I read a story about the first woman to receive the Purple Heart award, and it seems appropriate to share with you on this Memorial Day Weekend. Her name was Army Lieutenant Annie G. Fox.
She received this prestigious military award in 1942. She was recognized for her heroic actions that were taken during the December 7 Pearl Harbor attack a year earlier.
During the Japanese attack, she remained calm and successfully directed the hospital staff under her care to tend to the wounded who were brought in from the harbor.
More specifically, “she administered anesthesia to patients during the heaviest part of the bombardment, assisted in dressing the wounded, taught civilian volunteer nurses to make dressings, and worked ceaselessly with coolness and efficiency, and her fine example of calmness, courage and leadership was of great benefit to the morale of all with whom she came in contact…”
The color of this award is purple because it’s a color that is traditionally associated with courage, bravery, and sacrifice.
I know it’s not the same thing, but in today’s Acts scripture reading, we read about another woman who demonstrated courage and sacrifice. Her name was Lydia.
We are told that she was a business woman who made and sold very valuable purple cloth to people in the greater Greco/Roman world. We are also told from our reading that she was someone who had an open heart. And because of this, I like to think of Lydia as being someone who had a Purple Heart.
Here’s why. Lydia became the very first person on the continent of Europe to become a follower of Jesus. The very first one!
And after she and her household were baptized into the Christian faith, she immediately offered her home and her resources to the Apostle Paul so that he would be able to have a base of operations in sharing the good news of Jesus. Without Lydia’s open heart, Paul would not have been able to continue in his missionary journey.
Lydia’s sacrificial spirit is what Paul desperately needed especially since just before this story, we read how Paul had been turned away again and again from continuing to share the good news of Jesus to the wider world.
This story reminds us that even though we will face obstacles and challenges in living out our faith, God has a way of putting the right people along our path who will help us to continue to move forward.
What makes this story even more amazing is that Lydia wasn’t even Jewish. She was a Gentile who had a curiosity about the Jewish faith which is why she and some other women had gathered by the river on the Sabbath. They had gathered to pray. Our scripture reading even refers to that area by the river as a place of prayer.
Think about all that Lydia was risking in becoming a follower of Jesus. By all indications, she was well off because she was a dealer in the much sought after purple cloths. In that time period, only the wealthy including Roman senators would have been able to purchase this very expensive cloth.
There would have been absolutely no social advantage for this successful business woman to be associated with this new and strange movement called Christianity, not to mention her curiosity with the Jewish faith, since both were considered to be fringe movements in the Roman Empire during that time.
And yet, when Paul shared the good news of Jesus with her, she was willing to not only be baptized and become a Christian, but to go all in by offering her home and her livelihood in any way she could.
Lydia truly had a Purple Heart!
I’m sure you can think of some key people in your life, who like Lydia, were people of Purple Hearts, people who just when you were thinking all hope was lost, and you were facing yet another dead end, enabled you to keep moving forward.
Yesterday marked the 287th anniversary of John Wesley’s heart-warming experience in London, England. Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement of which we are heirs today, said on that day during a prayer meeting that he was attending, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.” He said this because he knew in that moment without a doubt that his sins were forgiven, and he belonged to Christ.
This is why Methodists are known as people of warm hearts, because of this wonderful gift of assurance that Wesley had been missing in his life and was now just receiving. Even though he had preached about the good news of Christ many times, he had never experienced this assurance of faith himself.
But what is sometimes forgotten about Wesley’s famous quote are the events that led up to that heart-warming experience.
For the past several years, Wesley was feeling spiritually empty inside. Even though he had been busy preaching and organizing class meetings to help reform the Church of England, he was struggling with his own relationship with God.
In 1735, three years before his heart-warming experience, Wesley led a missionary group to Georgia here in the new world with the goal of converting the Native Americans to the Christian faith. Wesley and his group failed to convert anyone during that trip.
In his journal about his frustrating experience in America, Wesley writes, “I went to America to convert the Indians, but who shall convert me?”
While on a ship back to England, the Atlantic storms frightened him. And during those storms he noticed this strange group of people who were known as Moravian Christians who didn’t seem afraid at all.
During those storms, they sang hymns and prayed; men, women, and children, they all were undaunted by those storms. They seemed to have full confidence in God and were not fearful of death because they knew that they belonged to Christ as the scriptures remind us.
That voyage on the way back to England helped Wesley to see what was missing in his life. An assurance of God’s love. An assurance of God’s forgiveness. An assurance of God’s peace.
Like Lydia in our scripture reading today, those Moravians had Purple Hearts, hearts that were open to God, hearts that by their example would lead this troubled Anglican Priest to have his own heart-warming experience, not too long after arriving back to England.
We are a people of warm hearts but we are also a people of Purple Hearts.
I don’t know that Lydia knew at the time that she was being courageous and sacrificial when she offered her home and her resources to help Paul continue his missionary journey.
I think she was so overwhelmed with her own newfound faith in Christ, that she was willing to do whatever was needed so that others might come to know Jesus who died on the cross for our sins and offers us salvation, peace, joy, hope, and new life.
Maybe you have noticed some Lydias along the way, people whose hearts are open toward others and who share whatever resources they have in sowing seeds of faith along the way.
Several years ago, I was attending a school event when I noticed a woman who was cleaning up the leftover trash from the students who had just left the school cafeteria.
And as she was spraying the tables and wiping them down, she said to me, "Pastor, I'm a Christian. And I know that I'm not supposed to force my faith on any of these students. That's why I simply try to sow some seeds of my faith here and there with these kids. They call me 'grandma' around here because of my age and I think they feel that they can talk to me if they're having a problem."
"God bless you," I said to her as I was leaving the cafeteria. And as I drove home from the school, I thanked God for the people he places throughout our schools and communities who like that woman at the school sow seeds of faith in loving and caring ways.
There are Purple Hearts all around us who are sowing seeds of faith and hope. You might not realize it, but I’m here to remind you that the seeds that you are sowing for God’s kingdom really do make a difference.
Offering encouragement to a neighbor. Sending a get-well card just to let that person know that they have been in your prayers. Placing an offering in the plate on Sunday morning. Putting up another creative message on our church’s front sign. Visiting that person you haven’t seen in a while.
Like Lydia, who opened her heart and offered her resources so that the mission of the church would be able to continue, may each one of us have open hearts in the offering our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness.
May we each have a Purple Heart faith.
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