For the past few weeks we have been reflecting upon the beginnings of the Christian church – those early years after the resurrection of Jesus. We have witnessed this time mostly through the experiences of Paul, the church’s first missionary, as told by the author of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles.
Now, when you come right down to it, this particular Biblical narrative is quite the adventure story. It has its share of prison escapes, church fights, grisly executions, and a good dose of circumcisions and healings thrown in for good measure.
Today’s story, however, has none of the swashbuckling elements that we have come to expect in the Book of Acts. In comparison, it is a tame piece of prose, a blip on the radar screen. Like a snapshot, it is a story so brief that it would be easy to skim right by it – onward to the next stoning or shipwreck.
However, I think that this little vignette about Paul and Lydia is worth stopping for, worth savoring for a few minutes because its message is terribly important to the Christian faith and particularly to a community church like we are.
The tale begins with a vision which Paul had in Troas, on the shore of the Aegean Sea, in what is now modern day Turkey. Now, in Paul’s day, the Aegean Sea was acknowledged as the boundary between East and West, for on its far coast lay Macedonia in what we now call Greece. So there was Asia on the Turkish side and Europe on the Greek side.
Anyway, here we have Paul enjoying the sunset one balmy evening, dabbling his feet in the briny water. Then, quite unexpectedly, our missionary experienced another one of those pesky visions. This time he witnessed a man standing on the far side of the Aegean Sea, pleading with him, "Come over to Macedonia and help us.”
Having learned to take these spectacles seriously after his experience on the Damascus road, Paul immediately scrapped his idea of heading east into Asia to spread the Gospel message and instead sailed west and arrived in Philippi, a city about as close to being the capital city of Macedonia as you could get.
There he and Silas and his other missionary buddies hung out for a few days until the Sabbath rolled around - and, like most preachers on that seventh day, Paul had the urge to – well – you know - preach. Whether he could not get top billing at the synagogue in the city or whether there were not enough religious males in Philippi to even have a congregation, we do not know.
However, what the author of Luke/Acts does tell us is that Paul ended up outside the city gates down by the riverside that Sabbath morning with a bunch of apparently well-organized women no less who looked for leadership to Lydia, herself not a Jew but still well versed in the Torah (a God worshipper, one translation calls her).
Apparently, these women met regularly in a small house to pray, preach, sing, and praise God. Now doing all this without the men folk was in and of itself quite unusual. Added to that was the fact that the women obviously welcomed newcomers and strangers because Paul and his friends were gladly received and made to feel at home in this small Gentile faith community. Such a welcome was not commonplace either as Jews and Gentiles did not mix freely.
Well, Paul must have preached a heck of a sermon that morning because, when all was said and done, Lydia first and then her whole community were baptized (each and every one of them), and she invited Paul into her home to rest up and stay a while.
Lydia then holds the distinction of being the first Gentile in Europe to be converted to the Christian faith. She is an interesting woman, and we know little about her except that she was in the business of purple cloth, a color of fabric associated with royalty and wealth.
Now we do not know if Lydia used the expensive method of dying her fabric (That would have been by utilizing mollusk shells, a real breach of Jewish kosher dietary regulations), or if she dealt with the knockoff version of purple dye based on a plant derivative.
But either way, it was physically demanding and dirty work and so generally would have been relegated to what the rich folk might have referred to as society’s riffraff. In short, Lydia was a blue collar worker, economically probably smack in the middle of the middle class, like a lot of us.
However, I am not concerned about her socioeconomic status this morning. What I find intriguing about Lydia is her unwavering commitment to hospitality. In a time when welcoming Christians into your home could be pretty dicey (what with all the persecution going on), Lydia opened her doors and her heart to Paul, paving the way for – and here is the interesting part for us - the notion that the church should be a diverse faith community where strangers with their sometimes strange customs and traditions are embraced.
There is a lesson here in Lydia’s little snapshot story. And it is a lesson that we as a community church really need to take to heart. But first, let’s talk about what a community church is – that is, what we here at RVCC are called to be.
My definition of a community church is a faith community that is rooted in the secular community. It arises out of the community itself as the community’s sacred place. When I read Ernie Knight’s history of our church, I found out that is exactly what occurred here. That long ago Ladies’ Mite Society did not set out to create a denominational church. They set out to build a church for their community here in Raymond.
Now we happen to be affiliated with the United Church of Christ, but we are first and foremost a community church. And that means one of our defining qualities is our diversity.
I mean, if you walk into the First Methodist Church or St. Someone or Other’s Episcopal Church, you are going to find a gaggle of Methodists or a passel of Episcopalians. The worship will be pro forma because in a Methodist church you will use the Methodist hymnal and in an Episcopal church you will use the denominational Prayer Book.
However, when you walk into a community church, it is not that straightforward. Because not everyone in Raymond is the same, it would follow that we can not expect everyone in our church to be the same. We come from an enormous spectrum of theological and political beliefs. We grew up with a variety of worship styles that we bring with us here because those rituals and traditions are an important part of who we are.
This inbred and inescapable diversity can be our greatest strength, or it can be our most profound weakness. It can be a source of unending excitement – or potentially destructive conflict.
But the lesson we learn from Lydia and Paul is this: diversity is good. We are called to welcome the politically conservative Baptist stranger and the theologically liberal unchurched newcomer – and so we are called to, maybe not like, but still embrace those rituals and traditions that they bring with them – because their rituals and traditions are as much as part of them as ours are of us.
And I believe that, as a community church – particularly in this day and age of growing narrowness and parochialism – we are called to unceasingly expand our notion of community. As our bulletin reminds us, we are “ministers to the world.”
Think of it this way, if Paul had not preached to the Gentiles with their different customs and strange dietary laws, you and I would not be sitting in these pews today, and Christianity would most likely have remained a sect of Judaism.
So what does all this embracing diversity and welcoming other traditions mean for us? First and foremost, it goes without saying that racism, sexism, ageism – all the isms have no place here. And, for me, as your pastor, it means that I can not possibly please everyone all of the time.
Hey – it is a fact! Someone is not going to like a sermon because it is not inspiring enough – or it is too liberal – or not liberal enough. Someone is not going to like the musical responses because they are in a foreign language or because they have African roots or call for a drum. Someone is not going to appreciate a new hymn when the hymn supplement is filled with the old ones he or she grew up with. And for some of us, the hymn supplement is filled with music we never heard before we came here because those songs were not part of our church tradition.
Sometimes, as your pastor, I feel like I am doing a carefully orchestrated balancing act, seeking to proclaim the Gospel by weaving with Donna between hymnals and musical styles, seeking to proclaim the Gospel by threading my way through ritual and tradition, on the one hand, and new ways of looking at our ancient stories, on the other hand. But as Paul and Lydia would surely agree - this is good – and it is energizing – and it is fun.
In many ways, a community church like ours is similar to Maine weather. You know how the saying goes: if you do not like the weather in Maine, then wait five minutes. Well, if you do not like what is going on in worship or education or mission, wait – it will change. We are a community church – and nothing is written in stone.
I believe that as long as we keep talking with the appropriate people about what we like and not just dissing the music or the sermon or the worship style or the curriculum or whatever we do not like – but instead offer suggestions to make those aspects of our community life more meaningful, our diversity will be the most wonderful source ever of creative dynamism and life.
It may not always be comfortable for everyone all the time here, but a community church is not supposed to always be comfortable. It is supposed to be a place where we can experience God and deepen our spirituality in different ways. Sometimes those styles are well within our comfort zone, but sometimes they are strange or just rub us the wrong way.
But, hey, that is the nature of the beast. That is life in a community church which values openly sharing our faith journeys – different as they may be - , which values being assured that if we stray into narrowness or any of the isms, someone will be there to beckon us back to the openness and acceptance that Jesus expects from us who call ourselves his followers.
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Revelation 21:1-6 God's Dream
Earlier this week, while she was volunteering in the Church Office folding your bulletins and inserts, Frances saw the Scripture reading and commented that she had never heard anyone preach from the Book of Revelation and did not know that any verses were even included in the lectionary.
In fact, there are just a couple of passages from this strange narrative in our three year cycle of readings – perhaps because the creators of the lectionary intuitively understood that the Book of Revelation, this last book in our Bible, is one that most of us who inhabit staunch New England Protestant churches would rarely touch with a ten foot pole.
However, even if we have never ventured to read it from start to finish ourselves, we have certainly heard tell that Revelation is filled with exotic and incomprehensible symbols and psychedelic images of seven headed beasts and seven seals and brides and cities and angels and archangels and warfare and absolute destruction.
The Book of Revelation is that piece of canonized writing that can make us who are theological moderates feel pretty uncomfortable. It is difficult not to associate it with modern day doomsayers who point to chapter and verse as evidence that the end of the world is imminent.
Everything from the creation of the State of Israel in 1949 to the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001 point to nothing else, they say. No wonder some of those folks railed against President Obama recently when he brought world leaders together to discuss nuclear disarmament. They claimed that the President was inhibiting the inevitable Armageddon by restricting the way we might go about destroying ourselves.
However, in spite of theologically conservative protestations to the contrary, like all of the books in our Bible, Revelation was written at a particular time to a particular group of people who had a particular history and culture and set of issues. As Christian theologian Marcus Borg wrote, like the Bible as a whole, the Book of Revelation needs to be taken seriously, but not literally.
In order to understand the significance for us of this particular passage that we read, we must understand its historical context. And so we begin by acknowledging that the author wrote this passage not for us as a manifesto outlining the sequence of events leading to the end of the world, but rather for a group of early Jewish Christians during a time of significant crisis in the early church.
The Book of Revelation is really a letter to seven churches, and it is written in the apocalyptic style. The community of faith that first heard it probably felt like they were living in some sort of end times – perhaps like you felt after September 11, 2001 or December 7, 1941.
It was as if your world was suddenly and forever changed. It was different and frightening, and you had all sorts of questions that no one seemed able to answer. Would you be safe? Would your family be safe? What was going to happen now?
For the Jewish Christians to whom this letter was written, two equally traumatic events had occurred. First, Roman armies had destroyed Jerusalem and leveled the Temple. The Holy of Holies was no more. All that was left standing was part of a single wall, where Jews today still congregate and wail.
But it was not only the physical razing of the Temple that was so terrifying. It was also the symbolic destruction of more than 500 years of sacred ritual and prayer. It was the death of a way of life. It was the loss of a place that had been central to Jesus and the culmination of his ministry.
And, second, in the aftermath of the destruction, Rome had singled out followers of Jesus for persecution. Jewish Christian men and women throughout the Empire faced social exclusion, economic embargos, and politically motivated religious harassment.
It was within this context of fear and loss that the people of the seven churches heard these marvelous words of hope that we read this morning. You see, the Book of Revelation – and this passage in particular – challenges us to call up our imaginations in even the worst of times.
Just imagine, the author seems to say, a world whether evil does not win. Just imagine a world that is not scary and lonely and out-of-control. Just imagine a world where our reason for being is grounded not only in the future, but also in the present. Just imagine that in the midst of all the evil, all the malice, all the pettiness God is creating a scenario where heaven and earth co-mingle. Just imagine a world where hope is the last word.
Too often our theology limits itself to hope in heaven only, and the earth is left behind or deemed irrelevant. But that is NOT what the author of Revelation tells us. Rather, he says that “God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women!”
As Church of the Brethren pastor, Peter Haynes, writes, “Here (HERE) then is God’s home, the home which God is even now in the process of making, not in some far off, ethereal never-never land, but here. A new heaven, a new earth, together.”
The passage that we just read is a dream. It is God’s dream, and it is a dream for this earth, not for some future world. And for the author of Revelation (as it should be for us), it is the only dream worth dreaming.
After all, it is what the Gospel is about. Remember how we marveled at Christmas time that the Word – God – had become flesh and was dwelling among us, full of grace and truth. We focused on a baby then. But, oh, the dream is so much bigger than that.
The Word has become flesh and even still dwells among us. And surely, if God is here, dwelling among us, God is in control. So, if nothing else, take comfort that our world – our lives – will not spin off into chaos.
You see, our most profound hope lies with the one who is in control, the one who will make all things new, the one who has been here since the beginning and who will always be here, the one who promises to wipe every tear from our eyes. In the end, we can only stake our lives on that kind of hope and the love it generates – because, in the end, little else will really matter.
The truth of this passage is not that the world will explode in some fiery Armageddon before God’s Kingdom comes. This vision in the final chapter of the final book of our Holy Scriptures is not about an ending. It is about a beginning.
God is at work in our world – creating and re-creating. “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth – as it is in heaven.” It is a cosmic joining, an eternal intermingling.
And you and I are somewhere in the middle of this great unfolding drama, and our task is to live faithfully into the vision of the author of Revelation. Can we permit ourselves to "see" the unseen, to conceive of the good news of a new heaven and earth, to continue to long for a time of healing when the tears are finally wiped away from our eyes? That is the question.
Can we put to rest all of our pain and loss – as individuals and as this church family - for even a little while, long enough to breathe in the Spirit and trust in the One who makes all things new?
Not new things, by the way, but all things new. God does not start over. Rather God takes what it here and transforms it. God takes our lives and heals them. God takes all the broken pieces that are us and makes them whole once more. That is the big picture – even when the details are devastating.
I read a blog this week entitled “Magdalene’s Musings.” Its author writes that this passage in Revelation “beckons us to that place where we can find that we are already part of a new heaven and a new earth. (And that is why we share in communion together.)
When we gather around the table to break the bread and to take the cup, we are gently reminded that even painful memories, even our most devastating losses, can be gathered together and made holy in community.
They are made holy because, as Revelation reminds us, the home of God is among mortals. That is what our communion is about: we do this in remembrance of the One who suffered… who we lost… but who was raised again, and who lit for us the path to new life, life even after loss, life even after death.”
“God has moved into the neighborhood, making a sacred home…with us.” Thanks be to the Holy One!
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
In fact, there are just a couple of passages from this strange narrative in our three year cycle of readings – perhaps because the creators of the lectionary intuitively understood that the Book of Revelation, this last book in our Bible, is one that most of us who inhabit staunch New England Protestant churches would rarely touch with a ten foot pole.
However, even if we have never ventured to read it from start to finish ourselves, we have certainly heard tell that Revelation is filled with exotic and incomprehensible symbols and psychedelic images of seven headed beasts and seven seals and brides and cities and angels and archangels and warfare and absolute destruction.
The Book of Revelation is that piece of canonized writing that can make us who are theological moderates feel pretty uncomfortable. It is difficult not to associate it with modern day doomsayers who point to chapter and verse as evidence that the end of the world is imminent.
Everything from the creation of the State of Israel in 1949 to the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001 point to nothing else, they say. No wonder some of those folks railed against President Obama recently when he brought world leaders together to discuss nuclear disarmament. They claimed that the President was inhibiting the inevitable Armageddon by restricting the way we might go about destroying ourselves.
However, in spite of theologically conservative protestations to the contrary, like all of the books in our Bible, Revelation was written at a particular time to a particular group of people who had a particular history and culture and set of issues. As Christian theologian Marcus Borg wrote, like the Bible as a whole, the Book of Revelation needs to be taken seriously, but not literally.
In order to understand the significance for us of this particular passage that we read, we must understand its historical context. And so we begin by acknowledging that the author wrote this passage not for us as a manifesto outlining the sequence of events leading to the end of the world, but rather for a group of early Jewish Christians during a time of significant crisis in the early church.
The Book of Revelation is really a letter to seven churches, and it is written in the apocalyptic style. The community of faith that first heard it probably felt like they were living in some sort of end times – perhaps like you felt after September 11, 2001 or December 7, 1941.
It was as if your world was suddenly and forever changed. It was different and frightening, and you had all sorts of questions that no one seemed able to answer. Would you be safe? Would your family be safe? What was going to happen now?
For the Jewish Christians to whom this letter was written, two equally traumatic events had occurred. First, Roman armies had destroyed Jerusalem and leveled the Temple. The Holy of Holies was no more. All that was left standing was part of a single wall, where Jews today still congregate and wail.
But it was not only the physical razing of the Temple that was so terrifying. It was also the symbolic destruction of more than 500 years of sacred ritual and prayer. It was the death of a way of life. It was the loss of a place that had been central to Jesus and the culmination of his ministry.
And, second, in the aftermath of the destruction, Rome had singled out followers of Jesus for persecution. Jewish Christian men and women throughout the Empire faced social exclusion, economic embargos, and politically motivated religious harassment.
It was within this context of fear and loss that the people of the seven churches heard these marvelous words of hope that we read this morning. You see, the Book of Revelation – and this passage in particular – challenges us to call up our imaginations in even the worst of times.
Just imagine, the author seems to say, a world whether evil does not win. Just imagine a world that is not scary and lonely and out-of-control. Just imagine a world where our reason for being is grounded not only in the future, but also in the present. Just imagine that in the midst of all the evil, all the malice, all the pettiness God is creating a scenario where heaven and earth co-mingle. Just imagine a world where hope is the last word.
Too often our theology limits itself to hope in heaven only, and the earth is left behind or deemed irrelevant. But that is NOT what the author of Revelation tells us. Rather, he says that “God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women!”
As Church of the Brethren pastor, Peter Haynes, writes, “Here (HERE) then is God’s home, the home which God is even now in the process of making, not in some far off, ethereal never-never land, but here. A new heaven, a new earth, together.”
The passage that we just read is a dream. It is God’s dream, and it is a dream for this earth, not for some future world. And for the author of Revelation (as it should be for us), it is the only dream worth dreaming.
After all, it is what the Gospel is about. Remember how we marveled at Christmas time that the Word – God – had become flesh and was dwelling among us, full of grace and truth. We focused on a baby then. But, oh, the dream is so much bigger than that.
The Word has become flesh and even still dwells among us. And surely, if God is here, dwelling among us, God is in control. So, if nothing else, take comfort that our world – our lives – will not spin off into chaos.
You see, our most profound hope lies with the one who is in control, the one who will make all things new, the one who has been here since the beginning and who will always be here, the one who promises to wipe every tear from our eyes. In the end, we can only stake our lives on that kind of hope and the love it generates – because, in the end, little else will really matter.
The truth of this passage is not that the world will explode in some fiery Armageddon before God’s Kingdom comes. This vision in the final chapter of the final book of our Holy Scriptures is not about an ending. It is about a beginning.
God is at work in our world – creating and re-creating. “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth – as it is in heaven.” It is a cosmic joining, an eternal intermingling.
And you and I are somewhere in the middle of this great unfolding drama, and our task is to live faithfully into the vision of the author of Revelation. Can we permit ourselves to "see" the unseen, to conceive of the good news of a new heaven and earth, to continue to long for a time of healing when the tears are finally wiped away from our eyes? That is the question.
Can we put to rest all of our pain and loss – as individuals and as this church family - for even a little while, long enough to breathe in the Spirit and trust in the One who makes all things new?
Not new things, by the way, but all things new. God does not start over. Rather God takes what it here and transforms it. God takes our lives and heals them. God takes all the broken pieces that are us and makes them whole once more. That is the big picture – even when the details are devastating.
I read a blog this week entitled “Magdalene’s Musings.” Its author writes that this passage in Revelation “beckons us to that place where we can find that we are already part of a new heaven and a new earth. (And that is why we share in communion together.)
When we gather around the table to break the bread and to take the cup, we are gently reminded that even painful memories, even our most devastating losses, can be gathered together and made holy in community.
They are made holy because, as Revelation reminds us, the home of God is among mortals. That is what our communion is about: we do this in remembrance of the One who suffered… who we lost… but who was raised again, and who lit for us the path to new life, life even after loss, life even after death.”
“God has moved into the neighborhood, making a sacred home…with us.” Thanks be to the Holy One!
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Acts 9:36-43 Resurrection Legacy
Call her Tabitha – or call her Dorcas, if you happen to favor the Greek. Whatever name you use, understand that she was a pillar of the early church in Joppa, a town which was about 30 miles northwest of Jerusalem. Tabitha was greatly loved and respected by her congregation and by others whom she served throughout the community.
It has been said that “many are full of good words, who are empty and barren in good works; but Tabitha was a great doer, no great talker." (Matthew Henry) Tabitha must have had seemingly unending energy, for her ministry was a broad one.
This woman (who incidentally is the only female in the New Testament to be explicitly called a disciple), this woman felt called by God to a life of simply “doing good and caring for the poor.” Apparently, she was particularly sensitive to the abject poverty and significant needs of widows in her society.
There is evidence that she was exceedingly generous with her time – and with her resources. As the Gospel writer of Luke/Acts notes, Tabitha fashioned tunics and other garments for those in need, be they the beggars who wandered the streets or the widows who ate at the soup kitchens and inhabited the homeless shelters of Joppa.
As Presbyterian pastor, Laurie Anne Kraus imagines… “A child, dressed in a gown Tabitha had made, glowing with pride as she lifted her face for the water of baptism…..A poor man, rags discarded, clothed in sturdy homespun, standing straighter, his dignity restored….. Extra food, slipped onto the church's common table-always without a word…. Packets made up and slipped into the bundles of the widows who were too proud to beg, but whom, everyone knew, had too little to live on.” That was Tabitha. She noticed enough to care about everyone.
And then one day, Tabitha fell ill. Her body just gave out on her, and she died. Maybe she had been sick for a long time and just had not told anyone. Maybe she was worn out from all her caring. Maybe she was just old. But she died – and everyone in the Joppa church was in mourning.
The children wept in their baptismal gowns. The poor men sobbed in their homespun. The widows carried the coats and dresses she had made for them in their arms – almost as if by doing so they carried a piece of Tabitha close to their hearts – and they cried too.
Tabitha was so generous that her death first rattled and then devastated the little Christian community – as deaths of church pillars often do. Who would help the many widows of that city, the ones she had cared for? How would they survive now with her gone?
And in the midst of all the grief and the guesswork, someone must have figured that Joppa needed a grief counselor, and so two of the men in the community travelled the distance to Lydda and found Peter, the recognized leader of the nascent Christian movement. “Please hurry and come to us,” they implored. And Peter did.
But when he arrived, Peter did not sit down with the widows and children and poor men whom Tabitha had served. He did not ask them how they were feeling and encourage them to express their sadness even more openly. No – Peter sent them all away from the room where Tabitha lay in state. And what followed was a powerful and empowering moment.
Peter shut the doors and knelt by the dead woman’s body and prayed. You can almost hear the quiet because the author of Luke/Acts does not include any long winded and theologically complicated prayers. In fact, we do not know what Peter prayed about. We can only speculate – give me courage, give me strength, I do not know if I can do what I sense you want me to do, I do not know if I really am filled with your Holy Spirit and can do all the things you ask me to do in your name.
But whatever Peter prayed, he eventually came around to whispering “Amen.” Then he looked down at the still form of the saintly woman. “Tabitha, get up,” he said – simple words – and most definitely to the point – words that echoed the ones that Jesus had once said to the daughter of Jairus, lying years before on another deathbed. “Get up.” And Tabitha opened her eyes and did just that.
And we are left to wonder – and UCC pastor, Kate Huey, does “what went through Peter's mind, what was in his heart, what memory and what hope gave him the audacious confidence that he could say two words, and then count on God, right then and there, to do something so astonishing. In this Easter season, perhaps we don't really have to wonder long, and Peter's confidence is testimony to the power of God in his life, the things he has seen and experienced, and the effect all of it has had (on him).”
Then, without a word, Peter offered his arm to Tabitha as any gentleman would do to such a great and well-respected lady and helped her up. He opened the door and took Tabitha out into the sunshine and her mourners saw her alive once more.
Told in the style and even using some of the same vocabulary as similar stories in the Gospels, this tale of Peter and Tabitha harkens us back to the ministry of Jesus himself. It reminds us – as well it should – of stories such as Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life and raising the daughter of Jairus. Yet, here, in our tale this morning, it is not Jesus who restores life but Peter – and this fundamental difference is significant - for us and for the church.
As United Methodist minister, Daniel Hilty, notes, “You know, it’s a funny thing: before Easter in the Bible we’re only told about Christ himself doing this kind of work that Peter and Tabitha do in our Scripture reading today.
Before Easter it was Christ who went around bringing the dead back to life, it was Christ who brought hope and compassion to the poor and the forgotten. Sure, the disciples gave it a try too from time to time, and every now and then they’d do OK, but most of the time they’d fall flat on their faces, or they’d miss the point.
But all of that seems to change after Easter. After Christ’s resurrection things are different. Suddenly, folks like Peter are bringing life to the dead. Suddenly, people like Tabitha are offering hope to the widows and outcast.
Something seems to change at Easter: it’s almost as if Jesus’ work and power have been passed right along to the folks who came after him. After Easter, there’s a cosmic shift. Things are different because Christ has conquered the grave, and after that all other obstacles seem small by comparison.”
Belief in that “cosmic shift” lies at the very core of the church and its ministry – our ministry. This story of Peter healing Tabitha presents the apostle in the role of continuing the ministry of the risen Christ. This story would demonstrated to the early church – and should demonstrate to us - that Jesus is alive and still ministering to the world – through the apostles, through the believers, through the church.
You see, the church is so much more than dutifully sitting here on Sunday morning – though being here as one body and one community is important and not to be taken lightly. Here we are restored each week with strength and courage to go forth and minister in Christ’s name. However, that is a sermon topic for another time.
Today, if you leave this place with nothing else, carry with you a belief in the power of this faith community and the power of us as individuals within the church. Trust that within us – even you and me - is the same power that allowed Peter to bring new life to Tabitha and Tabitha to bring new life to the children, the poor, the widows she served.
As Biblical scholar and theologian, Walter Brueggeman, writes, “Clearly the narrative attests that Peter—the church—is entrusted with the resurrection power of Jesus who himself carries the force of the creator God. The church is entrusted with the power to create new life. . .bodily, concretely, locally.”
Because we are the church, you and I are resurrection people – like Peter and Tabitha. And that is both exciting and daunting. You and I have been touched by the Spirit and like our forebears in this story are capable of creating new life around us.
Oh, we may not do the laying on of hands thing and be quite as dramatic as Peter was, but surely we have it within us to minister with the depth and compassion of Tabitha. Through our efforts and the power of the Holy Spirit, our little corner of the world really can be transformed.
You see, the resurrection legacy has been passed on to us – to you and to me. We are what make the resurrection real in this crazy world we live in. We have been given the tools to dispense the miraculous power of life.
Those tools are in our hearts. They are in our hands and feet as we forge a strong commitment to go about – not thinking about or talking about - but actually doing the works of love and reconciliation to which the Gospel calls us. As Francis of Assisi once said, “Preach the gospel, and when necessary, use words."
Because you see, in the end, the Gospel is not about words. It is not about the words that say that what is most important is the personal relationship we may claim to have with Jesus. It is not about the words that point only to the future and where we fit into all eternity.
The Gospel is about doing. It is about action, about loving acts now, in this world. "The good news is about bringing life where there is death, love where there is hate, healing where there is brokenness.” (William Loader)
If Easter taught us anything, it should have taught us that the story is not over. The story is never over – because, as Peter and Tabitha illustrated in this little tale in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, the power of the resurrection has been handed on to us – it is our legacy.
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
It has been said that “many are full of good words, who are empty and barren in good works; but Tabitha was a great doer, no great talker." (Matthew Henry) Tabitha must have had seemingly unending energy, for her ministry was a broad one.
This woman (who incidentally is the only female in the New Testament to be explicitly called a disciple), this woman felt called by God to a life of simply “doing good and caring for the poor.” Apparently, she was particularly sensitive to the abject poverty and significant needs of widows in her society.
There is evidence that she was exceedingly generous with her time – and with her resources. As the Gospel writer of Luke/Acts notes, Tabitha fashioned tunics and other garments for those in need, be they the beggars who wandered the streets or the widows who ate at the soup kitchens and inhabited the homeless shelters of Joppa.
As Presbyterian pastor, Laurie Anne Kraus imagines… “A child, dressed in a gown Tabitha had made, glowing with pride as she lifted her face for the water of baptism…..A poor man, rags discarded, clothed in sturdy homespun, standing straighter, his dignity restored….. Extra food, slipped onto the church's common table-always without a word…. Packets made up and slipped into the bundles of the widows who were too proud to beg, but whom, everyone knew, had too little to live on.” That was Tabitha. She noticed enough to care about everyone.
And then one day, Tabitha fell ill. Her body just gave out on her, and she died. Maybe she had been sick for a long time and just had not told anyone. Maybe she was worn out from all her caring. Maybe she was just old. But she died – and everyone in the Joppa church was in mourning.
The children wept in their baptismal gowns. The poor men sobbed in their homespun. The widows carried the coats and dresses she had made for them in their arms – almost as if by doing so they carried a piece of Tabitha close to their hearts – and they cried too.
Tabitha was so generous that her death first rattled and then devastated the little Christian community – as deaths of church pillars often do. Who would help the many widows of that city, the ones she had cared for? How would they survive now with her gone?
And in the midst of all the grief and the guesswork, someone must have figured that Joppa needed a grief counselor, and so two of the men in the community travelled the distance to Lydda and found Peter, the recognized leader of the nascent Christian movement. “Please hurry and come to us,” they implored. And Peter did.
But when he arrived, Peter did not sit down with the widows and children and poor men whom Tabitha had served. He did not ask them how they were feeling and encourage them to express their sadness even more openly. No – Peter sent them all away from the room where Tabitha lay in state. And what followed was a powerful and empowering moment.
Peter shut the doors and knelt by the dead woman’s body and prayed. You can almost hear the quiet because the author of Luke/Acts does not include any long winded and theologically complicated prayers. In fact, we do not know what Peter prayed about. We can only speculate – give me courage, give me strength, I do not know if I can do what I sense you want me to do, I do not know if I really am filled with your Holy Spirit and can do all the things you ask me to do in your name.
But whatever Peter prayed, he eventually came around to whispering “Amen.” Then he looked down at the still form of the saintly woman. “Tabitha, get up,” he said – simple words – and most definitely to the point – words that echoed the ones that Jesus had once said to the daughter of Jairus, lying years before on another deathbed. “Get up.” And Tabitha opened her eyes and did just that.
And we are left to wonder – and UCC pastor, Kate Huey, does “what went through Peter's mind, what was in his heart, what memory and what hope gave him the audacious confidence that he could say two words, and then count on God, right then and there, to do something so astonishing. In this Easter season, perhaps we don't really have to wonder long, and Peter's confidence is testimony to the power of God in his life, the things he has seen and experienced, and the effect all of it has had (on him).”
Then, without a word, Peter offered his arm to Tabitha as any gentleman would do to such a great and well-respected lady and helped her up. He opened the door and took Tabitha out into the sunshine and her mourners saw her alive once more.
Told in the style and even using some of the same vocabulary as similar stories in the Gospels, this tale of Peter and Tabitha harkens us back to the ministry of Jesus himself. It reminds us – as well it should – of stories such as Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life and raising the daughter of Jairus. Yet, here, in our tale this morning, it is not Jesus who restores life but Peter – and this fundamental difference is significant - for us and for the church.
As United Methodist minister, Daniel Hilty, notes, “You know, it’s a funny thing: before Easter in the Bible we’re only told about Christ himself doing this kind of work that Peter and Tabitha do in our Scripture reading today.
Before Easter it was Christ who went around bringing the dead back to life, it was Christ who brought hope and compassion to the poor and the forgotten. Sure, the disciples gave it a try too from time to time, and every now and then they’d do OK, but most of the time they’d fall flat on their faces, or they’d miss the point.
But all of that seems to change after Easter. After Christ’s resurrection things are different. Suddenly, folks like Peter are bringing life to the dead. Suddenly, people like Tabitha are offering hope to the widows and outcast.
Something seems to change at Easter: it’s almost as if Jesus’ work and power have been passed right along to the folks who came after him. After Easter, there’s a cosmic shift. Things are different because Christ has conquered the grave, and after that all other obstacles seem small by comparison.”
Belief in that “cosmic shift” lies at the very core of the church and its ministry – our ministry. This story of Peter healing Tabitha presents the apostle in the role of continuing the ministry of the risen Christ. This story would demonstrated to the early church – and should demonstrate to us - that Jesus is alive and still ministering to the world – through the apostles, through the believers, through the church.
You see, the church is so much more than dutifully sitting here on Sunday morning – though being here as one body and one community is important and not to be taken lightly. Here we are restored each week with strength and courage to go forth and minister in Christ’s name. However, that is a sermon topic for another time.
Today, if you leave this place with nothing else, carry with you a belief in the power of this faith community and the power of us as individuals within the church. Trust that within us – even you and me - is the same power that allowed Peter to bring new life to Tabitha and Tabitha to bring new life to the children, the poor, the widows she served.
As Biblical scholar and theologian, Walter Brueggeman, writes, “Clearly the narrative attests that Peter—the church—is entrusted with the resurrection power of Jesus who himself carries the force of the creator God. The church is entrusted with the power to create new life. . .bodily, concretely, locally.”
Because we are the church, you and I are resurrection people – like Peter and Tabitha. And that is both exciting and daunting. You and I have been touched by the Spirit and like our forebears in this story are capable of creating new life around us.
Oh, we may not do the laying on of hands thing and be quite as dramatic as Peter was, but surely we have it within us to minister with the depth and compassion of Tabitha. Through our efforts and the power of the Holy Spirit, our little corner of the world really can be transformed.
You see, the resurrection legacy has been passed on to us – to you and to me. We are what make the resurrection real in this crazy world we live in. We have been given the tools to dispense the miraculous power of life.
Those tools are in our hearts. They are in our hands and feet as we forge a strong commitment to go about – not thinking about or talking about - but actually doing the works of love and reconciliation to which the Gospel calls us. As Francis of Assisi once said, “Preach the gospel, and when necessary, use words."
Because you see, in the end, the Gospel is not about words. It is not about the words that say that what is most important is the personal relationship we may claim to have with Jesus. It is not about the words that point only to the future and where we fit into all eternity.
The Gospel is about doing. It is about action, about loving acts now, in this world. "The good news is about bringing life where there is death, love where there is hate, healing where there is brokenness.” (William Loader)
If Easter taught us anything, it should have taught us that the story is not over. The story is never over – because, as Peter and Tabitha illustrated in this little tale in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, the power of the resurrection has been handed on to us – it is our legacy.
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
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