Called Back To Life
Acts 9:36-43, John 10:22-30
Before 9:00 am on Friday, cars filled the church parking lot. Moms, Dads in their running shoes and visors were armed with sunscreen, water bottles, sunglasses. They were making the commute over to the far sides of the school where there were large inflatables, cones lining off zones of fierce competition and messy games, pennants flying in the breeze. Clumps of other parents yawning their way to aliveness gathered, wishing for one more cup of coffee as they drew in the fresh oxygen of the morning. Praying this would be enough to get them through another field day. If you’re a parent or a teacher, you’ve been there. May, the busiest month of the school year. The month of incessant year-end programs: band concerts, awards day,dance recitals, piano recitals, Muffins with Mom, Donuts with Dad, Teacher appreciation! Middle school move up meetings, instrument fittings for next year! Plus track meets, baseball tournaments. There are exams and graduations, not only for seniors anymore. Kindergarteners, 5th graders, some preschools host graduation programs! Parents and teachers are exhausted by the time May gets here. Reading log? Are we still supposed to be doing that? We are barely getting to school on time. Don’t ask us to give that final book report or science project the craftsmanship and research rigor we gave it back in September. Backpack zippers and straps are tattered or broken. I ask you: Are they clothed? Wearing shoes? Are they present when attendance is taken? THAT is winning May, my friends. We need to just hold on a little while longer. Soon summer will be here to resuscitate your souls.
Don’t we sometimes need to catch our breath? Or more than that – a direct flow of oxygen, air, Spirit? It seems there are many places in this world that need resuscitation. Weary and worn down places. People stretched too thin. Many are asleep with apathy. Paralyzed by poverty of wallet or poverty of spirit. Like those in Acts 9, today, we need to hear Peter call our names and say, “Get up!” We need God to call us back to life. The life God intends for us to have.
The book of Acts tells the story of the apostles after Jesus is resurrected; and it tells the story of a new movement, the early days of the formation of the church. I believe that a dip into the stories of the early church might give us some guidance as we celebrate our 60th anniv soon and seek the next steps God has for us. Where do we need to be resuscitated? What paralysis is holding us down?
There are two vignettes here back to back that disrupt the flow of Acts after a “coherent account of Paul’s conversion.” We have these two stories of Peter with Aeneas and then Peter with Tabitha (AKA Dorcas). Perhaps, Will Willimon suggests, they are from an older, more primitive legend about Peter. Their placement here invites us to get curious, to inquire what is Luke trying to proclaim through these stories inserted here? Just as they disrupt the literary flow, Luke portrays through them the ways God is acting as a disruptor in the community.[1]
I see this happening in two ways: 1) no one must stay in their prescribed role; and 2) what is dead and dying can be resuscitated.
The apostle Peter is said to be going “here and there among all the believers” (Acts 9:32). He is keeping busy and he is working wonders. Before going to Tabitha, Peter is in Lydda where he encounters a man named Aeneas who has been bedridden for eight years due to paralysis. Eight years. Peter invokes the name of Jesus and instructs Aeneas to “Get up!” and make his bed!! (Moms, do we feel seen? The next time you say this, you can tell them you are quoting scripture!) Aeneas is immediately healed in his body and able to get up. And because of this, many turn to the Lord. While in Lydda, Peter receives word from Joppa that he is needed urgently. This is where the second vignette begins. In Joppa, there is a disciple named Tabitha… (record-scratch). Have you heard someone argue that women cannot be leaders in the church because it is not “biblical?” Somebody forgot to tell Luke![2] Tabitha merits the only use of the feminine form of the Greek word for disciple here in Acts 9:36. Why? Luke’s insertion of this detail is meant to be a disruptor.[3] There is a pattern of disruption in this new community of the early church.
Tabitha is devoted to acts of kindness and charity. She leads a ministry to other widows. The majority of the poor and starving in the first century were women who had no male agency, wealth in which to share. In the patriarchal system, widows relied on the charity of the community, or they starved there on the margins of society. You might recall that Jesus scolded the scribes and Pharisees for ignoring the needs of the widows and the most vulnerable in their midst (Matthew 23). These women need someone to represent them, to protect them. These are to whom Tabitha has given her life.
When Peter arrives in Joppa, he is met by the mourners. Tabitha’s death has caused a crisis in the community. The most vulnerable have lost their champion. They don’t trouble Peter with theology, or physiology, or ask for consolation. They show him how Tabitha has clothed them, has cared for them. They are consumed with how they will survive.[4]
Peter ushers them out of the room so that he is left alone to pray. It reminds us that he does not act on his own power. Notice in both scenes, Peter didn’t ask Aeneas if he could try to stand up. He doesn't beg Tabitha to please rise from her bed. He speaks in imperatives. “Get up!” “Tabitha, get up!” The Spirit of God who raised Jesus– calls back to life this faithful woman, this disciple, whose compassion and service will characterize the new community these early believers are creating.
Do you see this pattern of disruption unfolding? No one must stay in their expected places.
First century societal norms would say:
➢ Humble fishermen, like Peter, should stick to their nets and not teach in the synagogue; or wander around invoking the name of the Messiah.
➢ Sick old men like Aeneas should stay in bed until the Lord calls him home.
➢ Tabitha, a widow woman, should stay home and let the men solve the problem of caring for the poor.
But you may have heard it said, “No good comes from should.”
When we seek to follow Jesus, we can trust our internal compass and the “shoulds” that play in our minds, get turned upside down. Luke shows us that in the early church, no one stays in their place. In fact, “common fishermen are preaching to the temple authorities, paralyzed old men are up and walking about and changing lives, and a woman heads a welfare program among the poor at Joppa.”[5]
How might we resist conforming to what’s expected of us if it is getting in the way of God’s call upon us? I wonder if folks :”out there” expect us to be boring Baptists bound to tradition; bound to a denomination that limits the call of women. We are BOLD, Faithful and free, Baptist Christians who are called, like Tabitha, to the least of these. Tabitha’s work was too important to die. I see Tabithas all over this church and I know that as we move into the future, the service we do in the community - the care we give to the poor and outcast - must continue. That work is too important to die. Let’s keep breathing life into ministries and new ideas that lead us to the least of these in Huntsville and beyond.
This world is not an easy place for us to live out our faith, to express our convictions. There seems to be a lot of people or places beyond resuscitation. In our society where there are such stark polarizations - even among Christians! – what seems like insurmountable division can lead to numbness, emptiness, or apathy. The vortex of hate, vitriol, name-calling will suck the life right out of you. And how can you, at that point, be resuscitated?
It happens in churches, too. They are too inward-facing, navel-gazing, in a survival mode of operation that’s no longer aware of the people on the margins, or where God is already at work out there in front of them. How might we / they in our anemic apathy be resuscitated, brought back to life?
For one, let’s keep dedicating ourselves to the children in our community who look to us to model what it means to follow Jesus with generosity of kindness and compassion, with boldness in our faith.
Here’s another way that I have experienced here just last week. On Wednesday nights in the month of May, we are gathering right here, to hear the spiritual autobiographies of some of our own members. In their profound honesty and integrity, in their brave and earnest sharing of their personal faith story, our community takes a collective breath. We are given the chance to “overcome the intense privacy and individualism that are cultural icons of our day”[6] and that overwhelmingly contributes to that polarization. Listening to understand another person, to walk alongside them in their faith journey, we experience resuscitation. This past week, I felt it in my own spirit. I felt it in the room. I felt my own apathy and anger melt away. I experienced communal healing. Will Willimon says, “Every time a couple of little stories like Aeneas’ and Tabitha’s are faithfully told by the church,” paralysis and death are rendered null and void. I think the same is true in the telling of our own faith stories, healing stories, redemption stories.
Just as Peter called the dead and dying back to life, may we hear the evangelical and prophetic call of God when Spirit says to us, “My child, Get up!”
[1] Willimon, William Interpretation Series, Acts
[2] Harvard, Joseph F. Feasting on the Word, Lent through Easter Year C commentary
[3] Willimon, William Interpretation Series, Acts
[4] ibid.
[5] ibid.
[6] Jones, Stephen, D. Feasting on the Word, Lent through Easter Year C commentary