5-12-19 Readings & Sermon

A reading from Acts.

Now 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.

At that time she became ill and died.

When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs.

Since 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.

So 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.

Peter 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.

He gave her his hand and helped her up.

Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive.

This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.

Meanwhile, he stayed in Japan for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner, the word of the Lord.

A reading from Revelation, I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white with palm branches in their hands.

They cried out in a loud voice, saying, Salvation belongs to our God, who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb.

And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing, Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom, and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God for ever and ever.

Amen.

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, Who are these robed in white, and where have they come from?

I said to him, Sir, you are the one that knows.

Then he said to me, These are they who have come out of the great ordeal.

They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.

They will hunger no more and thirst no more.

The sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat.

For the lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to the springs of water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

The word of the Lord.

The works that I do in my Father's name testify to me.

But you do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep.

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.

When my father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand.

The Father and I are one.

The Gospel of the Lord.

One of the churches that I was a part of recently had a tradition through the Easter season of telling some pretty bad jokes that were sure to get a laugh at least.

Celebrating the joy that comes with the resurrected life.

So bear with me while I give this a shot.

Why are sheep bad drivers?

They always make illegal ooh turns.

How many sheep does it take to knit a sweater?

Don't be silly.

Sheep can't knit.

And one last one.

What do you call a dancing sheep?

A bath larina.

At least we know the sermon can't get any worse than that, right?

Today, the fourth Sunday of Easter, is also sometimes referred to as the Good Shepherd Sunday.

It's a day where the collect and some of the readings draw to our minds the aspects of God that are similar to that of the great shepherd, a guide and a caretaker who has a clear vision of what it is that we, the sheep, need.

Today we sing a translation or interpretation of Psalm 23, the familiar psalm that starts out, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

And I could go on, but I'm sure y'all are pretty familiar with that psalm.

But the reality is, is often the only times that we hear that psalm are at funerals or at someone's deathbed.

But I think if we revisit that psalm, we see that it is a psalm also about life and a psalm about the journey that we are all on day to day.

It is a psalm that speaks of hope and of life, about being guided to abundant living here and now.

And it is about having courage and faith that even in those dark, dark valleys, we have a shepherd who comforts us and guides us.

In ancient Israel, shepherds lived rather semi-nomadic lives, moving from place to place, as they continually sought out pastures for their sheep.

They'd often have to wander through treacherous regions, putting their own life at risk, in hope of finding springs of living water for their sheep, and pastures where their sheep can graze.

There's a sense of seasonal life for a shepherd.

As the summers would come, it would become more and more arid where they were, and it would be harder and harder to find those springs, but they would keep searching until they found them, because what was important was providing for the sheep in their care.

This psalm also, though, speaks of the reality that times in our lives we are going to be wandering through dark, treacherous places.

But by having the good shepherd by our side, we know we are not going through those places alone, but that we have the good shepherd who protects us, who guides us, who's willing to risk his own life so that we may have life abundant.

And in this process, we find that our souls, our nephesh, our life force, is renewed day by day.

The gospel reading and the reading from Revelation also give highlights of who this good shepherd is.

And taking that all into one, ultimately it is about having a good shepherd who does all that is necessary to give us life.

We are all sheep, and God is our good shepherd.

But while we are called to be sheep, we are also called to be shepherds.

The resurrected Jesus instructs Peter three times to feed and care for his sheep.

Jesus calls us to follow the example he set before us, calls us to become shepherds ourselves.

In this story of Tabitha that we hear today, we learn of Tabitha, the great shepherdess.

She's identified as a disciple and the only female disciple individually identified through all of the New Testament, which speaks of her faith and the way she lives her life.

Importantly, though, she is one who lives a life of charity, caring for others, including the widows.

The name Tabitha, both in the Greek and the Aramaic, means gazelle.

But this in turn then means to be someone who has grace and beauty.

It also holds the idea of having a clear-sighted vision.

Tabitha was not only an image of grace and beauty herself, but she had a clear-sighted vision to see grace and beauty in widows, those who the rest of society were likely blind to.

She had a clear-sighted vision on how to care for others, just as a shepherdess would care for her flock.

This is not too dissimilar to the exhibit we have out in our hall right now of our sister's keeper, the vision that Mer Marie Placos has of exploring the grace and the beauty in women, even the women who live in the most, the most, the places with the most poverty in our world today.

And the hope is that by seeing grace and beauty in others, that we're able to see the fingerprint of God in each person, that we see that they are in fact children of God, and that this may lead us to care for others, just as the great shepherd cares for us.

When Peter comes to Joppa, he comes probably not to think, not thinking that he would actually revive Tabitha.

For as far as we know, up to this point, no apostle has had the audacity to bring a human back to life after death.

Jesus has done it, but none of his followers have yet tried this and succeeded.

So more likely he was coming to Joppa to be with this community, to grieve with them through this loss, and to maybe provide some vision for them of how they are to carry on now that this great pillar in their society is now gone.

But the widows, they take the time to speak to Peter, to share all that Tabitha had done, and Peter takes time to listen to them, to see how Tabitha was a great shepherdess.

Then Peter prays.

And after praying, he has the audacity, he has the courage to believe in the unbelievable, and instructs Tabitha to wake up.

She gets up, and this allows her to return to her community, to continue to serve it, to continue to be a shepherd to her community.

This story shares with us a clear-sighted vision of being a great shepherdess.

And that giving life to a community, giving life abundant.

And it's a life that leads not only to one or two widows being restored, but that a whole community comes to believe in the true great shepherd who ultimately provides all that we need.

Being a shepherd to me seems an awful lot, an awful lot like being a mother figure.

Tabitha was a mother to these widows.

She cared for their needs, she provided what was necessary in their lives.

She helped them to nurture and to grow.

Today we celebrate Mother's Day.

Mother's Day started back in 1908, and it was the idea of Anna Jarvis.

Anna was inspired by the life that her mother lived, and so after her mother died, she created some celebrations that eventually led to what we have as Mother's Day today.

Anne, the mother, lived in the 1800s and was all about community health.

See, she had 13 children, but the harsh realities of her day meant that only four lived and grew up to be adults.

The rest had died from illnesses brought on by poor water and poor sanitation.

And the mother had a clear vision of what a healthy community could look like.

And so taking the grief that she experienced from the loss of her children, she put that vision into something called the Mother's Day Work Club.

It was an organization of mothers who advocated together for healthier communities in which they lived, bringing changes to the water systems and the sanitation systems.

Once the Civil War broke out, the work club shifted their vision to include taking care of the soldiers on both sides of the line.

Didn't matter what uniform they wore, these mothers would mother these soldiers when they were ill, when they needed healing, or when they needed to die in peace.

Anne was known to be the woman, the only person willing to pray over the body of who is considered to be the first Union soldier to have died in that war.

She prayed the prayer of a mother when no one else could pray.

And then after the war was over, the community that she was in had families who were on both sides of the war, and so she was asked to lead a movement towards reconciliation, finding creative ways to help that community heal and to restore relationships.

Anne lived her life shepherding and mothering others, bringing to them abundant life.

Anna, her daughter, was so moved by the faith of her mother and the way she saw her mother's faith being lived out daily, that one day while she was sitting in her mother's Sunday school classroom, she thought to herself, I hope and pray that someone sometime will find a memorial Mother's Day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life.

She's entitled to it.

So three years after Anne died, her daughter started Mother's Day.

It originated in a small town in West Virginia and had a special service of worship to thank God for the gift of mothers.

The daughter was not able to be there that day, but she sent carnations for everyone in attendance, and with that she sent this message to explain why she chose white carnations.

She writes, its whiteness is to symbolize the truth, purity, and broad charity of mother love.

Its fragrance, her memory, and her prayers.

The carnation does not drop its petals, but hugs them to its heart, hugs them to its heart as it dies, and so too, mothers hug their children to their hearts, their mother love never dying.

When I select this flower, I was remembering my mother's bed of white flowers.

Jesus himself saw himself as a mother to his disciples.

He prayed that he could be like a mother hen protecting her children.

He prayed this because he knew that the disciples and all of his followers would go through dark valleys and would need the protection of a loving mother.

God is our great mother.

God holds a clear-sighted vision of what gives us life abundant.

And so as we honor our earth, our earthly mothers, we honor the love of God that we experience through our mother's love.

It is love that gives us life abundant.

Becoming a parent does not stop any of us from ever being a child.

And being called to be shepherds never stops us from first being God's sheep.

May we never forget who the great shepherd is and how the great shepherd loves us and protects us and leads us to life abundant.