Acts 9: 36-43

Rev. Lisa Day

Swarthmore Presbyterian Church

April 25, 2010

Next month, I will celebrate the third anniversary of my graduation from Princeton Theological Seminary.  And if there is one thing Princeton seminary prides itself on, it is the emphasis on speech and preaching in the curriculum.  All students, even those destined for PhDs or social work, or pastoral counseling, all students must take speech class the first year, emphasizing the reading of scripture, and preaching in the middle year.  Dr. Gross, Dr. Bartow, Dr. Brothers did not agree on everything, but were unanimous with one piece of advice:  The perils of beginning a sermon with a joke.  Folks might laugh, and welcome the lightness, they warned, but they likely won’t remember anything but the joke.  So, with apologies to my professors…

Three pastors walk into a coffee bar to discuss a funeral book they are reading together.  The author urges the return to a practice of a viewing for the body at the time of death.  What words would you hope to hear spoken over your open coffin, they asked one another?  So Rev. Day says, "I would like them to look down and say, 'She was a wonderful mother, she always loved and supported her children and they never knew a day when she didn’t delight in them.’"   Then Rev. Weicher says, "That's lovely Day.  But I would like them to say, 'He was a great man in the community and the church - he did so much to make both a better place.’"   Rev. Wohlschlaeger says, "That's very nice, you two, but I would like them to look down and to hear them say, 'Look! He's moving!”

And if all you remember is the joke, you will have a gotten a good bit of the what is in the sermon today.   

We start with the viewing of a body.  Though in this case, no one looked down at her and said she was a wonderful mother.  We actually don’t learn anything at all about her family status.  Is she a mother?  A wife?  A widow?   We aren’t told.  This is surprising since, unlike often spare Bible stories, there are many other rich details about her here.  And when we get rich details about a woman in the Bible (or just about anywhere else) we usually get her marital and maternal status in the mix. 

What do we learn about this woman?   She is named as “disciple,” the only woman so named in the entire New Testament.  She has two names, her Aramaic name, Tabitha, and a Greek one, Dorcas.  Perhaps this is an indication that her ministry as a disciple is to the stranger, the immigrant, a bi-lingual, bi-cultural ministry.  I guess it’s a good thing she was working in Joppa and not Arizona.  But nobody is standing over her body extolling her virtues as a mother and family woman.

They do proclaim her to be a great woman in the community and in the church, a disciple, one known for good works, and acts of charity.  She is so important that they  send two men to fetch Peter, the leader of the Jerusalem church from where he was staying 10 miles away.  Why do they send for Peter?  We aren’t sure and the text doesn’t tell us.  Do they want the senior pastor there to preside over the funeral?  Or is there some hope that the Spirit who blew new life in Pentecost and came upon them in their baptisms might be able to do something through Peter?  Having heard of the healings he has begun to do in Jesus’ name, do they hope for more than a healing here?

Tabitha is clearly important, a great woman in the community and the church – testified to by the fact that Peter drops everything and comes quickly.  And as quickly as he arrives, he is surrounded by widows.  They weep as they show the material evidence of Tabitha’s faithful care for them and others.  They weep at the support they have lost.

Widows we do know about.  In that patriarchal society, a widow was so vulnerable without a man – husband or son—to support her.  She was cut off economically and socially and vulnerable to starvation and death.  The God of Israel oft judged the nation by how the widow was cared for, and also the immigrant stranger.  As the psalmist said, "The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin."

Jesus, as you may recall, restored one widow to life and security by raising her dead son, her protector and provider.  And so it was no surprise that vulnerable widows would be attracted to the early church, to those who were following in Jesus’ Way.  It would be good news for widows of that day to find a home in a community established on the firm foundation of God’s call to love neighbor, to welcome the stranger, to provide for the least of these.  And Tabitha had been faithful in all these ways.

Perhaps you remember Peter’s earlier history with widows in the church?  It’s found in a passage from Acts 6 that we’re lingering over together at each of our deacon meetings since it is about the beginnings of deacon ministry in the church.  Those early days when the church was growing by leaps and bounds after Pentecost, growing with widows and orphans and those in need among other new members, and the Hellenists, the Greek speaking folk, got upset because of the neglect of their widows when it was time for the food to be distributed.  The 12 apostles were frustrated at being drawn into this fray; or, as they put it, ‘It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait at tables.” Seven dedicated and faithful disciples were chosen to work with the widows, Stephen first among these.  Stephen and the others could look after the widows, make sure the distribution of food and goods was fair and provide for all in need in the community, could do the waiting at tables.  Peter and the apostles would then be free to “devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the word.”  With Jesus ascended, the business of living into God’s kingdom becomes the work of his disciples.

And living into God’s kingdom turns out to be risky business for the disciples, just as it was for Jesus.  Not long after his appointment as the first deacon, Stephen is stoned to death for being a follower of Jesus’ Way.  And here, Tabitha, a disciple like Stephen who has been serving the widows, is also claimed by Death, this time in the form of sudden illness.

Tabitha’s discipleship was not marked by what she said, her proclamation of the Gospel was not in words, but in her deeds.  These least of the community, and of the church, have been tenderly cared for by Tabitha: their nakedness covered by garments she made, their deep needs met by her loving deeds.  And so they have tended to her dead body, washed it, clothed it, lovingly laid it out, companioned it with tears.  This is no shell from which her spirit has departed, this is the beloved flesh and body of Tabitha, also called Dorcas, a disciple of the Lord Jesus, a friend to strangers and widows as Jesus was.

So Peter comes, and by prayer and word, Tabitha is restored to life and to those who still need her love and care.  There is no theological statement about how this happens, only that it happens.  The dead one is raised, the provider is restored to the widows, just as Jesus restored the son to that poor widow of Nain in Luke’s gospel.  The power of Jesus remains present in the church in the Holy Spirit so that what he did on earth is now done by his church in his name.  Healing, raising the dead, reaching out to the poor and outcast, confronting authorities.  The risky business of living into God’s kingdom continues.

And even as the young church is called to live with courage into God’s kingdom, they are shown that the Holy Spirit is with them.  In Tabitha’s raising, there is the gift of confidence that in death they belong to God as surely as did Jesus Christ.  The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is not a singular one time act by a loving God, but the first of many.  The church can declare with confidence, “We believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” 

We have been busy in this church thinking and talking about death these past three weeks at adult education. Between 60 and a hundred of us have gathered, the first week to hear some of our wise physicians talk about the blessing and sometimes bane of modern medical interventions.  Last week, we heard from two of our lawyers and a grief counselor, about how to prepare ourselves and those we love for our deaths, how to attend to our legacy.  Today, we wondered together at the mystery which awaits when death comes, as it will, to each of us.  Can God be trusted to hold us close in death and to raise us to new life on the other side?  It is the existential crisis – the breathlessness that can come in the middle of the night as we contemplate our mortality.  What is next?  Can God be trusted?  We weep along with those widows for our Tabithas, and for ourselves.

Our other scripture readings today speak of the God who knows our name.  In John’s gospel, Jesus declares himself a good shepherd.  “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. … My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”   He knows us by name – just as God said to the people in exile in Isaiah:  “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” 

Or in another reading that came to my inbox this week care of one of you.  It is not scripture, but perhaps an inspired work of the Spirit nevertheless.  Someone asked young children about what love means.  One youngster replied:  “When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.  You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.”

Jesus, our Good Shepherd, leads the way, the way to life, through death, and into resurrection.  And we follow.  “Tabitha, get up!”  Her name is safe.  Her life is safe, both here and hereafter.  And so is ours.  And so perhaps the question for us, is not so much what happens when we die, but how does what we believe about what happens when we die free us up to live – to really live -- to live today as if we were indeed already living life eternal.

Our faith teaches that we have already died – in our baptisms, we have died to ourselves, to sin, to Death, and we have risen to new life in Christ.  In our baptisms, our eternal life in Christ has already begun, is indeed being lived out this very day.  There is freedom for the way we live our lives when we are confident that God’s arms, God’s love, God’s kingdom somehow await us in our death as surely as they hold us now.  Our names are safe in God’s mouth.  Our lives, and those of the ones we love, even the ones we love who have died, are safely held in God’s life. 

And so for now, like Tabitha, our life can be a living sermon, an embodied proclamation of the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, until our baptisms are complete in our death, and our journey on the Way of Jesus Christ at last leads us all home!