MAY WE HELP YOU?
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Text: Acts 9:36-43
A church whose mission is to serve those in need. Whatever we make of the miraculous story of Dorcas’s restoration to life, we see clearly that she is part of a church whose mission is to serve those in need. Not only is she a part of this body of servants, she is a key member. She is the only woman in the book of Acts to be identified specifically as a disciple. Her remarkable good work of compassion and service causes her community to reach out to Peter in hope that he might do something about her illness and death. Peter’s reputation has continued to grow as did that of Jesus before him as he moves through Judea preaching, teaching, and healing in Jesus’ name. People are putting faith in him as God’s representative.
There is a great deal of scholarly debate about the literal and symbolic meaning of this story, but we are not going to try to unravel all that today or come to any definitive conclusion about the raising of Dorcas. We do know that this story fits into a long line of revivification tales. Not only are there stories of raising from the dead in many cultures and religions, this story closely follows stories of raising from the dead performed by Elijah, Elisha and Jesus. This story places Peter solidly in that prophetic tradition in which God works through one whom God calls to do something that is beyond any easy human understanding. The book of the Acts of the Apostles, or, as we noted earlier, the Acts of the Holy Spirit, tells of the growth and evolution of the church, led by Peter, Paul, James and others. It shows the manifestation of Jesus’ teaching to his followers that they would, in their ministry, do things as great, and even greater than he had. Here the church becomes significantly the body of Christ, showing him alive in their own lives, witnessing to the ongoing power of his spirit to shape and inspire them, carrying on his work in their growing ministries of compassion and grace.
Kate Huey asks of us: “Is the church continuing the work of Jesus today? Is the church acting like the ancient prophets, our ancestors in faith? Would those who hear about us, and those who watch what we do, hear and feel echoes from the story of Christ? Would they recognize us as prophets, filled with the power of the Spirit?” (Kate Huey, "The Way Forward," SAMUEL, i.ucc.org , April 25, 2010.) Are we truly a church whose mission is to serve those in need? Is compassion a key characteristic of our congregation? In the anthem this morning the choir sang, “Christ has no hands except your own to reach the world and make him known. His love can change humanity by your touch alone. Christ has no hands except your own.” Do we believe this is so? Do we then live like it is so in our own lives?
Dorcas did. Not only does the text tell us that she was “devoted to good works and acts of charity,” the evidence was there in the room as the other widows paraded the garments that she had sewn for them. Her hands, working for Christ, had clothed the naked and comforted the afflicted. And more than that, her good work had empowered these women to care for and speak for themselves. Her good works were more than just acts of charity. Quietly and without fanfare, she not only turned her life own around through following Christ, she helped others to turn their lives around as well.
Jon Walton says, “Dorcas was not a preacher, theologian or eloquent writer. She did not make her mark on the church with brave deeds or major financial gifts. But she did win converts and touch lives, and probably influenced more people than anyone else in Joppa. She took care of people. She made tunics and knitted afghans, baked cookies, held hands and visited people. She listened to the heartbreaks and joys, toils and triumphs of the people in the church in Joppa. And what's more, she persuaded her friends to help.” He goes on, “She organized her own form of ecclesiastical welfare system and established her version of the Little Sisters of the Poor. She was the Dorothy Day of her time, putting a human face on the compassion of Christ and expressing and embodying that love for those in the village of Joppa” (Jon Walton, “Living by the Word: What about Dorcas?” in The Christian Century, April 17, 2007.)
How many people have we known like Dorcas – quietly, humbly living in the power of the Spirit, serving as the hands of Christ, turning the world right side up in the name of God? There are some saints sitting in this room today. I won’t embarrass them by calling any names. Most of us know who they are. We’ve seen them at work, felt the touch of their hands, benefited from their prayers. And some are not here in person, but the memory of their faithfulness to the gospel, of their “good works and acts of charity” and a sense of their compassion and grace lingers in this very room. Truly we are blessed by these folk, but we are also challenged. How might we become more like them? How might we be more the hands of Christ in our own daily living? How might we be more committed to and better practitioners of lives of compassion and grace? God knows the world needs such desperately.
We’ve been hearing all this month about the remarkable work of Greg Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute. Here is a man of compassion who met a people of great compassion. Though needy in their own right, their response to the injured climber was to nurse him to health. Now, in response to their generosity, this one man is making a huge difference, not alone, but because he has inspired others to work with him. While his good works and acts of charity transform the lives of children and whole villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it also challenges systems that are insensitive to cultures not their own, that rush too quickly to impose military solutions on ancient, complex social problems. Like Dorcas, his work does more than provide charity, it transforms lives along with social and cultural reality. Not unlike Jesus and the promise of the realm of God. Christ-love can change humanity, but only if our hands are committed to making that love a practical reality in the world in which we live. We can’t all be Greg Mortenson or Dorcas or Peter, but we can, uniquely and faithfully, be the whole person God calls us to be.
Now I want to say a word about Peter’s role in this story. We’ve looked at Peter’s post-Easter transformation several times recently. He seems only to grow in power and wisdom as we move through the book of Acts. His encounter with, his ongoing relationship with the risen Christ has made all the difference in his life. We have no way of certifying what actually happened in that upper room with Dorcas on that fateful day in Joppa. All we can say is something happened that day that was transformative in her life and the life of the Christ-followers gathered around her. What we do know is that Peter was serving as the hands of Christ that day. This story records, as do other stories about him, that, following in the footsteps of Jesus, before he did anything, he prayed. He centered himself in God. He focused on his relationship with the living Christ before he acted. In today’s words of preparation, John Biersdorf says, “As an act of love, prayer is a courageous act. It is a risk we take. It is a life-and-death risk, believing in the promises of the gospel, that God’s love is indeed operative in the world. In prayer we have the courage, perhaps even the presumption and the arrogance or the audacity to claim that God’s love can be operative in the very specific situations of human need that we encounter.” He must have had Peter in mind when he penned these words, for there is in Peter’s prayer great courage in the face of death. But, more importantly, there is an act of love in the service of Christ and all those who looked to Dorcas to be Christ to them. Could God, would God do a miraculous thing for these people in need? Peter put his faith in God to do so. He took that life-and-death risk, believing that God was very much operative in his world. Could we, would we take such a risk in Jesus’ name and ask God to transform some aspect of life around us?
Of course, praying like this does not mean we get to dictate the outcome of our prayers. Even though Dorcas was raised on this occasion, like Lazarus, she would die eventually. That was her human lot as it is ours. God does not always give us what we want. I would like to say that what God does give us is what we need. I know this is hard to take sometimes, and by it I do not mean that God sends suffering, pain and death to test our mettle. I do mean that, even though we cannot manipulate reality by our prayers, we can discover the power that God offers to transform life and turn the world right side up - sometimes through changing things, sometimes through learning acceptance, sometimes through the realization that God is just with us, “even when the way goes through Death Valley.”
A church whose mission is to serve those in need. May we help you? God helping us, I hope we can. I hope each us can find a way to live like Dorcas, like Peter, like Christ, in compassion and grace, in faith and service. And, as a community, I pray we will continue to grow into our calling to be the hands of Christ. How will the world hear the message that Jesus is alive? How can it know the truth unless it's through our lives? Touching the desperate, feeling their pain; reaching the hopeless in Jesus' name, we are the lighthouse to shine his light! We are the hands, indeed, we are the body of Christ to serve people in need. Amen.
36Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. 37At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. 38Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, “Please come to us without delay.” 39So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. 40Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. 41He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. 42This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. 43Meanwhile he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.