Try to imagine what it would have been like in Joppa. In this story, a kind of parallel to the story of Lazarus, Dorcas is raised from apparent death, and picks up a new life. Like much of the world today, including Canada, people spoke more than one language. In Joppa, they spoke at least Greek and Aramaic - some would probably have spoken Hebrew. Depending where she was and with whom, Dorcas was also known as Tabitha – both names meaning gazelle.
You probably know people like her. Most of us know there are only so many hours in a day or days in a week. Dorcas wasn’t one of those people - she always seemed to have more than enough time to get more done than is possible to do in the regular day or week. Somehow, though, despite al the things she did, it seemed as though she always had lots of time to give her undivided attention. If there was a job that needed to be done, she was always there to do it; doing it well and with a smile..
Sounds like some people we know, doesn’t it?
What few people saw in Dorcas, however, - and what we probably don’t see in some of the seemingly tireless people around us - is that Dorcas was becoming weary of requests for her time,
weary of the hurts and sorrows she was carrying for people, weary of the growing expectations that she could do it all.
“She was devoted to good works and acts of charity,” but it seemed as though no one else was devoted to them (v 36). The church in Joppa loved having Dorcas do the work.
Maybe it was a combination of her personal style, and a complacent church, but no one else seemed able or willing to carry some of the load. So when Dorcas died, there was a crisis. No one else knew what to do. All they could think of was who would replace her. No one had taken time to thank her. They just compared themselves to her, and decided that she was so talented, their gifts didn’t measure up to hers. So they would find a way to say “Oh, I don’t have any gifts or talent, I can’t really do anything.” Rather than recognise that God had given everyone gifts, they were happy to leave it to Dorcas.
Funny, though, when she died they found a way to minister to her. They gently and carefully washed her body and laid her on a bed (v 37). The woman who had in many ways washed their feet is now being washed from head to toe by the people she had served.
Dorcas was an exceptional woman, and the only women named in the Bible specifically as a disciples. But her ministry had allowed people to think that the church was there to serve them - that it was OK to expect it. Dorcas’ way of caring for people created a self-centered group who thought there was no future if she wasn’t there. To them, her death spelled death for the church.
But God had something else in mind. God’s vision of the church was larger than their vision of the church. God knows there is more to the church than just caring for the people who attend.
So when God raises Dorcas from the dead, there is a dramatic change as God’s vision for the church comes into focus. The church begins to change from simply caring for the “widows and saints” who had benefited from her charity to one concerned about the community around them. The people begin to share the good news of God’s love and grace as they tell her story (v 42).
In the book “The Holy Longing”, Ronald Rolheiser talks about two kinds of death and two kinds of life. He uses a word that not too many people are familiar with. This particular word is “paschal.” It comes from the Hebrew word ‘pesach’, which means Passover. In Christian circles, it’s often used to speak about Jesus’ death as the Passover lamb given for the people of Israel.
Rolheiser talks about terminal death and paschal death. Terminal death ends life and ends possibilities. Paschal death is a death that, while ending one kind of life, opens the person to a deeper form of life. Paul spoke to the Corinthians about a grain of wheat being planted and dying but returning as new life in a new form - that is a paschal death.
There is resuscitated life and resurrected life. Resuscitated life is, for example, someone who has been clinically dead and is resuscitated, brought back to the physical life they left. Resurrected life is not a restoration of the same old life but the entering into a radically new life. Lazarus got his old life back, a life from which he had to die again. Jesus did not get his old life back. He received a new life – a richer life and one within which he would not have to die again.
Dorcas died a terminal death and was gifted with resuscitated life. She takes up where she left off, so to speak. Dorcas’ church died a paschal death, and from is death came a resurrected life.
Dorcas doesn’t change - she carries on as before
Her church, however, changes. Their resurrection helps them change the basis for their existence, change the way they live and contribute to the life of their congregation. They find ways to respond to God’s love and grace by living out - within the congregation and outside it - gratitude for what has been given.
They participate in acts of piety and commitment, they participate in acts of charity, they are open and welcoming, they witness to the good news by working to ensure the church is able to live fully, they imitate the Disciple Dorcas.
If you read through the entire book of Acts, you begin to understand that this isn’t just about Dorcas, but about the work of the Spirit - which is a story without end. The Holy Spirit begins work among us as we experience a paschal death and our own resurrection.
If the ultimate aim of stewardship is that our whole lives are to honour God, then we need to work from theologies of abundance, gratitude, and active discipleship. A theology of abundance celebrates that God created all that is and generously gives us every gift that we have and are. God calls us into relationship, to make our world better. We honour God when celebrate the abundance of God’s love for us, when we celebrate our lives together; we also honour God when we respond with gratitude.
Discipleship means a focus on Jesus, God’s great gift, who shows us how to live in ways which reflect our relationship with God in community. Through our giving - of time, of talents, of money - we participate in the preaching, teaching, healing, feeding and caring. We are the embodiment of God’s love, and the hands and feet of Jesus.
God also gives us the gift of the Spirit. We honour God by being open to the Spirit’s guidance. In opening ourselves to the Spirit’s leading, we are able to discern God’s call to both abundant living, and abundant giving.
The work of resurrection - and it is work - is not something that happens fast. It takes a change in our focus, a revitalisation of our purpose. The story of Dorcas, and the life of her congregation, is a story about stewardship. Each of us has something which is vital to the life of our congregation. Each of us has Spirit-given gifts, and the only way the congregation can experience the paschal resurrection is if those gifts are put to the best use possible. It has always been a reality of the church, that it cannot be resurrected without the hands, feet, and gifts of everyone in it.
May it be so.
Sources:
1. Based on the sermon “ Resuscitated for Service”, a sermon based on Acts 9:36-43 by Rev. Randy Quinn
2. Ronald Rolheiser, “The Holy Longing”. Doubleday, 1999, p. 146
3. “Celebrate Stewardship”, by Judith and Warren Johnson, copyright 2004The United Church of Canada. Used with permission.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Dramatic Encounters a sermon based on Acts 9:1-6 Third Sunday of Easter Glen Ayr United Church
For most of his life the late Malcolm Muggeridge professed to be agnostic. In 1969 he became a Christian, publishing “Jesus Rediscovered”, then “Jesus: The Man Who Lives” in 1976, a more substantial work describing the gospel in his own words. He also produced several important BBC documentaries with a religious theme, including In the Footsteps of St. Paul.
In 1982, Muggeridge converted to Roman Catholicism. He was 79. His last book “Conversion”, published in 1988 and recently republished, describes his life as a 20th century pilgrimage - a spiritual journey.
In today’s reading from Acts, there is a word which never shows up, and yet its presence almost screams out of the story. Rev. Tom Hall calls it “a disruptive word--a word that intrudes into our life, a word that rocks our boat, threatens us with priority shifts.”
The story of Saul on the road to Damascus is not a story about a conversion to the Christian faith. Saul was a Jew, and remained a Jew even after his experience. It is a story about a change in nature or character. Unfortunately, the Damascus Road incident has become kind of the yardstick by which everyone measures “conversion”. I suggest that this story is one of a huge epiphany for Saul.
A little background. Saul seemed to arrive just when he was needed most. The religious leaders and the sanhedrin thought new the movement could not be stopped even after the death of Jesus. Saul volunteered to take on the job of getting rid of the Jesus movement. He was young, intelligent, well educated as a rabbi and absolutely committed to the traditions of the faith. There were reports of followers in Damascus, and off went Paul, determined to stomp them out.
And he finds himself flat on his keester in the road, blinded by an incredible light. He has to be led into Damascus, and wait in the city for instructions. So he sits for three days in a room in an inn - hungry and unable to function. A human comes into the room, he feels hands on him and then hears "Brother Saul; Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit." The lights come back on, and suddenly he sees more clearly than ever. He really sees, for the first time in his entire life. His perspective changes. His commitment changes. His relationships change. Even his name changes.
We tend to think of conversion as someone becoming a Christian when they were some other faith prior to that. Saul, now Paul, was still the same man as before in the sense that he was still a practicing Jew. He hadn’t changed his faith, but he had changed his perceptions and understandings of how that faith was to be lived out. His understanding of God changed.
Paul had a conversion experience - no question of that - but his experience was one of conversion to a new life in ministry within the faith he had professed all his life. He understood his scriptures and his faith differently, and the new insight propelled him into ministry with the small group he had elected to eliminate. Sometimes conversions are loud and bold affairs--much like Paul's. Often they are not.
One of the most well-known conversion experiences is that of Kagawa Toyohiko. He had been an orphan from an early age, and became a Christian while learning English from western missionaries. His extended family disowned him. He studied at the Tokyo Presbyterian College, in the United States. The real conversion, I believe, came when he attended Kobe Theological Seminary, and found himself distressed by the pickiness of the seminarians around technicalities of doctrine. He believed that Christianity in action was the real truth of those doctrines.
In 1909 he moved into a Kobe slum as a social worker, and sociologist. He recorded many aspects of slum society previously unknown to middle-class Japanese - illicit prostitution (i.e. outside of Japan's legal prostitution regime), informal marriages (which often overlapped with the previous), and the practice of accepting money to care for children and then killing them.
Kagawa was arrested in Japan in 1921 and again in 1922 for his part in labour activism during strikes. After his release, he helped organize relief work in Tokyo following the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake, and assisted in bringing about universal voting rights for men in 1925. He organized the Japanese Federation of Labour, as well as the National Anti-War League in 1928, and continued to speak on behalf of Japan's poor; he pushed for the vote for women, and a peaceful foreign policy.
His conversion began through a simple prayer: "O God, make me like Christ." That was it. That was the blinding light and heavenly voices that accompanied his conversion. He was an orphan, half blind, always sick, yet he walked into the slums of Tokyo and became the greatest slum reformer.
Conversion is not a word we associate very often with our own lives. We don’t often have those wild experiences where we see with absolute clarity, if even for just an instant, and find ourselves blinded by the insight. Sometimes it’s something very small, which we might easily overlook. Other times the mighty persistent God breaks in to disrupt our lives completely. Saul’s experience on the Damascus road challenges us to be open to conversion. The Good News of Easter, and for us, is that God brings a profound change in nature or character. As Christians, we have to be open to conversion. That means seeing our selves, our lives, our congregation, our church - differently - and making a commitment to being a part of the church’s life, in whatever way we can.
Sources:
1: “Conversion”, a sermon by Rev. Tom Hall
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Muggeridge
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyohiko_Kagawa
In 1982, Muggeridge converted to Roman Catholicism. He was 79. His last book “Conversion”, published in 1988 and recently republished, describes his life as a 20th century pilgrimage - a spiritual journey.
In today’s reading from Acts, there is a word which never shows up, and yet its presence almost screams out of the story. Rev. Tom Hall calls it “a disruptive word--a word that intrudes into our life, a word that rocks our boat, threatens us with priority shifts.”
The story of Saul on the road to Damascus is not a story about a conversion to the Christian faith. Saul was a Jew, and remained a Jew even after his experience. It is a story about a change in nature or character. Unfortunately, the Damascus Road incident has become kind of the yardstick by which everyone measures “conversion”. I suggest that this story is one of a huge epiphany for Saul.
A little background. Saul seemed to arrive just when he was needed most. The religious leaders and the sanhedrin thought new the movement could not be stopped even after the death of Jesus. Saul volunteered to take on the job of getting rid of the Jesus movement. He was young, intelligent, well educated as a rabbi and absolutely committed to the traditions of the faith. There were reports of followers in Damascus, and off went Paul, determined to stomp them out.
And he finds himself flat on his keester in the road, blinded by an incredible light. He has to be led into Damascus, and wait in the city for instructions. So he sits for three days in a room in an inn - hungry and unable to function. A human comes into the room, he feels hands on him and then hears "Brother Saul; Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit." The lights come back on, and suddenly he sees more clearly than ever. He really sees, for the first time in his entire life. His perspective changes. His commitment changes. His relationships change. Even his name changes.
We tend to think of conversion as someone becoming a Christian when they were some other faith prior to that. Saul, now Paul, was still the same man as before in the sense that he was still a practicing Jew. He hadn’t changed his faith, but he had changed his perceptions and understandings of how that faith was to be lived out. His understanding of God changed.
Paul had a conversion experience - no question of that - but his experience was one of conversion to a new life in ministry within the faith he had professed all his life. He understood his scriptures and his faith differently, and the new insight propelled him into ministry with the small group he had elected to eliminate. Sometimes conversions are loud and bold affairs--much like Paul's. Often they are not.
One of the most well-known conversion experiences is that of Kagawa Toyohiko. He had been an orphan from an early age, and became a Christian while learning English from western missionaries. His extended family disowned him. He studied at the Tokyo Presbyterian College, in the United States. The real conversion, I believe, came when he attended Kobe Theological Seminary, and found himself distressed by the pickiness of the seminarians around technicalities of doctrine. He believed that Christianity in action was the real truth of those doctrines.
In 1909 he moved into a Kobe slum as a social worker, and sociologist. He recorded many aspects of slum society previously unknown to middle-class Japanese - illicit prostitution (i.e. outside of Japan's legal prostitution regime), informal marriages (which often overlapped with the previous), and the practice of accepting money to care for children and then killing them.
Kagawa was arrested in Japan in 1921 and again in 1922 for his part in labour activism during strikes. After his release, he helped organize relief work in Tokyo following the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake, and assisted in bringing about universal voting rights for men in 1925. He organized the Japanese Federation of Labour, as well as the National Anti-War League in 1928, and continued to speak on behalf of Japan's poor; he pushed for the vote for women, and a peaceful foreign policy.
His conversion began through a simple prayer: "O God, make me like Christ." That was it. That was the blinding light and heavenly voices that accompanied his conversion. He was an orphan, half blind, always sick, yet he walked into the slums of Tokyo and became the greatest slum reformer.
Conversion is not a word we associate very often with our own lives. We don’t often have those wild experiences where we see with absolute clarity, if even for just an instant, and find ourselves blinded by the insight. Sometimes it’s something very small, which we might easily overlook. Other times the mighty persistent God breaks in to disrupt our lives completely. Saul’s experience on the Damascus road challenges us to be open to conversion. The Good News of Easter, and for us, is that God brings a profound change in nature or character. As Christians, we have to be open to conversion. That means seeing our selves, our lives, our congregation, our church - differently - and making a commitment to being a part of the church’s life, in whatever way we can.
Sources:
1: “Conversion”, a sermon by Rev. Tom Hall
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Muggeridge
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyohiko_Kagawa
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Butterflies in the Garden A sermon based on Luke 24:1-12 Easter Sunday April 4, 2010 Glen Ayr United Church
But very early on Sunday morning the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. They found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. So they went in, but they didn’t find the body of Jesus. As they stood there puzzled, two men suddenly appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes.
The women were terrified and bowed with their faces to the ground. Then the men asked, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Remember what he told you back in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again on the third day.”
Then they remembered that he had said this. So they rushed back from the tomb to tell his eleven disciples—and everyone else—what had happened. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several other women who told the apostles what had happened. But the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn’t believe it. However, Peter jumped up and ran to the tomb to look. Stooping, he peered in and saw the empty linen wrappings; then he went home again, wondering what had happened.
****************************************************
Two weeks ago on a Saturday, a call came from North York General Hospital that a United Church chaplain was needed in the intensive care unit, as a patient was going to be removed from breathing support. I arrived to find some of the family gathered around the bedside, and a woman with a breathing mask lying on the bed. She struggled to breathe even with the mask on, and with morphine to ease to the pain. In some ways it was as if she struggled to get free of her body. I was reminded of the struggle of butterflies to break free from the chrysalis, to shed the thing which held them trapped to this earth, to spread their wings and take off into a new life.
Luke tells us that it was very early Sunday morning when a group of women went to the tomb. There was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and some other women who are not named by Luke - but clearly it was important enough to include. The women went with their spices to prepare Jesus’ body for a proper burial. Luke infers that these are the women who provided for Jesus out of their own resources, when the twelve were on the road. These women arrive to see the yawning entrance to the tomb, and the mighty stone rolled away. It is hard for us to imagine, we are so used to the stories now. It must have been at first puzzling, but when they find themselves confronted by two men in dazzling white, they were absolutely terrified - so afraid, in fact, they fell to the ground and covered their faces. The men asked the most confusing question, too: Why do you look for the living among the dead. He is not here, he is risen. Remember, he told you this would happen.
I’d be willing to bet the women were thinking - what did he tell us? What are these men talking about? The women were probably physically and emotionally exhausted from the events of the week, and in the midst of those events, being bound by religious law, that they could do nothing till the Sabbath was officially over. They had seen the excruciating execution and death of Jesus, and probably wanted to forget - not remember. They were moving on autopilot, in many ways, but still thinking enough to go to the tomb, taking the spices needed to prepare a body properly for burial.
Remember what? Remember how Jesus told you this would happen? It was back in Galilee! Remember he said he would be handed over? He told you that he would be crucified! Remember? And he said that he would rise again on the third day. Well, it happened just as he promised. Remember?
Suddenly it all came back to them - like a flood of light- not that it made any sense- but the women remembered that this was what Jesus said would happen and it did. The women remembered and so they returned to tell the others. They were met with disbelief, and even some concern that they were hysterical women who couldn’t accept real life. Isn’t that the human reaction, after all?
And yet, Luke tells us Peter got up and ran to the tomb, saw the gravecloths - went away wondering what had happened.
It’s the statement, and the question of the two men which are so significant for this day. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He isn’t here any more, he is alive. Remember what he told you? Remember?
In the first letter to the new house church in Corinth, the apostle Paul had his work cut out for him. None of the converts was an eye-witness to any events; Paul himself was not an eyewitness. Yet he accepted on faith that the Jesus had been resurrected; some of the other converts obviously weren’t so sure, so they wanted some explanation - some proof. Paul says to them “You ask how the dead can be raised? How silly can you be? Of course, the dead do not get up and walk again, in the same body. But each kind of life is given a body - one kind of body for plants, another kind for animals, another kind for birds, one for fish. And just as there all these different kinds of flesh, so it is with the human body.
Remember, says Paul, what you plant cannot live unless it first dies. A grain of wheat in the ground looks like nothing and appears dead, yet when it grows it has a body completely unlike the grain of wheat. It’s that way with humans and resurrection. Only by dying do we live.
So why go looking for the living among the dead? A lowly and often mundane caterpillar disappears inside a chrysalis, but when it finally struggles and pushes and breaks its way free, what emerges from the chrysalis is something completely changed from the body which went in.
Remember. Resurrection can happen in so many ways. A dying person’s soul struggles to emerge from the chrysalis which holds it to this earth. A living person’s soul can also struggle to break free, to come out of the closed chrysalis and spread out its wings. Resurrection is an invitation to make such major change in our selves, that we truly become something wholly new.
Sources:
1. "They Remembered" by Rev. Cynthia Huling Hummel
2. "Finding Out for Ourselves", by Rev. Elizabeth Darby
The women were terrified and bowed with their faces to the ground. Then the men asked, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Remember what he told you back in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again on the third day.”
Then they remembered that he had said this. So they rushed back from the tomb to tell his eleven disciples—and everyone else—what had happened. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several other women who told the apostles what had happened. But the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn’t believe it. However, Peter jumped up and ran to the tomb to look. Stooping, he peered in and saw the empty linen wrappings; then he went home again, wondering what had happened.
****************************************************
Two weeks ago on a Saturday, a call came from North York General Hospital that a United Church chaplain was needed in the intensive care unit, as a patient was going to be removed from breathing support. I arrived to find some of the family gathered around the bedside, and a woman with a breathing mask lying on the bed. She struggled to breathe even with the mask on, and with morphine to ease to the pain. In some ways it was as if she struggled to get free of her body. I was reminded of the struggle of butterflies to break free from the chrysalis, to shed the thing which held them trapped to this earth, to spread their wings and take off into a new life.
Luke tells us that it was very early Sunday morning when a group of women went to the tomb. There was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and some other women who are not named by Luke - but clearly it was important enough to include. The women went with their spices to prepare Jesus’ body for a proper burial. Luke infers that these are the women who provided for Jesus out of their own resources, when the twelve were on the road. These women arrive to see the yawning entrance to the tomb, and the mighty stone rolled away. It is hard for us to imagine, we are so used to the stories now. It must have been at first puzzling, but when they find themselves confronted by two men in dazzling white, they were absolutely terrified - so afraid, in fact, they fell to the ground and covered their faces. The men asked the most confusing question, too: Why do you look for the living among the dead. He is not here, he is risen. Remember, he told you this would happen.
I’d be willing to bet the women were thinking - what did he tell us? What are these men talking about? The women were probably physically and emotionally exhausted from the events of the week, and in the midst of those events, being bound by religious law, that they could do nothing till the Sabbath was officially over. They had seen the excruciating execution and death of Jesus, and probably wanted to forget - not remember. They were moving on autopilot, in many ways, but still thinking enough to go to the tomb, taking the spices needed to prepare a body properly for burial.
Remember what? Remember how Jesus told you this would happen? It was back in Galilee! Remember he said he would be handed over? He told you that he would be crucified! Remember? And he said that he would rise again on the third day. Well, it happened just as he promised. Remember?
Suddenly it all came back to them - like a flood of light- not that it made any sense- but the women remembered that this was what Jesus said would happen and it did. The women remembered and so they returned to tell the others. They were met with disbelief, and even some concern that they were hysterical women who couldn’t accept real life. Isn’t that the human reaction, after all?
And yet, Luke tells us Peter got up and ran to the tomb, saw the gravecloths - went away wondering what had happened.
It’s the statement, and the question of the two men which are so significant for this day. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He isn’t here any more, he is alive. Remember what he told you? Remember?
In the first letter to the new house church in Corinth, the apostle Paul had his work cut out for him. None of the converts was an eye-witness to any events; Paul himself was not an eyewitness. Yet he accepted on faith that the Jesus had been resurrected; some of the other converts obviously weren’t so sure, so they wanted some explanation - some proof. Paul says to them “You ask how the dead can be raised? How silly can you be? Of course, the dead do not get up and walk again, in the same body. But each kind of life is given a body - one kind of body for plants, another kind for animals, another kind for birds, one for fish. And just as there all these different kinds of flesh, so it is with the human body.
Remember, says Paul, what you plant cannot live unless it first dies. A grain of wheat in the ground looks like nothing and appears dead, yet when it grows it has a body completely unlike the grain of wheat. It’s that way with humans and resurrection. Only by dying do we live.
So why go looking for the living among the dead? A lowly and often mundane caterpillar disappears inside a chrysalis, but when it finally struggles and pushes and breaks its way free, what emerges from the chrysalis is something completely changed from the body which went in.
Remember. Resurrection can happen in so many ways. A dying person’s soul struggles to emerge from the chrysalis which holds it to this earth. A living person’s soul can also struggle to break free, to come out of the closed chrysalis and spread out its wings. Resurrection is an invitation to make such major change in our selves, that we truly become something wholly new.
Sources:
1. "They Remembered" by Rev. Cynthia Huling Hummel
2. "Finding Out for Ourselves", by Rev. Elizabeth Darby
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