I don’t know whether it is a coincidence, whether it is divinely inspired, or whether it is just irony, the Lectionary text today from the Book of Acts is about healing and restoring and renewing. In light of the events that have occurred in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts this last week, I think that it is most telling that preachers throughout North America are preaching on the Book of Acts and our passage this morning. I think it is one of the great tragedies of life that it often brings the wounds of people to the surface to bring our dependence on something greater than ourselves to the fore.
Indeed, in many ways the events in Boston, Massachusetts, have been very close, even to our own ranks and our own members. One of our members lives a block from Boylston Street and has texted me over the last few days out of great concern and certainly until the culprit was arrested, great fear about what might happen. The sister of one of our members crossed the line of the race ten minutes before the explosion occurred. A minister who has preached from this very pulpit, the Reverend Robert Ripley, who was at Metropolitan United Church in London for many years, a great preacher, was in that race, and he crossed the line about fifteen minutes before the explosion.
It touches all of us. It touched me, having lived there for some months, and having relatives in the area. The names and the places, the pictures of the banks and the restaurants were all familiar, and blood and suffering on the very street where one would normally eat a hotdog and have a laugh. Tragedy and wounds get very close. They remind us of our mortality. It doesn’t matter where we are on the earth, from the moment we wake up in the morning we have no idea what tomorrow will bring or the day will bring or the month will bring or even the minute will bring.
We are mortal and fragile creatures and wounds can go very deep. Some of the wounds are of lost limbs, some of them are ultimately existential lost lives – a little boy, a young woman, an adult, a police officer shot – all with no plan for those who have to encounter it except to hope and pray for the best. We are mortal. I love what Deval Patrick, the Governor of Massachusetts, said in his speech at the service of memorial. He said, “The lessons of faith we need to return to even if they defy logic.” I liked what President Obama had put in his speech that day. He quotes from the Book of Hebrews and that wonderful line: “Run with perseverance the race that is being set before you.”
Whether it is to look back to the source of faith as Patrick said, or to run forward for the race that is before us as Obama said, either way, it is not for us to simply stand still in the face of tyranny, but to progress. The early church did that. The early Christians had exactly the same attitude. On the one hand, they looked back: they looked back with fondness to the ministry of Jesus, they looked back most especially to the central moment, his Resurrection from the dead. For the disciples, and later the Apostles, what had happened before were the lessons of faith that sometimes even defy logic, and yet they looked forward.
The Christian community did not stand still and memorialize Christ; rather they lived with Christ and took up the mantle of the healing ministry that he had. This is what we see happening in this very text from the Book of Acts. Here, the early church manifests how you deal with wounds, death and collective grief. The story of the raising of Tabitha is one of the greatest stories in the whole of The New Testament, and yet as I read it, I felt that I needed some interpretation to make sense of it.
So often when Luke, who wrote the Book of Acts, gives an account like this there is sort of a sermon attached to it or a point of interpretation given to it in order that you may learn a lesson from it, but not so in this case. All he does is simply tell the story, and he leaves it up to us to interpret it. At times, when I have read this, particularly as a preacher, I feel robbed. I feel like saying “Just give me a line that explains why this was important.” But, it is not there.
It is funny, you know, that when there are moments of crises one tends to reminisce. I reminisced about a time when I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a friend of mine and I decided to go to the movies in Medford Square, where one of the victims is from. I remember going to the movie theatre with him. He had always wanted to go and see a classic movie in one of the old theatre houses in Medford Square. The very famous movie La Dolce Vita (some of you will remember that and some of you will be born since that), but La Dolce Vita was a great movie at the time, an iconic movie, and he wanted to see it.
He dragged me along and just as we took our seats there was an announcement from the manager saying “We regret to inform you that because of technical difficulties there will be no translation into English put on the screen throughout the movie.” I nearly died! My friend spoke a little Italian. He could get some of it. Me? I sat there watching a movie I didn’t want to watch, about a subject that I didn’t care about, in a language that I didn’t understand. It was Purgatory! It really was. Not having anything to understand it by – no sub-titles being there – really made it painful.
Nevertheless, I got something out of it. I understood the pathos and the lesson of that movie: the good life isn’t what we always think it is. But, I would like it to be interpreted for me. I feel the same way about the Tabitha story. When I read this that I have no sense of the power that Peter had to bring Tabitha back to life. What power did he have? It is not given in this story, but it is given in the story right before it. It is there in the story of Aeneas, where Peter has the power to heal in the name of Jesus Christ.
One can assume that in this story it is the very same power that Peter had. It is the power that had come from the Resurrection and the presence of the Living Christ in the Spirit. This is what empowered Peter to do what Patrick said: “to defy logic.” But, look at this story! There are within it so many dimensions of healing. There is a personal dimension: Tabitha, which is Aramaic for the Greek Dorcas, which in English means Gazelle,( a lovely name for someone) was much loved and respected by the citizens of Joppa and by the Christian community, so much so that when Tabitha died they sent two envoys a few miles away to Lydda to Peter, one of the Apostles, to see if he could come right away and do something miraculous. Peter, upon hearing the need of the Christian community in Joppa, left immediately and went with the two envoys.
It is fascinating that the early church believed that those who had witnessed the Resurrection now themselves had a power to be able to heal in the name of the Risen Lord. It is why the Apostles are so important, and their witness, as I suggested on Easter Sunday. And so, Peter goes there and he finds everyone milling around. They had already washed her body in preparation for burial. There were people who were gathered in the hallway of the house. There were widows, fellow widows with Tabitha, who were crying, and Peter arrives on the scene and he says, “Please leave us alone.”
Why he did that we do not know; Luke doesn’t tell us. Was it to concentrate? Was it to be able to pray? Was it because the widows were a distraction? Was it because Peter himself was worried if things hadn’t gone well? We don’t know. He just simply says, “Please leave us alone.” And then, in one of the great moments in The New Testament, he goes over to Tabitha and he calls out her name: “Tabitha, arrestee!” (Tabitha, rise up!) And, Tabitha rises up. Then, coming back to the crowd, he presents her, and people believe and there is great joy.
Peter had come all the way from Lydda though to care for one individual. The people of the church had gone to seek him out of concern for the individual. The widows and those who were grieving in the house had asked for help to heal the individual. There is a sense in which in so many of these New Testament encounters there is empathy, there is a love for and a concern for the welfare of an individual person. We see these stories repeated over and over again in the Book of Acts. It is one of love. It is one of compassion.
When I think of the love that the people in Joppa had for Tabitha I think of that magnificent stanza from Plato’s Stella, which was translated later by Shelley. This is what Plato wrote: “Thou art the morning star among the living ere their light has fled. Now having died thou art Hesperus, giving new splendour to the dead.”
Tabitha was thought of with that same passion, and it was the compassion of the community, and it was the compassion of Peter to go to the wounded and to bring life. It is not that Tabitha was immortal; it was just not Tabitha’s time to die, and Tabitha was given new life. The healing of the person in The New Testament!
There is also a sense of the congregational dimension in all of this. We read that the congregation were in Joppa, and Joppa is now known of course as Jaffa, and Jaffa is where we get the wonderful oranges from. What a place! Jaffa, Joppa, it is an historic town. It goes back thousands of years. It is the place where Jonah was from before he was swallowed by the whale. This was his home. Joppa is historic, and to have a Christian community in this historic town is significant, because that community was hurting, that community was mourning and grieving. They had lost someone that they loved and we are told that she died suddenly, or it appeared that way. They are grieving and they are lost.
Joppa was Boston, but without the assassins, a place that hurt, a community that grieved, a city that needed care. So often, when you face a calamity there is this tremendous temptation to respond with a steely hardness, with anger or reserve or fear. But not in this case! The congregation reached out to Peter.
One of my favourite writers spent most of his time and his life in later years in Massachusetts and in the ocean states of New England. His name is Frederick Buechner. I have quoted him before. He is dear to my heart! I remember when I lived in Bermuda hearing about him, because he had grown up in Bermuda, and had gone on to become a famous Presbyterian minister and a writer, and was even on The New York Times bestseller list.
He writes about wounds and grief. I thought about this at the service in Boston. I was amazed no one read from Buechner; I would have would have read from Buechner at that service. He is brilliant and this is what he says:
When it comes to putting broken lives back together, when it comes in religious terms to the saving of souls, the human best tends to be at odds with the holy best. To do for yourself the best that you have in it for you to do: to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world in its harshest and worst is by that very act to be unable to let something be done for you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from: the love of God.
It is so easy when you face wounds and difficulties and sadness to have that steely resolve and just rely on yourself but, as he is suggesting, it is the time when you should let go and cast yourself into the hands of God. That is exactly what Peter did and what the community of Joppa did with the raising of Tabitha.
I am often amazed, and I know that probably more than any us, Dr. Hunnisett sees this, but when people face grief and when they face a loss it is almost incomparable, the love and support that a Christian community can give you. There is something qualitative about the nature of having people of faith around you when you are grieving. Oh, I am not suggesting that others who have little or no faith cannot provide solace and comfort; they can. You can find the support that you need in many different places in many communities, but not like this one, for this has something that others don’t have: it has what Deval Patrick called “the memory of faith.”
It is that word of faith, that word of hope, that word of transformation and that word of Resurrection that the healing Christian community gives. I always feel sorry for those who do not have that in their lives when they have moments of sorrow and grief, for I feel that they lose something. It was the same with those widows in that story. They are grieving; they have prepared the body; their sister in spirit had died: they needed love and support at the moment of their sorrow and their grief, and Peter came and he brought it in the name of Christ. At the moment of the greatest need, the people of faith stepped up.
There is one final dimension in this that must not be lost, and that is the charitable dimension. It is interesting that Luke tells us that Tabitha was a person who cared for the poor. Tabitha was probably from among the poor, but we don’t know that. We are told, however, that she cared for them. Can you imagine the scene? The body is laid out. Peter is brought in. Everyone is gathered around. And, what do the widows do, but bring out some of the robes and the clothes that Tabitha has made for the poor. Can you imagine how his heart must have been moved to see such charity, to see such compassion that had come from this woman that was lying before him?
It is not that Tabitha needed to earn the grace of God or the power of the Spirit to raise her from the dead. That is not what is being pointed out. What is being pointed out nevertheless was the fact that she lived the life of caring for the poor and lifting them up. Howard Snyder of Tyndale Seminary, a former professor who toured around with Reverend David McMaster in Kentucky, makes a fascinating point that from its very origins, the Christian community cared for the poor and those wounded by poverty.
You see it in the story of Cornelius in Acts, Chapter 10. You see it in The Old Testament, where the great character Job we are told, even in the midst of his own struggles, cared for the poor. And then there is that incredible line from the Book of Proverbs: “He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will reward him for what he has done.” Jesus personalized this himself, “Whatever you do for these, the least of my children, you do for me.” In other words, you care for the poor amongst you.
People become poor for many reasons. Sometimes, it is psychological and emotional. Sometimes, they are poor because of unemployment and a general poverty. Sometimes, it is because of famine or war. Sometimes, it is ill health that makes them unable to work. Sometimes it is injustice and depression. People get poor for many reasons. But, one of the things that I find in the Bible is that it doesn’t speculate about those causes; it simply engages the need of the poor when you meet them. Not that those things should not be addressed, but that the care for the poor is the first thing.
Here, in this passage, there is the remembrance of somebody who devoted her life to caring for the poor. We don’t need subtitles or interpretations to understand this text. The story tells it all! The dimension of caring for the individual, the dimension of the healing community, the dimension of the charitable community: these are the things that define the mission of the church. These are the things that should reach into our soul. These are the things that are a result of the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. These are the things the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will need for years to come – and so do we! Amen.