April 29, 2007 Des Moines

Acts 9:36-43

Prayers of the People

Call us into life, O God.  Call us into life.  It’s not that pulses are silent around us; it’s not that springtime isn’t popping all around us.  It’s not that pride and gratitude and joy do not surround and elevate us in the course of most of our days.  All these things are true – in this day, most present of all.

We are grateful for all these joys that touch our skin in present and particular ways.  And it’s not that our griefs and laments and prayerful aches don’t remind us how precious is this life and the relationships that swell it. 

No, we pray that you will call us into life, O God, precisely because we know how little of the life that you intend we actually experience, actually expect, actually practice.  Forgive us, we pray, for the many ways that we construct our walls and then willingly live within them.  Open the doors of our awareness and our expectation, O God; open the windows of our imagination and our appreciation; peel off the roof of our hopes and our awe-filled wonder, O God, and call us into life as you see it in the eyes of those made in your image; in the expansiveness of the heavens, in the color and complexity of the earth and all that fills it with fur and feather and fin and leaf; with wave and blade and grain and bloom.  Call us into life, we pray, in the name of him who came that we might know and have life abundant.  Amen.

“Inheritance of Grace”

Recently, when Lori was asked to play her flute at Kyles A.M.E. Zion church, I joined in as her accompanist.  It was an annual Women’s luncheon that brought together women of several generations to support the missions program of the church, and to worship and fellowship together.  During the few minutes that I was present, frequent references were made to Dorcas – a kind of “spiritual mother,” as it turned out, for their discipleship.  I was shamefully grateful that no one present that day asked me for a brief synopsis of Dorcas’ life.  I was familiar with her name, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything about her.

            This morning’s story is the answer to my ignorance.  Dorcas – or “Tabitha” in Aramaic; “Gazelle” in English – was a disciple and benefactor of the early church.  We don’t know anything really about her family life or station in life, but we are told that she was “devoted to good works and acts of charity.”  The fact that no mention is made of any man in her life could mean that she was a widow, and quite possibly a woman of some financial means.  That isn’t the only possible explanation, of course.  How many people have you known who lived their lives literally hemorrhaging generosity and grace – who were not wealthy and yet offered freely out of their means to those who had need? 

            Whoever she was, Dorcas was a woman whose discipleship extended beyond Sunday morning – into good works and acts of charity, hands-on ministries like making clothing and giving it away.  There was no Social Security in that day, nor pension plans to soften the blows of poverty or illness or aloneness.  There were only other people – people like Dorcas who paid attention to the basic needs around her and did what she could to meet them.  And Dorcas apparently did it so well, so lovingly and conscientiously that when she became ill and ultimately died, it was enough to throw the whole community into distress.  Emissaries were dispatched to summon Peter who happened to be in a nearby city. 

            And that’s when the story gets interesting.  On the strength of the request, alone – without explanation or elaboration – Peter steps away from whatever he was doing and travels the short distance to Joppa, where he finds a house in mourning and witnesses eulogizing the deceased.  And where he also receives the implied, if not stated, plea:  “Isn’t there anything you can do?”  Shooing everyone out of the room, Peter knelt down beside the bed and prayed, and then directed these simple words to the corpse:  “Tabitha, get up.”  And low and behold, she did.  Accepting Peter’s help out of the bed, the two – healer and healed – presented themselves to the no doubt surprised but grateful friends in the other room. 

            And suddenly we are in uncharted waters.  If we have had lots of experience with good and generous disciples, I would venture to say that we have exactly no experience with people being called back from the dead.  “But what about Jesus?” you have every reason to ask.  And I can only reply that no one in the story or those who later told it seemed to connect what happened to Dorcas with what happened to Jesus.  Scripture, come to think of it, is no stranger to stories about dead people returned to life – Lazarus (John 11), the widow’s son at Nain (Luke 7), Jairus’ daughter (Luke 8), and resuscitation exploits attributed to Moses and Elijah and Elisha.  But while those stories may have evoked wonder, none of them evoked devotion.  No one worshipped these odd inheritors of grace.  Hallmark sells no greeting cards celebrating the raising of Dorcas. 

            Nonetheless, why shouldn’t we be delighted in the story of Dorcas’ miraculous resuscitation?  Why is it that I feel, if anything, more resentful than joyful?  Perhaps it is because I have prayed at the bedside of too many faithful disciples devoted to good works and acts of charity who had likewise fallen ill, but didn’t “get up” on command.  I’ve pronounced too many benedictions on the lives of too many saints brought short too soon, too young. 

Pastors and poets Maren Tirabassi and Joan Jordan Grant offer this prayerful reflection that perhaps voices our own sentiments:

I washed her

Little limbs so long and quick

That used to run like a gazelle,

Left foot just turning in.

I lay elbow clean against

The rough sheets and

Gently touched the ribs

Like white lattice

Where the flowers of life grew,

When she was

Morning glory and roses.

Her hands so still

That worked so hard

And played, too –

Gestured whole stories

Making a pageant

Of her spoken words.

Those sewing hands and

Writing hands, those

Cooking, earth-planting,

Teaching hands, now

Little waiting hands.

And then I wept.

And softly fingered things

That once were hers –

The fabric of a dress for dancing

And the shells found

One seashore summer,

The edge of painted dresser,

A square of quilt,

An old photograph

In a pewter frame,

The books she read,

A blue and white bowl,

A silver cross, a ring.

Come to this Joppa, God,

Send a healer to

Wake her eyes.

Pray her alive,

My Tabitha, my friend.

Come to this Joppa, God, indeed.  What are we supposed to get from this story – or any of those other ones, as far as that goes?  Is it simply that we shouldn’t give up hope?  In all honesty, that feels like a counsel of cruelty in the vast majority of cases.  This isn’t a golf game in which a single birdie every now and then is enough to keep us playing.  It seems torturous to point to an occasional resuscitation as reason to keep on praying.  Surely this story is good for more than that. 

            It is certainly worth taking note of the powerful presence of community – that which had flowed from Dorcas to the widows, and which now returns to her through their own concern and grief.  And it is instructive to see Peter, having rushed from Lydda to this Joppa bedside, do nothing before he kneels beside the bed and prays.  And there is some worthy value in feeling the nudging reminder that the church – personified here in Peter – stands in the same line of Spirit and power as Jesus and the prophets.  Hadn’t Jesus told the disciples, after all, that they would do greater works than he?

            And perhaps that is enough work for the story to do.  Whether or not we disciples in the church should be held liable for not praying the beloved dead back into active life, we could stand to feel some level of chastisement for the puny expectations we hold for what is possible to occur through and among us in the name of Christ.  Whether or not Luke retells this story to convince believers that funeral homes could go out of business, we would at least do well to renew our profession of faith – not in our own power – but in the power of the resurrected Christ to bring new life to all persons, and the church is that vehicle through which such power is manifest and moved. 

            The curse of the church, in my experience, is not that it presumes too much for what is possible through its hands, but that it expects and settles for so little.  Given all the ways that people are dying around us – only some of which literally deprive a pulse; given all the ways that people are being deprived of or simply losing touch with the blessings and the basics – the food and medicine and shelter, of course, but also the meaning and the welcome, the reassurance and the forgiveness, the imagination and the hope – that are finally required to animate us in any sense of what it means to be alive,  what would it mean for the church to kneel and pray and speak out for, and reach out toward, the walking dead who are shuffling through their days?  

I don’t finally know what to make of this story and this miracle so utterly distant and removed from my own meager experience.  I’ll leave it to brighter, more faithful interpreters than me.  I am left simply to participate in it; to marvel how Dorcas, when she heard her name spoken, “opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, sat up.”   And how Peter “gave her his hand and helped her up.”

And I am left to wonder whose names are on our lips?  To whom are we prayerfully, hopefully, calling out?  To whom are our hands reaching with a love and lift toward life?

How long a heart beats is finally God’s business, not our own.  But the holy ministry of calling people into life is what the church is all about.