April 28/29, 2007

Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; John 10:22-30

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, time for preachers to pull out their best sheep stories.

I do have a couple: There's the flickering memory from living on a farm when I was 2 or 3, watching the farmer shear the sheep. The lambs didn't always go uncomplaining forth for their haircut, despite the pronouncement of the old hymn. What I remember is the animals' bleating, the farmer's determination, the occasional nick of the electric razor. I remember how odd the sheep looked without their wool coats, not quite themselves anymore after the farmer's swift work... how they shuddered from their sudden nakedness..

And there's the story of the bad perm Becky Schaller gave me one day when we were in high school. Her mother was a hair stylist so I thought Becky would know what she was doing. But I came out of her basement with my shoulder-length hair in tight fuzzy coils against my head, looking a lot like one of Jesus' little wooly-headed lambs, It wasn't the look I was going for.

Those are my sheep stories. Not much gold there to mine for a sermon, really. So I went back to the texts appointed for the Church for today... And I heard Tabitha calling out to me. Tabitha and Peter and Simon the tanner.

Tabitha was a pillar of her congregation in Joppa, one of the go-to, salt-of-the-earth folks, beloved and famous for her unstinting care of others. She had a soft spot in her big heart for widows, who -- along with orphans, resident aliens, the poor, and the powerless -- were among the most vulnerable in Roman society. The widows of Joppa looked to Tabitha and her congregational care committee for the tangible help no one else would give them.

The only woman in all of scripture to be called a disciple, Tabitha cared for widows apparently out of her own resources and in the most practical of ways - she sewed their clothing. Her death created such a crisis that the congregation sent for Peter.

Peter, who by this time had earned a reputation as a healer, comes quickly, but Tabitha has already died, and the wake is well underway. The upper room where she has been laid out is filled with friends, mostly widows who stand sobbing -- dressed in the clothes she had sewed for them, passing around afghans, sweaters, and shawls, all knitted by Tabitha. Everyone there had a story about how her life had touched theirs, how some selfless act of devotion she had performed for them had lifted them from despair. In their sobs, Peter hears their wordless request to bring their friend and benefactor back to them.

Through Peter's prayer, God grants the widows' wish and gives Tabitha her life back. As Peter speaks at her bedside, her eyes fly open and she who has helped so many to stand on their own is helped to her feet. The solemn wake bursts open into a joyous street dance.

Tabitha's story is a story of hope, of resurrection - a demonstration of God doing a new thing... catalyzed here by Peter, who calls down the power of the Risen Christ to do this holy work of raising the dead.

The story ends with what might seem like an odd bit: the mention of Peter's lodging arrangement in Joppa. He stays for some time following Tabitha's comeback party, Luke tells us...with Simon, a tanner in that town.

Now Peter was fastidious about keeping kosher, so bunking with a tanner is an astonishing choice. For tanners - who worked with animal carcasses to make leather from the hides -- were chronically unclean... To Jews, they were untouchables, really...outsiders pushed to the margins of society.

I think I know this Simon. He goes by the name Marlin now. Marlin is a faithful member of the church Gene and I raised our children in. He has worn his magic green leisure suit and bolo tie to worship nearly every Sunday for the 29 years we've known him. His fingernails are always grimy, stained by whatever it is that he handles at work. His brain is stained too, you might say - addled, perhaps, by the fumes that hang in the air of a dirty workplace. Only the first half of Marlin's sentences makes any sense, but one time I understood him to say that he worked in a leatherworks, tanning animal hides. "Smelly work," he muttered. At church, Marlin is on the ushering rotation. He's pretty good at handing out worship folders. And he's the one who makes sure Bill, who is blind, gets up to communion and back to his pew again.

None of us knows much about Marlin. How does he get to church? Is he part of a family? Does anybody watch out for him at all? Most people at church avoid him, to be frank. He says inappropriate things and smells a bit. He lives on the margins if anybody does. But he is faithful in worship and helps out as he is able.

And Tabitha. We all know her. She's the one who collects winter coats and new socks for those experiencing homelessness, and caps and mittens for elementary children experiencing their first winter in Minnesota. She ties quilts for Lutheran World Relief, crochets bandages for Global Health Ministries, and knits prayer shawls for members of her church family who are sick, mourning the death of a loved one, or otherwise in distress. She runs errands for families in crisis, and brings casseroles to new parents. PROP counts on re-stocking the shelves of the community food shelf with donations from her church, and CAP looks forward to the gently used clothing and household goods she hauls in for sale at the thrift shop.

Like the Tabithas we know, Tabitha in our scripture story took care of people. Her compassion went far beyond Minnesota nice. She walked alongside people surrounded by darkness, shouldering their burdens, crying with them in their pain, dancing with them in their joys. Her love was hands-on and down-to-earth. Her work was holy work: The work of a servant -- emptied of ego to be filled by God's Spirit to serve the least, the weak, the shoved-aside. Her work was that of a shepherd -- feeding, sheltering, protecting her flock.

But Tabitha's isn't the only holy work in this story.

When God works through Peter's prayer to restore the widows' friend to life, we get a dramatic example of how God uses the church - peopled by overachieving Tabithas and sketchy types like Simon the tanner... The church, represented here by Peter (himself by turns, faith-filled and flaky) who is used by God to raise the dead. Peter, too, watching Jesus, following his lead, engages in holy work.

Tabitha's story illustrates the unfolding theme in Acts of pushing boundaries wider and wider: She knocks down walls to serve widows, who were among those routinely overlooked. And Peter defies Jewish purity laws to accept Simon's hospitality and calls him brother. Resurrection busting out all over!

The good news in Tabitha's story (and in the throwaway scene involving Simon the tanner, too) is that God brings life from death, wholeness from brokenness, love where there is hate, compassion where there is carelessness, welcome where there is exclusion. A miracle of resuscitation makes us wonder to be sure. But the greater wonder is how people who have been beaten down by poverty or war or racism or grief or despair, rise up to live another day, renewed in hope. But with God's miraculous power for life, the church can be the catalyst for this resurrection, continuing Jesus' work to make the world new.

In our world today there are countless "upper rooms" filled with widows and friends, fatherless children and childless parents, weeping and mourning...in places visited by hurricanes and tornadoes, tsunamis and earthquakes...in places visited by armed conflict and chaos...in hospitals and emergency rooms...in refugee camps...in city neighborhoods losing its children to poverty and hopelessness. Even these darkest of valleys, which seem to be ruled by fear and sorrow, can be overturned by "the power of God for life." But it takes radical shepherding.

When Bob and Diane's eldest son, Rob, died tragically two years ago after he was hit by a campus bus at Iowa State University, our hearts ached for them.

I hope I never forget his funeral.

One of the most impressive things about the deeply moving service in that packed church was the eulogy for Rob offered by his parents... who spoke for twenty minutes arm in arm with uncommon composure and stirring faith. When they were finished, I felt both anchored by the rock that tethered them to hope, and lighter at the same time - lifted by the new thing we could all see God was already doing in them ...and in all of us, the church assembled to weep together and to be for the Stupkas witnesses to God's love and faithfulness.

At the luncheon afterward, I asked Diane and Bob how, at a time that was so difficult for them, they could remain so composed and tend to us sitting in the pews as they did. They looked like they'd been bowled over by a miracle when they said, "It was the congregation, everyone out there. God has given us so many good friends. We felt your love and support when we looked out. It just came to us as a wave of strength. We're going to hurt for a long time but with that kind of support we know we're going to be OK."

In that funeral mass, God brought life from death in the midst of great suffering and grief. And God used the church to do it. Sadly, the prayers at Rob's bedside didn't result in his resuscitation. Nevertheless, there was -- and still is -- resurrection to celebrate, even for those who feel his absence the most.

And Tabitha's story, too - alongside that of Christ's empty tomb - bears witness that death is not the final word, "reality is not bound to what has been. Reality is bound to the promise" of the Good Shepherd, who said: "My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand."

Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)

Thanks be to God! Amen.

1 Heidi A. Peterson, "Clothed with Compassion", The Christian Century. Reprinted online at www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2184.

2 Jon M. Walton, "What about Dorcas?" The Christian Century, April 17, 2007.

3 Thanks to Seasons of the Spirit church school curriculum for the idea of "holy work" in the Acts passage.

4 The phrase ["God's] miraculous power for life" comes from a preacher's blog by Walter Brueggemann: www.theolog.org/blog/2007/04/blogging_toward_1.html.

5 Thanks to Liv for her comment posted by on a blog for preachers called Theolog: Blogging Toward Sunday: http://www.theolog.org/blog/2007/04/blogging_toward_1.html.

6 Heidi A. Peterson, "Clothed with Compassion", The Christian Century. Reprinted online at www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2184