Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 25, 2010

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

OK. So we just heard two Bible stories about someone bringing a dead person back to life. Did you notice how similar those two stories are? We’ll get to that in a minute. It’s important. But if you’re like me, and in this respect at least I suspect that you are, the first thing you probably noticed was that in these two stories Peter and Jesus bring dead people back to life. And if you’re like me, and in this respect I suspect that you are, you probably thought: “No way! That just doesn’t happen. No one can bring a dead person back to life.” Frankly, if being a Christian means that I have to believe these stories literally, factually, then I can’t be a Christian. I don’t believe them literally, factually. If you do, fine; but I can’t, and I don’t. For me the literal meaning of these stories is a major barrier to faith.

But then, if you’ve been paying any attention to me at all around here, you know that I don’t believe that we have to take these Bible stories, or any Bible stories, literally. The literal meaning of a Bible story is invariably superficial and of no particular use to us. There is invariably much more depth and much more meaning in these stories when we see them precisely as stories, as metaphor, as myth. When we look at the stories that way they come alive. They invite us in. They ask us deep and probing questions about our own time and our own lives. What do we find when we look at the stories of the raising of Tabitha and Talitha that way? And by the way, “Talitha” isn’t really a name, but it often gets used as the name of the girl in Luke’s story; and I will use it that way for the sake of convenience.

They both are, as we have seen, stories of people raising dead people back to life. The metaphor in them is actually, I think, quite clear. The faith of Jesus Christ brings people out of death back into life. But not death and life understood literally. Rather, death and life understood as metaphors for how life is with us. It is perfectly possible, and indeed it is quite common, for people to be dead in this life. Their bodies aren’t biologically dead, but they are dead to life, real life, whole life. Lots of things can make us dead in that way. Addiction to alcohol or drugs comes readily to mind as something that makes us dead in this life. It destroys a person’s life long before it kills her. Other things can make us dead in this life too. An obsession with wealth as the goal of life, an obsession that can devour everything else in a person’s life, makes alive people dead. I’ve seen it. I used to work among people like that, people whose only apparent aim in life was to make as much money as possible. The alcoholism, divorce, and suicide rates among them were very high. They were alive yet dead. Fear of change can make a person alive yet dead. I used to be one of those people, and I’ve known others. They know that their life isn’t really working for them, isn’t bringing them wholeness and satisfaction; but they can’t imagine how they could change it. And they have a list of reasons a mile long about how they can’t do anything about it. They live in an unsatisfactory world formed by a lack of imagination combined with a lack of courage. They are alive yet dead. You can probably think of other scenarios that render people alive yet dead, that put them in great need of being brought back to life.

The stories of the raising of Tabitha and Talitha tell us that these kinds of living death are not what God wants for us or for anyone. In them Jesus first, then Jesus’ closest disciple Peter, demonstrate that what God wants for people is life not death. Unlike Jesus himself, Tabitha and Talitha will die again someday, and that fact tells us that stories really are about life in this life and that the death we’re concerned with in the stories is metaphorical death. We are all mortal, yet God wants for us life while we have life, real life, whole life, abundant life. That’s what the metaphor in these stories is telling us. God seeks to lead people from death to life, all in this life.

These stories have people coming back to life, and they are set in the midst of faith communities. In Mark’s story Talitha is the daughter of Jairus, a leader of the synagogue. The faith community there is the Jewish community in which Jesus too lived and worked. In Luke’s story from Acts the faith community is the community of the followers of Jesus, still Jews of course but now Jews who are following Jesus as the Christ. Talitha and Tabitha find new life precisely in communities of faith, and there’s a lesson in that part of the story for us too. We might be tempted to dismiss the story of Jesus and Talitha because that, after all, was Jesus; and we aren’t Jesus. But here’s where the striking similarities between these two stories comes into play. Luke, the author of the story of Tabitha in Acts, knew the story of Jesus and Talitha. He got it from Mark, and he included it in his Gospel too, although he doesn’t use the word Talitha. He tells it first of Jesus in his Gospel, then he tells it of Peter in Acts, and there’s a lesson in that for us. Who is Peter? He is the leader of the first community of Jesus’ followers after Jesus’ death and resurrection. He represents the Christian community. In telling a story about him bringing a woman back to life that so closely parallels the story of Jesus bringing a girl back to life, Luke is saying that the powers that were in Jesus now reside in the Christian community. The Christian community has the power to restore people to life.

And that means that that power now reside in us. We may not believe in a formal doctrine of the Apostolic Succession the way the Catholics, the Orthodox, and some other Protestant traditions do. We certainly don’t ascribe great power and authority to the Pope as Peter’s successor the way the Catholics do; but we do stand in apostolic succession. We are the successors of the Apostles. We are the heirs of the Apostles; and Luke is telling us that the power that was first in Jesus and then in the Apostles, the power to bring people from death to life, is now in us. Bringing people from death to life is our call as a Christian community.

And maybe your first thought is that we don’t do it, or even that we can’t do it. Well, think again. I know of at least one way that we do it. We provide a spiritual home for people who thought there was no spiritual home for them, and certainly no spiritual home for them within the Christian tradition. People who reject popular Christianity, with its literalism, anti-intellectualism, and prejudices. People whom popular Christianity rejects because of their orientation, or because they are divorced, or because how they choose to live and to love doesn’t fit popular Christianity’s narrow and prejudged ideas of what is proper and what is permissible. We provide a loving, welcoming Christian community for these folks and for their children. Our whole congregation makes real for them God’s love and God’s acceptance, and they make that divine love and acceptance real for the others of us. We make real for them God’s grace, and they make God’s grace real for the others of us. That is helping them on their journey from death to life. This church is where I moved from death to life, death in a profession that was so wrong for me that it was killing me quite literally to work that gives me life, quite literally. From the death of a beloved spouse to new life in the knowledge of God’s unending grace. Oh, yes. We do it. We bring people from death to life. Not literally, but really. Not literally, but powerfully. We read the stories of Jesus and Peter bringing people from death to life. And if we have ears to hear we respond: They did it. We can too. We do too. Amen.