“Called
to Life”
Acts 9:32-43
Psalm 23
First Presbyterian
The Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
April 25, 2010
Easter 4
I
read a national study the other day that claims that the biggest problem facing
the church today is biblical illiteracy. I
am not sure I agree with that because the church in these days has a whole menu
of issues from which to choose, but, even here in this congregation, I hear
people say, “I wish I knew the Bible better.” Or “I wish I knew better how
to read the Bible.”
At
least the latter comment recognizes that there is more to understanding the
Bible than simply being able to read the words on its pages.
If I were to open the books of a business, I would need to be taught how
to read them. We take literature
courses in school to learn how to read the various literary genres.
We have a different expectation of poetry, for example, than we do of
non-fiction. Non-fiction reports
facts in trying to convey a truth while poetry, Ross Mackenzie once said,
“tells glorious lies on its way to the truth.”
Such as when Mary Oliver said in her short poem called The
Uses of Sorrow:
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
Well,
no one actually, literally gave her a box filled with darkness.
On the face of it, that is a lie. But
it is a glorious lie because it serves the truth with which we all can resonate.
Love is sometimes painful, sometimes deeply so, but if we pay attention,
we shall find that even that hurt can be redeemed in us toward our growth and
maturity and thus, belatedly, receive the gift of it.
So,
today, in response to any and all of you who ever have said or thought, “I
wish I knew better how to read the Bible,” I want to employ our scripture of
the morning to begin to help.
To get the message I
believe Luke intended when he wrote the section in the book of Acts we read
today, we have to let go of biblical literalism.
Whether or not these two incredible acts attributed to Peter really
happened – the re-animation of the paralyzed man named Aeneas and the even
more spectacular resuscitation of Dorcas from the dead – neither act in itself
is the focus of what Luke is trying to convey.
If they are, then
even if Peter really did in the name of God what Luke says he did, we are at
best reciting ancient history this morning.
Good for Aeneas and Dorcas, but what do their healings have to do with us
in
My take?
It doesn’t matter to me if there was or wasn’t a paralyzed man named
Aeneas who really was healed or a Dorcas who really was recalled from the dead.
If the facticity of Aeneas’ healing two thousand years ago is made to
be the point of that particular story, directing us backward to a time gone by,
we then can escape the wider message and responsibility that goes with it that
the power of God can heal our lives, too, lives that sometimes are paralyzed by
fear or boredom or complacency because, deep down, we sometimes like those
things. They become a part of our
identity. Sometimes we would rather
stay stuck where we are than to learn a new and vital way of living, relating,
and being in the world.
Many of the stories
in scripture are formulaic in nature- that is, they follow a well known
blueprint –that would be familiar at least to their original readers and
hearers. For instance, notice how
closely Luke’s story of resuscitating Tabitha (the Greek translation of
“Tabitha” is “Dorcas” – they are the same person) resembles an earlier
story in Mark about the resuscitation of Jairus’ daughter:
Mark in his gospel
says that the people gathered at Jairus’ house where his daughter lay dead
were weeping and wailing loudly. Luke
says that the mourners gathered where Tabitha lay were weeping loudly.
Mark says that Jesus
told all the mourners of Jairus’ daughter to go outside.
Luke says that Peter told those who had gathered to grieve Tabitha to go
outside.
Jesus said to Jairus’
daughter (in Aramaic), “Talitha, cum!” meaning “Little girl, get up!”
Peter said to Dorcas, using her Aramaic name, “Tabitha, cum!” meaning
“Tabitha, get up!”
Do you see how
similar the two stories are, how they follow a formula?
The stories in scripture seek less to communicate history than to convey
mythic and mystic truth. So, I want
to give you three foundational principles for reading and interpreting
scripture: (1) Rather than expending
a lot of energy trying to figure out if a particular story really happened or
not, ask yourself what the writer is trying to convey in what he has written.
(2) Ponder the meaning of a particular story and why the writer would
have considered the story important to tell.
(3) Then contemplate what the implications of the story’s meaning are
for our lives, the life of the world, and your life now.
Using these
guidelines, let us reap a harvest from today’s stories in Acts.
Luke tells us that Peter “was going here and there among the
believers,” a seemingly prosaic ministry, but then he abruptly includes
these two sensational stories about the healing of Aeneas and the resuscitation
of Dorcas. Aeneas is paralyzed.
He cannot move. He is stuck.
Condemned to a hundred tomorrows just like today.
Except, except – is not Luke with this story of Aeneas’ healing
meaning to tell us that there is good news for everyone who is trapped and bound
and caught in lives that are going nowhere?
The chains of anguish, despair, and lack of opportunity that imprison
lives can be loosened! Sterility can
yield to possibility. Dead
ends can give way to lively new beginnings.
New insights will open new doors. The
power of God welling up in us will change our lives, both personally and
communally. How many of you, honest
now, really care if Aeneas was healed twenty centuries ago?
Is that the kind of news that gets you out of bed on Sunday mornings?
I didn’t think so. But what
about the news that the power of God can get your
life moving again when it gets bogged down or broken?
No wonder the gospel
of Jesus Christ appeals so much to the poor and the powerless and is often
considered a threat by those who benefit from the present arrangement of things,
as Jesus himself found out. No
wonder the powers-that-be twist and distort the gospel for their own purposes
and encourage a reading of scripture that looks backward, not onward.
Those with power prefer a paralyzed populace who cannot rise up to demand
generosity and justice, paralyzed populace that languishes in lethargy.
But God subverts their plans with Aeneas-healing in all who refuse to be
dormant or doormat any longer. That
is the truth about God that Luke and the early Christian community experienced
through the ministry of Jesus and want to pass on to others, to us, so it makes
little matter if there really was an Aeneas who got up off his paralytic’s bed
or if Luke was using literary license to make his point.
Do you see? The message is
bigger than Aeneas. It is not
confined to Aeneas long ago. It is
about the way the early Christian community experienced the power of God in
their lives and how it can work in your life and my life and our lives and the
life of the world.
Dorcas/Tabitha was a
widow heading up a welfare program among the poor in Joppa.
Her death caused a crisis in the community.
The vulnerable ones whom she had gathered under her wing have lost their
mother hen. How will they survive?
Luke’s story says
that Dorcas was revivified from the dead. But
is that the point of the story? No.
A resuscitated Dorcas would be able to help her people for a
while, until she died again, but what about all the other communities of need in
other places and throughout all the ensuing years?
Luke means by his story to tell us that not even death can stem or stay
or stop the Lord’s cup from overflowing with goodness and mercy and justice.
If the princes and presidents and politicians cannot lead us into a
peaceable kingdom where it is well for everyone, then the widows faithful to
God’s dream will – the Dorcases and the Tabithas of the world – as well as
the children, the uninsured, the underprivileged, and all those whom power
disdains, disrespects, and disregards.
Notice that Luke
does not explain the specifics of how the unfolding of peace and justice happens
in the world, just that it does and it will, and through the unlikeliest of
people – paralyzed men and good-as-dead women – like we are sometimes –
who are being healed and called to life by the power and promise of God.
To live in the power
of God renders null and void the powers of paralysis and death whenever and
however they occur in us. To live in
the power of God calls us again and again to life.
Weeping and weariness may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the
morning. And morning always come for
those who trust in God.
Amen.