Acts
9:36-43 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. At that time she became ill and
died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. Since 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." So 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. Peter 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. He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and
widows, he showed her to be alive. This became known throughout Joppa, and many
believed in the Lord. Meanwhile he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain
Simon, a tanner.
Revelation 7:9-17 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!" And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing, "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen." Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, "Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?" I said to him, "Sir, you are the one that knows." Then he said to me, "These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
If you look at all the selected lectionary texts for this week, there are the two we have today; the other two are the 23rd Psalm, and the story from John about the good shepherd. Well, I’ve preached those other two so often I decided to step off and preach the less familiar ones. So, today we are looking at Acts and Revelation.
It’s necessary when grappling with both, to bear in mind some background. Acts is a compilation of stories told about the work of the disciples, following the resurrection. It was likely written by the same person who wrote the Gospel of Luke, hence the two are often referred to as Luke-Acts. At the very beginning of Luke, we are told that the author is writing down what he has been told, to the best of his ability. So last week in Acts was the conversion of Saul, this week is Peter being called to Joppa, on the death of Tabitha.
Much like Canada of today, people
had to be bi, or multi-lingual. In Joppa, people spoke Greek and Aramaic.
Depending upon the context, the woman in the story was called Dorcas or Tabitha.
I imagine she was like many women we’ve known in many churches and many places. She
apparently had an unending supply of energy. She remembered everyone’s birthday. She worked hard to
support her own family, but there was always time to make special gifts for
other people, too. Casseroles when someone was ill, clothes for those who
couldn’t afford much – and often things which were hand made. Well, most of us technically
know we are limited to 24 hours in a day and seven days in a week, but people
like Tabitha always seem to have more hours in a day and somehow an extra day in every
week. Tabitha was the kind of person who was always there and always ready
to listen. If she did have a fault it was that she didn’t know how to say no,
and I’d venture to say she didn’t realise she could.
However, people became so used to
assuming she was always around, they didn’t notice how tired she was getting, how
weary of constant requests for her time, weary of the day-after-day burdens of
caring for the needs of others, weary of the hurts and sorrows she was carrying
for people, weary of the growing expectations that she could do it all. She was
devoted to good works and acts of charity, but it seemed like the church in Joppa loved having her do
the work for them.
Let’s look at this church a bit.
Churches then were brand new ‘plantings’, and didn’t have paid ministers like
we have now. This was likely a house church, as most were – where the community
of new disciples met around a meal, and where important gatherings took place.
The homes of the wealthier then were built around an inner courtyard, with
sleeping rooms on the second floor, eating space on the first, and to the rear
of the courtyard kitchens and places for the animals. Perhaps this was
Tabitha’s home, perhaps someone else’s. However, it seemed as if only Tabitha
did the work, and everyone let her. She was the stability of the gathered
community. So when she died, there was a crisis. No one else knew what to
do. No one else knew who to visit or how to visit. And worse still, no
one thought anyone could replace her.
No one had thanked her, no one had
tried to relieve her of the load. Until she died. Then they had to find a way
to minister to her. So they washed her body and laid her on a bed. The person
who had in many ways washed their feet is now being washed. She, Tabitha-Dorcas
was a named disciple, and was a special person in their midst.
But Dorcas – let’s call her that now
– Dorcas’ ministry had allowed the church to focus on their own needs.
Her work in their midst had made people think the church was there to serve
them. Her method of caring for people created a self-centered group of
people who thought there was no future if there was no Dorcas. In their minds,
the death of Dorcas spelled death for the church. They had a limited notion of
what the community is supposed to be about.
There are so many questions in this
passage, and so many ways it can be interpreted. What seems, on the surface, to
be a story about a simple death, and the calling of the leader of the disciples
Peter, to help – it’s a great passage for defining pastoral care ministry, and
developing the gifts of people within congregations. It’s a story about kinds
of ministry. It’s a story about stability versus stagnation. It’s a story about
congregational community. It’s a story about death and new life.
Did Dorcas really die, or is this
story a metaphor? The Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan has noted “Its not that the early people wrote
literally and we are now smart enough to take it metaphorically, but that they
wrote metaphorically and we are now dumb enough to take it literally.”
Stability. Something we want in
every congregation. There’s a difference, though, between stability and just
being there and letting everything happen.
The Revelation passage gives us
another insight into this paschal death and resurrection. Revelation talks
about the throne, where the Lamb is seated. The throne is the metaphor for
stability. It is not a literal throne, but a solid place where grace,
compassion and justice exist. It becomes symbolic for the centre of God’s
realm. While the word throne has many symbolic meanings, I like the meaning of
stability and the centre of the realm – because it is, in our sacraments,
services and life together, what we as community seek to emulate and establish.
A stable, solid but active-in-the-spirit community with Jesus at the centre.
In the book, The Holy Longing,
author Ronald Rolheiser posits two kinds of deaths and two kinds of life. He
says “There is terminal death and there is paschal death. Terminal
death is a death that ends life and ends possibilities. Paschal death,
like terminal death, is real. However, paschal death is a death that, while
ending one kind of life, opens the person undergoing it to receive a deeper and
richer form of life. The image of the grain of wheat falling into the
ground and dying so as to produce new life is an image of paschal death.
There are also two kinds of life: There is resuscitated
life and there is resurrected
life. Resuscitated life is when one is restored to one’s former life and health, as is the
case with someone who has been clinically dead and is brought back to
life. Resurrected life is not this. It is not a restoration of one’s old life but the reception of a
radically new life.”
So let’s assume Dorcas died. The story would have us
believe that her death was a terminal
one. She is given a resuscitated life. She comes back to life and
resumes the kind of life she had been living before. Or does she? Is this a
story about the metaphorical death of a person to one way of life, and a rising
to a new way of being – in the same place with the same people. Look at the
supposed return of Lazarus – do we think he went back to the same life in the
same way? And that word paschal or Easter – Jesus is resurrected into a new
kind of life – not resuscitated into the old life. Each, in fact, experienced
both a literal death and a paschal death
More importantly, there was another
death as well. The church had died when Dorcas had died. Essentially
the community/congregation had put all its eggs in one basket, and leaned on Dorcas
for its stability, instead of Jesus for its stability. The church could have
suffered a literal death, but instead it had an Easter death – one that yielded
a new kind of life – one which included Dorcas as a treasured leader, but
didn’t need her to hold it all together.
This little congregation learned how
to live into abundance – to celebrate what they did have not what they
didn’t. Their resurrection gives them the chance to re-evaluate who they
are and how they have been functioning as a community. They begin to reach out
more in care of others, and care for their own in different ways; they do it by
celebrating God’s abundant gifts, and the working of the Spirit throughout
community, not just inside, but outside our congregations. The Holy Spirit is
at work in our midst.
Sources:
1. Resuscitated for Service by Rev. Randy
Quinn
2. Various symbolic definitions of
‘throne’
3. Rolheiser, Ronald. The Holy Longing. Crown Publishing,
Random House; c. 1998, 1999, 2014
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