becoming a disciple of Christ - learning to see things as Christ sees them, do things as he does them – is a lifetime. Jesus has BEGUN a good work in you. Fabulous! But there’s so much more He still wants – needs to do in you / me.  What is that? What attitudes, actions...?
Paul was thankful, full of joy, because he could see that, what began with Lydia, had grown and passed the test of time. They had continued to do what the Lord requires of us all: “to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.”
One last thing, let me be clear, as your Minister: Black Lives Matter. Here, at Chester Road Baptist Church, Black Lives Matter. That does not mean, other lives don’t matter. No-one said that. But Jesus, our Shepherd, is not just content with the majority – those that have much, the privileged – the 99. Instead, He goes out of His way to protect the minority, even just the 1, to show that that one life matters. He wants all to experience what the 99 already have. [To explore this further, go to the bonus features ChesterRoad Baptist.org.uk/Watch] Were the 99 sufficiently self-aware about their privilege to rejoice that Jesus goes after the 1? Or were they more keen to protect their privilege by excluding the 1? The good news is that Jesus leaves the 99 to go after the 1. Sometimes, we’re that 1. Other times, we’re part of the 99.
Let’s thank Christ, seek to bring in God’s Kingdom, and reject the spirit of Empire.
DannyBrierley@ChesterRoadBaptist.org.uk