Meanwhile, In Joppa

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Easter 4C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Acts 9:36-43

“³⁶Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. ³⁷At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. ³⁸Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, “Please come to us without delay.” ³⁹So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. ⁴⁰Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. ⁴¹He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. ⁴²This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. ⁴³Meanwhile he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.”

The lectionary surprises me sometimes.  Even after close to seven years of going through it, and not yet being completely in the habit of mapping out our Sunday morning messages far in advance, I’m caught off guard when the selections for succeeding Sundays skip a passage that I would expect to follow.  I mentioned last week at the beginning of the message that the passage for last Sunday was taking us almost to the end of the Gospel of John, and that we would probably be finishing it up today.  That turns out not to be the case.  The selections for today did not include those last few verses of John.  Don’t ask.  I don’t know the reasoning behind leaving that passage for another time.

But here we have it.  Of the passages selected for today, we have the story of Peter’s raising Tabitha, or Dorcas in Greek, from the dead.  Though it’s not spelled out in the text, it bears noting that, when we read about someone being resurrected in the New Testament, it needs to be distinguished from Christ’s resurrection in one crucial detail.   Each one of those other people who were resurrected eventually DID, once again, die.  Jesus did not.  Just thought I’d make a point of that, in case there were any questions out there. 

Remember that as we approach the scriptures today, our challenge is to do it with an eye and an ear to what those who first approached it centuries ago would have seen or heard in the story that would speak to them and why, and see how that would be the same touchstone for us today or if it may have changed over time. 

First, we review the story.  

It is, as the title states, a telling of the Acts of the Apostles – literally – things they did.  In this instance, we have Peter, the one we left on the beach professing his love for Jesus, and Jesus telling him to ‘feed his lambs, tend his sheep, and feed his sheep’.  We are today jumping ahead some indeterminate amount of time, though it could stand to reason that it was not a LONG time – perhaps weeks or a few months, and that same man who had left Jerusalem in the wake of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, after having SEEN Jesus and spoken to him and eaten with him he’d then TRIED to go back to fishing.  Apparently it didn’t work. 

He couldn’t seem to fight back this urge to tell the story, to let people know what he’d lived through, what he was a witness to.  And along the way, he is made aware of a woman who was a disciple who was devoted to good works and to charity, and who had died.  He’s not too far away from where they have her, so he goes to the house in Joppa where they have her body.  He gets there, is taken to the room where she’s been laid out, and the women whom she’d been working with, ‘the widows’, the text points out, show him the tunics and other clothing that Tabitha had made while she was with them… it’s an important note to make … it’s not just a passing comment.  What it let’s us know is that she was helping the most destitute population of her society – the widows.  And in knowing that, we know a little more about her.  To say that she was ‘devoted to good works and acts of charity’ gets the information across about what she spent her days doing, but adding the detail about the widows helps us know HER as a person – it tells us that her call was to minister to those who had the least recourse in first century Palestine.  Widows depended either on their children or on the kindness of strangers to survive, or they remarried, and marrying out of desperate necessity makes for truly untenable relationships. 

So we get to know a woman who knew Jesus and followed him and served as his presence in Joppa, with the most marginalized segment of society at that.  And she got sick and died. 

When one serves the most marginalized segment of society, it is usually lonely work.  It’s not exactly the most popular ministry to be involved in.  AIDS hospice care, a home for pregnant teenagers, or a homeless shelter for mostly mentally ill people.  There are any number of valid ministry opportunities vying for our attention and our efforts, to say nothing of our contributions.  So if one that is an ongoing concern is … dependent on the energies and efforts of a single dynamic individual, if that person were to suddenly disappear, that ministry is at risk of crumbling.  It’s not a criticism of the way the ministry is run; it’s a statement of the facts as they relate to difficult and challenging ministries.

We COULD look at this story of Peter’s raising Tabitha from the dead as simply a response to the critical nature of the ministry she performed being assured a continuation – at least until she could hopefully teach the widows to sell garments for themselves to gain some way to earn a living and not be entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers.   

But we could also see this story as presenting us with an image, a picture of Christ as he is conveyed through the life of a disciple.  The widows had found a … I could say benefactor, and though it would be an accurate description it wouldn’t, I think, communicate the full impact that Tabitha’s life was having on them. In losing their husbands they had lost all identity, they were very literally non-persons in that society, and Jesus, through Tabitha, was giving them that back. 

When she passed away, their loss was at LEAST doubled.  From being a recognized member of society, with a position as wives to their husbands, through to the experience of losing the man on whom their position depended, and therefore their identity, and now to be in a position of contemplating losing the new identity they were just beginning to regain … that was a whole new experience for them, it was completely unexpected, and yet, Jesus had found a way through his disciple Tabitha to give them that sense of self, of worth, of value, back.

And in the face of that second great loss, Jesus sends Peter, who reestablishes that presence in their lives.  In a very concrete sense, Jesus brought life back to their lives.  And it wasn’t in the person of Tabitha, strictly speaking, nor was it through the person of Peter… though they were both involved. 

It was through his OWN presence – THROUGH THEM. 

William Loader, research professor at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, put it this way:

The good news is about bringing life where there is death, love where there is hate, healing where there is brokenness. The greater wonder today is when we can see people stand on their feet, communities make their way out of traps of poverty, enemies move towards reconciliation, despairing people finding meaning again. These are realities which take up the direction or flow of what would otherwise be legends left to the past. They invite us to take such stories as symbols of what is an abiding value and through them to find the hand of God in new beginnings today. 

And that IS one thing that God in Christ was and is still about even today: New Beginnings. 

In the face of a world that would generally write off anyone who is not young, rich and beautiful, we have this story of lives that are being transformed.

It is worth noting that Luke makes an initial reference to her name as Tabitha in Aramaic or Hebrew, but then says her name was Dorcas in Greek and then refers to her by that name throughout the rest of the narrative I don’t think that detail would have been lost on the listeners or readers of the Gospel in the first century.  Not only do they see Peter, a Jewish man, and Dorcas, a Greek named woman, working together to form and sustain this community, but it is an image of the body of Christ – the church – personified through them – being an active part in the redemption and the transformation of lives that had been written off. 

Where does Jerusalem Baptist Church fit into the story?

What role are we playing in this passage this morning?  Are we the widows, weeping for what has been lost?  Our sense of purpose, our identity, our base?  Or are we Dorcas, lying cold on the bed, dead to the world until Jesus comes along in the person of Peter and prays life into us once again?

On a slightly different note, what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton today?

Are we going to let the dead remain dead, as most of the people, named or not in the story, were ready to do, or are we going to imagine something completely, radically different from the reality we’ve lived with all our lives, one that allows for the completely unexpected to happen – and for God to work through that to redeem humanity to God’s self?  Can we be as bold as Peter and pray for an incredible miracle to happen in this very room?  Can we follow that prayer with two simple words, “Jerusalem, arise”?

Let’s pray.