Who Will Notice?

Psalm Reading

Psalm 23 ESV

A Psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

New Testament Reading

Acts 9:36–43 ESV

Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days she became ill and died, and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him, urging him, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter rose and went with them. And when he arrived, they took him to the upper room. All the widows stood beside him weeping and showing tunics and other garments that Dorcas made while she was with them. But Peter put them all outside, and knelt down and prayed; and turning to the body he said, “Tabitha, arise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. And he gave her his hand and raised her up. Then, calling the saints and widows, he presented her alive. And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. And he stayed in Joppa for many days with one Simon, a tanner.

Who will notice?

This can be a hard passage to read. Especially in a small congregation that has suffered many losses of members through the years and has been through a great deal of transition, the story of Tabitha can be an emotional one to read. While we know that all our own Tabithas are in the full presence of the Lord for all eternity now in that great cloud of heavenly witnesses. . . it’s still a hard passage to read.

Miracle stories can be frustrating like that. They are powerful testaments to God’s love and God’s work in this world, but they are also hard to hear when we are hurting from the loss of our own Tabithas - when we no longer see in our midst some of the powerful saints that have gone down in church lore as pillars of the congregation. They are hard to hear because we so infrequently hear about miracles happening in our world today.

When we, like the widows in Joppa, are hurting from the loss of a loved one, we share stories of them, showing the works that they did while they were alive. Yet, in spite of our faith and our love for them and the important role they played in the history and community of their congregation, they are not restored to this earthly life. Miraculous earthly healing was not in God’s plan for them and that’s hard to wrestle with when we read stories of people who did find miraculous healing in God’s plan for them.

I’m sure that Tabitha eventually died for good. We probably would have heard much more about her if she hadn’t. But we aren’t told about how the community handles their grief when she does eventually die. We can probably glean some insight about that, however, by looking at how they handled it before the healing.

Tabitha’s death left a huge hole in the fellowship in Joppa. She had been working to support the widows of the community by making them tunics and clothing. She was much loved. The women of the community showed one another and Peter the beautiful things she’d made and talked about how important she was to them.

What’s interesting is that they didn’t try to “be strong” for one another. They didn’t try to hold back tears so others would feel better about things. They didn’t put on a halfway smile and say, “It’s ok, she’s in a better place now.” This passage describes some real vulnerability. These women openly weeped with one another over their loss. They were vulnerable and open with each other. 

In her life, Tabitha knew her name – I talked about God names last week and even from the little we read about Tabitha, we see that she is a great example of this. Tabitha was a crafter and she was well known and fondly loved for the way she embraced this passion and used it for the good of the church and the people around her. Here we see the outcome when just one person embraces who they are in God and uses that identity to help others. Tabitha knew her name and it left a huge impression on the community.

The miracle is indeed an important witness to God’s power, but more so, this is a story about the sort of person who is highly valued and regarded in the church because of how she lived her calling. She is an example to all of us of how to use our gifts and passions.

It’s interesting that the Psalm matched up with this story in the lectionary is the 23rd Psalm. We read this Psalm at nearly every funeral. We read it because it reminds us that even in the difficult, shadowy times, God is there. Just as all it takes is for me to say, “Our Father” to get a room full of people to say, “Who are in heaven, hallowed be thy name. . .” and continue the Lord’s Prayer, if I were to start, “The Lord is my Shepherd. . .” Many of you will start either out loud, or to yourself, “I shall not want.” And there is such a comfort in these words. There is comfort in these words because they aren’t about tomorrow. They aren’t words to stow away for later. They are words that matter now. They are words that Tabitha’s friends might even have used for comfort when she died. 

And in the face of dark times, when inundated by enemies, God says, “Let’s sit down and have a meal together.” Nothing fancy, just fellowship and gratitude for one another. Sitting down and enjoying God’s presence in the face of everything that troubles and nags us. This Psalm is about presence and trust, just being together with God and one another – which is exactly what we need in difficult times. 

The story of Peter healing Tabitha is certainly about God’s power, and it’s also about acknowledging a person who lived fully into their identity, but it’s also about God’s community of believers. Our story won’t always look like Tabitha’s. Even when we really want it to. Even when we really miss the people who have gone before us. What it’s about is drawing comfort from God’s presence and from one another. One of the ways we experience God’s presence is through the other people in our faith community. This is about openness and about just being together as a community who celebrates one another no matter what might fly our way.

We have lost many Tabithas in the long life of this church. And many more will be called home to the presence of God in the years to come. In the meantime, let’s not wait until we are called home to celebrate one another – those other people in this room right here and right now. Tell those around you what they mean to you and how they are living into their God-given name.

And that also doesn’t mean that we’re over as a community because those Tabithas are gone. It just means that we have to be on the lookout to identify and affirm the Tabithas of the next generation who are stepping into leadership. Each Tabitha in our midst is different and the community will grow and change and ebb and flow depending on who they are at any given time. And that’s ok. That’s more than ok, that’s healthy.

We also need to think about the whole church as Tabitha. The church - both the church as a whole and the church as in individual congregations - is not necessarily dying or dead. And we are not on our own trying to rebuild. God can and does intervene. We have to let God intervene, and many churches get stuck in their grief and don’t let God do what God does. They spend too much time mourning what was and not enough looking to the next season of life. But when we move past our grief for the past, we are able to see the new life that God is creating, we are able to see the resurrection, we are able to take ahold of the calling, “Tabitha, arise.”

Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 2 Pastoral Perspective

Today’s story about a woman being raised from the dead challenges our assumption that we are left to our own devices to fix our predicaments—or, more to the point, that our predicaments are not fixable at all. We live in a world where the familiar nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty has tremendous influence. Humpty Dumpty is broken, and the common assumption is that putting him back together again is an impossible task. That is just the way it is—but not according to Acts.

Over the past few years, the sessions of both churches and I have been exploring what our identities are and how we can start living into those moving forward. We’re going to continue to do that for the foreseeable future, and we’re going to continue bringing you all into it more and more. There is new life out there. But that new life isn’t just going to show up magically. And as long as you all are willing to continue to embrace and look to the future of this church (not the past), I am willing to keep working tirelessly to help provide vision and focus.

If this church closed up the doors for the last time ever this morning at the end of the service, who (other than the people in this sanctuary right now) would even notice? Would the community mourn the loss like Tabitha’s community did or would it just be a little sad that the food pantry got a couple fewer cans each month? If the community around us sees no reason to ever come through these doors, that’s our fault, not theirs.

For the record, I’m not saying stop donating to the food pantry, keep doing that, but do that AND THEN. . .

Remember Saul last week? Called by supernatural intervention by God out of his life of destruction into a life of following God? That’s not the norm. If we just sit around waiting for people to have Saul moments out there, we are going to make very few new friends for the church. We need to reach them like Tabitha did - through our love and kindness.

Unlike other miracle stories we see in the gospels, Tabitha is not raised as a means of proving Jesus’ power. In fact, Jesus’ name is not used at all in her healing. Tabitha is raised because her work is too important to let her die. Is the work of this congregation too important to let it die?

I think it is.. But it doesn’t matter what I think. Not in this situation, anyway. I can be passionate and energetic and smart and all the things everyone wants their pastor to be and it doesn’t matter if you all don’t believe that the work of this congregation is too important to die and if you don’t act with the passion and energy that come with that belief. I’m just a cheerleader that contributes ideas from time to time. When we think about renewal and rebirth in the congregation, I’m not Peter come to raise Tabitha, you are.

That’s so important, I’m going to say it again:

When we think about renewal and rebirth in the congregation, I’m not Peter.

You are.

And when we talk about the “work of this congregation” I’m not just talking about what we are doing right now. I mostly mean the stuff that God is helping us grow into doing: the things that we right now can barely even imagine.

We need all hands on deck. And this passage affirms that everyone is supposed to be involved. There are two names here for the main character, Dorcas, the Greek name, and Tabitha, her Aramaic name. This is also the only place in the new testament where the feminine version of the word “Disciple” is used. This passage is affirming multicultural, gender equal participation in the work of the church.

Some of you may think you’re too old or too tired or too busy to dive in like that right now. But no matter how old or tired or busy you are, you can pray. You have ideas. You can support the mission and ministries of the church financially. You can tell people “there is something really cool happening over here!” You can lift up and encourage your church family and remind people of their God-given gifts and talents. There is a woman at St. Andrew’s who well into her 90’s was passionate about her card-writing ministry and she is so sad now that she just can’t keep up with that. And you should know that right now, she’s loving and praying for and missing every member of her church family.

Some of you may think you’re too old or too tired or too busy to dive in like that right now. But no matter how old or tired or busy you are, you can pray. You have ideas. You can support the mission and ministries of the church financially. You can tell people “there is something really cool happening over here!” You can lift up and encourage your church family and remind people of their God-given gifts and talents.

You are not too old or too tired or too busy, friends.

You might think your ideas aren’t “good enough”. How do you know if you don’t share them? I have found that most of the time when someone is hesitant to share an idea, it’s because it’s a weird one that hasn’t been tried before. But if the stuff that has been tried doesn’t work, we’re only left with what hasn’t been done! Some of your ideas might be duds, that’s true. But we all have some stinkers from time to time. And we learn more - this is scientifically proven - we learn more from failure, from trying and missing the shot, than from success. So let’s go get out there and try some terrible ideas so we can get to the great ones! I promise you that when Tabitha first started making clothes for others, some of them were clearly the work of a beginner. But that’s how you get good at stuff!

Your ideas are

You might not be excited about anything that’s happening in church right now. What ARE you excited about? How can that be built into the life of the church? If you’re not excited about what’s happening, don’t blame others. That just means there is a hole that ONLY YOU can fill. You can’t expect other people to get excited or passionate about your stuff and take the lead on it. That’s not how it works.

And I mean basically, like. . . anything. We have some people in both congregations who LOVE movies. I know exactly who to go to for my movie reviews when I’m looking for something to go watch. So you know what? We’re going to go watch some movies together this summer! Cinema ministry? Weird! But we’re going to have a blast! Bring a friend!

In , Christians are accused of turning the world upside down. When is the last time we here turned anything upside down? Let’s hop to it!

Acts 9:2 ESV

and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

Unlike other miracle stories we see in the gospels, Tabitha is not raised as a means of proving Jesus’ power. In fact, Jesus’ name is not used. Tabitha is raised because her work is too important to let her die. Is the work of this congregation too important to let it die?

And in , the

Acts 17:6 ESV

And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also,

Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 2 Pastoral Perspective

Acts tells us that those who belonged to the Way (9:2) were empowered to “turn the world upside down” (17:6). So in Acts we keep reading stories about conversions, healings, and life after death. This community empowered by the Holy Spirit was not content with the status quo.

Let’s stop being content with the status quo. Tabitha wasn’t. She saw widows who were destitute and forgotten and instead of saying, “That’s just how it is these days.”, or “I’m not an activist, I’m a seamstress.” she made them clothing. What a great problem solver! And when she died, there was great mourning.

Sometimes, churches have to close their doors for the last time. They have a life cycle like people do. And often when that happens, the community doesn’t really notice much beyond saying, “What a shame that building is empty now.” But sometimes, churches find new life and growth and an important place in the hearts and minds of the community. They become a story of life restored because their work was too important to die. One thing I’ve learned over the past 2 and a half years here is that you all are pretty incredible people. You are loving, you are generous, you are affirming, you are so many wonderful things, just like Tabitha was. I want nothing more than to see these two congregations I love so much to rise up like Tabitha.

And if you look at the percentages, these two congregations have experienced about 10% growth in active membership over the past two years. That’s like if a 500 member church took in 25 members a year. I can promise you this: there are very few 500 member churches taking in 25 members a year.

It’s hard work, but this can become a story of new life like Tabitha’s. Well done, so far my dear ones. Let’s keep up the momentum and continue to find work together that is too important to die.