acts

Acts 9:36-43

Today’s story in Acts reminds me of a Billy Collins poem. Collins, who teaches poetry as well as writing it, wrote these lines about his students in his poem, “Introduction to Poetry”:
“I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
…
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.” …

“But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.”

The account of the raising of Tabitha is short but enigmatic and challenging. For starters, someone is brought back to life after having died, and not even by Jesus, but rather, by Peter. It’s a tough miracle to swallow, but the biblical writers weren’t worried about science the way we are. They cared about what they remembered, and they cared what God was saying to them. So how do we determine what God is saying through this story, the story the community remembered, without tying it to a chair and beating a confession out of it?

Tabitha is described as a disciple. We’re told she is devoted to good works and acts of charity. It appears that she cared for the needy widows in Joppa, out of her own resources and in a very practical way: she made clothing for them. When Tabitha dies, the community fears that her life-giving work dies with her.

We aren’t told why Peter is called, or what’s expected of him. Tabitha is dead; her friends have already washed her body. When he arrives, he’s ushered to the upstairs room, and he asks everyone to leave. He kneels and prays and then speaks. The text emphasizes that he’s speaking to “the body,” not to an aware, alive person. He says, “Tabitha, get up.” And she does. The news gets around, and we’re told, “many believed in the Lord.” Well, yeah. If Christians today started raising the dead, churches would have no trouble meeting their budgets.

Every bible story is set in the midst of other stories. Behind this story about Tabitha is a story from Mark’s gospel that was retold by Luke, who was also the author of the book of Acts. The story in Mark is about Jairus and his daughter. Jairus, a leader of a Galilee synagogue, asks Jesus to heal his 12-year-old daughter, who is dying. On his way to Jairus’ house, Jesus heals the woman who touches his cloak in a crowd. Moments later, a messenger arrives with the news that Jairus’ daughter has died. But Jesus responds, “Do not fear, only believe.” Jesus continues to the house, where he tells all those present that the girl is not dead but asleep. He then goes upstairs and restores the little girl to life. In Mark’s account, Jesus speaks the Aramaic phrase “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!”

Talitha, get up. Tabitha, get up. The words are meant to sound the same, to be an echo. Tabitha’s upstairs room is meant to be an echo of that earlier upstairs room. And then there’s Peter, who had been called Simon but of whom Jesus said, “You are Peter, and on this rock” – because that’s what “Peter” means – it means “rock” – “on this rock I will build my church.” Peter in this story is meant to be an epitome of the authority, capacity, and mission of the church. He is the embodiment of the church, if you will. He enters the room where there is a smell of death and prays. He says, “Get up,” just the way Jesus did. And life is given, just the way it was when Jesus did it.

This story is a startling and dramatic announcement that Peter – that is, the Church – is to carry on the work of Jesus, and is entrusted with his resurrection power, the power of new life. Paul used the phrase, “the Body of Christ,” to capture this idea. The Church is the Body of Christ, given Christ’s life-giving work to do, and the power to do it.

We can’t really explain what happened in this miraculous story, and we shouldn’t try, but we can say that, at its core, it is subversive. It is subversive because every culture and community, every family, every congregation assumes things have to be a certain way. Who is powerful, who is weak; who thrives, who struggles; who lives, who dies. Tabitha, for example, is supposed to stay home and let the men come up with a way to care for vulnerable widows. Peter is to stay with his fishing nets and leave theology to the scholars and preaching to the charismatic. This story turns that upside down. Death is not the final word, and so reality is not bound to what has been. Flipping over the old assumptions is what the Church is to be about.

The Church tells and retells Tabitha’s story as a reminder that the Church is entrusted with the power to bring new life … bodily, concretely, locally. And not only life, but life for those who are on the bottom rung of the ladder, people who normally have no one to represent or protect them. Tabitha’s story tells us widows will not be abandoned. God will not allow it. That might impact how the Church responds to proposed reductions in Social Security benefits. It might impact what the Church teaches daughters and granddaughters, as well as sons, about choosing a career that will sustain them. It might impact a congregation’s decision to offer sanctuary to refugees in spite of the current war on immigrants.

William Willimon writes about Tabitha’s story: “Every time a couple of little stories like these are faithfully told by the church, the social system is rendered null and void. The church comes out and [says] … ‘Rise!’ and nothing is ever quite the same again.”

Perhaps Tabitha, sewing clothes for widows, also already knew what Mother Teresa said, that none of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love. Anne Lamott writes, “[M]ost of us have figured out that we have to do what’s in front of us and keep doing it. We clean up beaches after oil spills. We rebuild whole towns after hurricanes and tornadoes. We return calls and library books. We get people water. Some of us even pray. Every time we choose the good action or response, the decent, the valuable, it builds, incrementally, to renewal, resurrection, the place of newness, freedom, justice. The equation is: life, death, resurrection, hope. The horror is real, and so you make casseroles for your neighbor, organize an overseas clothing drive, and do your laundry. You can also offer to do other people’s laundry, if they have recently had any random babies or surgeries.”

The Church proclaims, “Tabitha, get up.” Widows and the vulnerable of our world, get up. You, who are surprised to discover that even you have been named as a disciple, get up. Get up, choose the good action, the decent, the valuable, and give witness to the resurrection to new life here and now.

Resources:
Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry,” from The Apple that Astonished Paris (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2006).
Mitzi Smith, “Commentary on Acts 9:36-43,” http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2814.
William H. Willimon, Interpretation: Acts (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1988).
Walter Brueggemann, “Blogging toward Sunday: Acts 9:36-43,” in The Christian Century, April 24, 2007, http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2007-04/blogging-toward-sunday-0.
Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair (New York: Riverhead Books, 2013).

Acts 10:44-48

We catch the apostle Peter literally mid-sentence in this passage in Acts. What comes before these verses is an important part of the story. Cornelius, a Roman army officer and Gentile in Caesarea, a believer in God but not a Jew, has a vision that he is to send for Peter. It so happens that Peter, a devout Jew, has a vision as well. He’s praying on the roof of his friend’s house in Joppa, anticipating a fine meal being prepared by his hosts. He falls into a trance and sees a sheet being lowered down from the heavens, filled with all of the foods that good Jews aren’t supposed to eat – animals considered to be “unclean.” He hears a voice: “Get up Peter, kill and eat.” Peter responds, “No, way! I’ve never touched this stuff, let alone eaten it!” He hears this answer: “What God has made, you must not call profane.” This happens three times, which is God’s way of saying, “And I really mean it, Peter.” And while he’s still trying to figure out what it is that God means, Cornelius’ men are knocking at the door to invite Peter to Caesarea.

A good Jew wasn’t supposed to hang out with Gentiles, but the Holy Spirit gives Peter a nudge out the door. He travels to Caesarea, meets Cornelius, and realizes this Gentile is having a genuine experience of God. Peter starts preaching about this God who’s giving Cornelius visions, and about how Peter has been awakened to a reality he never understood before: “I truly understand,” he declares, “that God shows no partiality.” But before Peter can finish his sermon, the Holy Spirit short-circuits the usual order of things, and that’s where we pick up the story. The Holy Spirit “fell on all who heard the Word,” on a whole crowd of Gentiles, as evidenced by their ability to speak in tongues and their inclination to praise God.

Rick Morley notes that the two words in this passage that “stick out as if they have neon lights attached to them,” are “astounded” and “even.” Gentiles are coming to faith in God in Christ, and the Christians of Jewish descent are “astounded” that the Holy Spirit of God is being given to “even” the Gentiles. In other words, they didn’t expect this. They couldn’t have predicted this. I suspect they didn’t even want this.

God is doing something new, something that the apostles couldn’t control, predict, or anticipate. This passage is often preached to remind us that the Church should be inclusive, but limiting this passage to who is included or excluded from the Church feels like a conversation for 25 years ago. Certainly, God expects churches to be inclusive. But God doesn’t stop there and to limit our analysis to the Christian Church feels oddly self-referential in 2024. As if God can’t be reached by other routes. As if the apostles’ understanding of God, or ours, is the only right way, the only possible way. As if we control God’s Holy Spirit.

Limiting the conversation to church puts us, in the Church, in a position of privilege and control. We welcome you. We let you in. Aren’t we special? When the point of this passage is that God is already at work in places and in ways beyond our imagination, in ways that will astound us. The Church needs the stranger, the foreigner, the “other” to show us the Holy Spirit isn’t the Church’s property. Otherwise, we might start thinking there’s limited space under the tent, or that it’s our job to make the tent bigger, when the thing is, it isn’t our tent. It’s God’s tent, and we don’t know the extent of it, the size of it, the reach of it. Morley writes, “It’s like when we look out into the world around us, we see just a sliver – just the tiniest wedge of possibilities. But, God sees the whole sky. The whole infinite expanse of the universe brimming with possibilities.”

At least the apostles in Acts were “astounded,” as opposed to “disgusted,” or “dismayed.” There’s some hope there.

William H. Willimon writes, “Faith, when it comes down to it, is our often breathless attempt to keep up with the redemptive activity of God, to keep asking ourselves, ‘What is God doing, where on earth is God going now?’” As with Peter, it’s an ongoing conversion.

Resources:
Rick Morley, “Even Astonished – A Reflection on Acts 10:44-48,” http://www.rickmorley.com/archives/1585
William H. Willimon, Interpretation: Acts (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1988)

Solvitur Ambulando

Putting one foot in front of the other on the path of faith

Tabitha, Get Up

Astounded