I don’t preach all that often, just once a month, and this is the second time in 5 months that I’ve had to rethink where my Sunday sermon would go, adjust what I thought I would say. The first time was after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut and now as a response to this week’s events in Boston. It says a lot about our world that twice in 5 months most preachers have had to throw out their sermon drafts in order to address our reactions to violence, evil and darkness.
I was going to talk about dirty, smelly sheep. I was thinking about what a great image we are given for Jesus in today’s readings, but claiming the Good Shepherd image for Jesus implies that we are the sheep. And sheep, although they certainly have their uses, are not all that cool. I’m sure you all have one or two wool sweaters and that you’ve experienced, as I have, the “lint magnet” qualities of wool. Sheep are balls of walking wool, Velcro in motion. Whatever they lie down in sticks to them, grass, twigs and other matter we won’t mention in polite company. Hence, the dirty and smelly part. Sheep are also slow to learn, unpredictable, stubborn, restless, dependent and all too likely to stray and get lost. Making connections between us and sheep is easy and unflattering; I know I have had all too many moments in life when I have functioned as a two legged sheep, moments I wish I could take back.
Sheep are also easily frightened, they will huddle together, baahing and baahing, bewailing their circumstances if you will, unable to see a way out of whatever situation they find themselves in. And certainly, we can clearly identify with those feelings of paralysis, hopelessness, and fear, especially this week.
What do we say in the face of the violence that so often has accompanied April, frequently the month of Eastertide? April is not unfamiliar with violence; it is the month when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, the month that 32 students were killed at Virginia Tech, the month of the Branch Dravidian siege at Waco, the month of the Oklahoma City bombing, the month of the Columbine High School shooting.
The 23rd psalm and the Revelation reading both treat death in a defiant manner, urging us to be fearless in the valley of the shadow of death and telling us God will wipe away the tears of those who have gone through the great ordeal. It is the verses from Acts though, that I think give us information on how to live in violent times as people to whom Easter matters, how to live with evil and darkness as people of the resurrection.
The widows of Joppa were stricken by the death of Dorcas. She is the only woman in the bible who is called a disciple, her good works and acts of charity must have been legendary for Luke to so name her. She was devoted to the widows, women who without her would have had nothing. Remember, in that culture, a woman without a man was practically invisible. She had no property, no income, no standing.
First, the community takes care of Dorcas' body. They are so devastated by her death that they call for Peter. Then the widows gather, weeping and telling her story. it would be easy at this point to focus on the resurrection of Dorcas. To link her goodness with her coming back to life. To somehow see her resurrection as a reward for her discipleship. But, surely there were others who did similar work, others who had committed their whole lives to being disciples. But, Peter did not bring her back to life as a reward, nor did he bring her back so that she could continue doing good works. Dorcas, or Tabitha as Peter called her, was raised so that those present could see that nothing, not even death, could stop the work of His disciples. She was not raised because the community needed her, but because the community needed the resurrection, they needed resurrection hope. Resurrection hope says that nothing can stop the work of Jesus, not even death. And this my, friends, is the hope that the we as the church are called to live out and the hope we are called to be.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that April is a month of such great tragedies, the anniversary month of such monumental losses, such overwhelming violence, the month when so much evil has appeared. Eastertide is a time of great light, and great light attracts great darkness. We even have a prayer in our service of compline that asks our Lord Christ to shield the joyous, a corporate awareness that great good can attract great evil.
We can choose to look at great evil, at all the heartbreaking damage we do to one another and to our earth and we can choose to have no hope. We can point fingers and lay blame, bemoan the presence of terror and fear and death in our lives. We can huddle together like sheep, baahing and baahing as we feel lost and alone. We can focus on the dirty, smelly nature of our sheepiness. We can perseverate on our all too human fallenness, our tendencies to be stubborn, dependent, and slow to learn. We can dwell on our feelings of having strayed or of being left behind. Or, we can remember Tabitha and the hope we are called to live in to. We can express in works of compassion and caring the hope of the resurrection. We can claim the promise that we will hunger and thirst no more, the sun will not strike us nor the scorching heat. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who will wipe away every tear from our eyes and we will dwell in the house of The Lord forever. Amen.
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