Wondrous Love

(Scriptures: Acts 9:32-43
Revelations 7:9-17 John 10:22-30)

In our reading from Acts, the sequel to Luke’s Gospel, we see the Apostle Peter continuing in the way of Jesus, teaching and doing miracles of healing as Jesus did. Indeed, the two miracles described in our reading may remind us of two of Jesus’ healings. In Luke chapter 5, we may remember the account of the paralyzed man, whose friend lowered him through a hole in the roof in front of Jesus, who healed him. Jesus had asked the skeptics among the crowd, what’s easier to do, tell this man that his sins are forgiven, or tell him to arise, take up his bed, and walk – and Jesus does both. In Acts, Peter, who has been going here and there among the believers and at the moment is in Lydda, northwest of Jerusalem, near Cesarea and Azotus tells Aeneas, “Jesus Christ heals you, get up and make your bed.” Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ power of healing had been conferred on Peter and the other Apostles. We are also to understand, from Aeneas’s name – a Greek name – that the message of Jesus is spreading into the Gentile community, possibly through the earlier efforts of Philip, who we’re told in Acts chapter 8 had been carried by the Holy Spirit to preach the good news in Azotus and Cesarea.

And then we read the lovely story of the raising of Tabitha, who we may better remember by her Greek name, Dorcas – and whose name in both Aramaic and Greek means “a gazelle” – a lovely, small, very swift species of deer or antelope. We’re told she was devoted to good works and acts of charity. She must have been very prominent in her community, having been one of the few women in the book of Acts specifically identified as a disciple. After her death, those with her sent for Peter, who had been staying in the village just down the road from Joppa, where Tabitha, also named Dorcas, lived. We’re given such a vivid picture of the moment when Peter arrived at the home of Dorcas, the widows surrounded him, weeping and showing Peter all the clothing that Dorcas had made – we can easily picture all this in our minds – so much so that, indeed, it was not that many decades ago that many churches had womens’ sewing circles called “Dorcas guilds” in her memory, that made clothing and altar coverings and the like. (Did Emanuel used to have a Dorcas guild?) We’re told that Peter put them all outside, prayed over Tabitha’s body. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, cumi” – “Tabitha, get up” – and then Tabitha sat up. Peter helped her to her feet and called everybody back inside to see that she was alive. Again, this story may remind us of Jesus’ healing of Jairus’ daughter – in the Mark version of the story, the name of Jairus’ daughter is Talitha – only one letter different from Tabitha – and so Jesus’ words to Jairus’ daughter – “Talitha, cumi” – Talitha, get up” were almost identical to those used by Peter. So the book of Acts is showing a continuity between the works of Jesus and the works of the early church – that Jesus’ loving acts of healing were being carried forward by Peter and others in the early church.

Luke ends this section of Acts by telling us that after raising Dorcas, Peter stayed for a while in Joppa in the house of Simon the tanner. After all the drama of the raising of Dorcas, we may breeze by this final line, but we might want to linger just a moment. Tanners – those who tanned or prepared leather - in that time were considered ritually unclean or at least marginal by observant Jews, as they worked day by day with dead animals, making leather from animal skins. The leather tanning process in those days raised quite a stench – it stank to high heaven, in fact, so tanneries were located on the outskirts of town, away from respectable people. So by starting this section of Acts with the healing of the Greek man Aeneas and ending with Peter staying in the home of a tanner, amid the stench of the dead animals, it would seem that Luke is preparing us for the spread of the Gospel in ever-widening circles, to those on the margins of Jewish society and to the Gentiles. And, indeed, in Acts chapter 10, we read about the conversion of the Gentile Cornelius and Peter’s vision in which God instructed Peter not to call unclean what God called clean.

What are we to make of all this? In our reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus, in a dispute with the Temple religious establishment, says that, “The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me….my sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” Through the work of the early church, the works done by Peter and the other apostles continue to testify to Jesus, and through Peter and the apostles those called to follow Christ hear Christ’s voice – telling them to rise from their sickbed, calling them to sit up from their deathbeds, following them to the margins of respectable society, willing to bring new life even amid the stench of death. In Revelations, we’re given a glimpse of the heavenly vision, as Christ the Resurrected Lamb of God is worshipped by angels and saints. Christ, God the Son, had earlier left all this, had left the glories of heaven to come in human form, to bring salvation so that we might join him in glory. All our readings today testify to God’s passionate love for us, a love that will not let us go, will not leave us nor forsake us, a love that will seek us even in the midst of stench and sickness and death to call us to new life. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

Flannery O’Connor’s 1950’s Southern Gothic novel “Wise Blood” described the memorable character Hazel Motes, who despite being the grandson of a fundamentalist revival preacher had lost his faith. In his despair Motes tried to start up the “Church of Christ Without Christ”, a church “where the blind don’t see and the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way.” When we read about the healing of Aeneas and the raising of Dorcas, we may wonder what all that has to do with us today. When our children ask us about it, we likely tell them, “well, that was back then…things like that don’t happen today.” And maybe in the back of our minds we wonder if it really happened back then – or did Dorcas maybe just faint or did Aeneas have some sort of psychosomatic illness that kept him bedfast, or did Luke just make the whole thing up. But I’d challenge us to resist temptations to try to explain away these healings and raisings – but rather to challenge ourselves, why don’t things like this happen more often in the church today? Dorcas’s friends had no qualms about asking Peter to come and expecting him to do something, even though Dorcas by appeared to have been dead and gone. Peter had no qualms about asking God to heal Aeneas and raise Dorcas. We worship the same risen Christ, who loves us just as he loved Peter and Aeneas and Dorcas – where is the power of healing that was present then? Or have we at some level bought into the despair of Hazel Motes, who tried to found a church without Christ because he expected God to do exactly nothing for him or anyone else one way or the other. As the letter of James says, “We have not, because we ask not.”

So let’s ask. I’m grateful every Sunday during the time for prayer requests, to get as much of a response as we do. This congregation is not at all shy about praying for healing, and a number of those who have appeared on our prayer list have been restored to good health. Perhaps intercessory prayer – praying for ourselves, each other, our neighbors, and our world – is a ministry to which God has called our congregation in a special way. Clearly we need to exercise discernment – before going to God in prayer, we need to open our ears and hearts and minds to hear Christ’s voice, to discern how God is calling us. We need to be sure that when we pray, our spirits are in tune with God’s spirit. All that said, having opened our Spirits to God’s spirit, let us go to God in prayer with the confidence that God is more willing to hear our prayers than we are to ask.

“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” May this eternal love of God, who never lets us go, continue to sustain each of us and our congregation, and may Emanuel church be a place of healing and support for our beloved neighborhood of Bridesburg. Amen.
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Come experience the wondrous love of Christ at Emanuel United Church of Christ, 2628 Fillmore Street (off Thompson), Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org