May
12, 2019
4th
Sunday of Easter
Acts
9:36-43
Psalm
23
Revelation
7:9-17
John
10:22-30
Please
pray with me,
May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable
and suitable in your sight, O God, our rock, our strength and our
redeemer. Amen.
I’m
not sure how to begin today.
So,
I’ll start with this. Rachel Held Evans
was a popular writer who challenged the evangelical Christian
establishment. She was a voice for many
through her blog posts engaging posts on twitter. She lived a life called by God and one that
was transformed by a living and loving God.
Rachel
was born in Alabama in 1981 and moved to Dayton, Tennessee, as a teenager. She was an enthusiastic and devout believer
from the start, steeped in the American conservative evangelicalism of the
1980s and ’90s; as a teenager, she was quoted in Christianity Today praising
her high school’s federally funded abstinence program.
She
left and returned to the faith many times trying to wrestle with the Bible,
it’s teachings, her life experiences and the world around her.
Rachel
became a forceful and winsome public voice for progressive evangelicalism,
first as a blogger and later as an author and sought-after speaker. She started
he blog more than a decade ago, and in her years of writing she confronted every
controversial issue in American evangelical culture.
Her
political and cultural polemics attracted the most attention. But she also
wrote passionately about her own evolving faith, her prayer life, her wrestling
with doubt, and her love for the church. In her most recent publication Rachel wrote, “Anyone
who has loved the Bible as much as I have, and who has lost it and found it
again, knows how a relationship with the Bible can be as real and as
complicated as a relationship with a family member or close friend.” (Inspired)
Rachel’s
last blog post was on March 6, Ash Wednesday.
In
it she wrote:
“It
strikes me today that the liturgy of Ash Wednesday teaches something that
nearly everyone can agree on. Whether you are part of a church or not, whether
you believe today or your doubt, whether you are a Christian or an atheist or
an agnostic or a so-called “none” (whose faith experiences far transcend the
limits of that label) you know this truth deep in your bones: “Remember that
you are dust and to dust you will return.”
Death
is a part of life.
My
prayer for you this season is that you make time to celebrate that reality, and
to grieve that reality, and that you will know you are not alone.” (Previous details about RHE from Slate.com)
In
mid-April, Rachel was admitted to the hospital for flu and had reactions to the
antibiotics. After being placed in a
medically induced coma to help control seizures she died a week ago on
Saturday, May 4th at the age of 37.
37. Really?!?
Her
writings inspired and encouraged me to lift my voice.
Her
experiences helped me to know that it’s okay that faith and doubt are part of
this life’s journey.
And
that it’s okay to be firm in your faith one day and completely wonder what God
is up to in your heart the next day.
She
was a woman and a person of faith who grew up in the church, was shaped by the
church, challenged by the church, but through it all learned of a God of love
and grace and forgiveness who called her to share that same love and grace and
forgiveness with all God’s children.
She
will be missed, and not forgotten.
This
past week, Mabel, a dear saint of the church died. She was known throughout this congregation
for the many, many quilts she made when infants were baptized at Trinity. Several years ago, we took a picture with Mabel
and many of the youth with their quilts.
She wrapped the most vulnerable in our community in warmth and love in
those quilts.
I
learned this week, too, that when Mabel was still able to come to church she
would bring a bag of food for the food pantry.
The volunteers knew right away that it came from Mabel. Apparently she tied it a special way and in
it each week was a meal: cereal, fruit, vegetables a starch or grain. When the volunteers asked her why she did it
she said that she would do it as long as she could because God wanted her to.
Our
lesson from Acts today echoed the life of Rachel and Mabel. Once you get passed the Greek translation of
Tabitha’s name as Dorcas.
Growing
up, and maybe even now, the word Dork, is not flattering or complementary. So let’s get passed this hiccup together and
also learn that her name means gazelle.
(That’s much more complementary.)
Tabitha
has lived a live of that of a disciple.
She is the person throughout the entire New Testament who is labeled as
a female disciple. She has lived a life
where she has used the gifts and talents she has received from God to help
provide to those in her midst, primarily by making clothing for those around
her, specifically widows. She helped
care for those in her midst who were the most vulnerable in her society. Upon her death, they were not just mourning
her death, but also perhaps fearful of what their own futures would be without
her presence and help in their lives.
When
Peter arrives after hearing of her death, those gathered are showing him the
clothing and sharing the ways she helped provide for their needs. He steps into her room, kneels down beside
her and prays. Then he turns to her and
says, Tabitha, arise. (the same word
that we use when we say Christ has been raised from the dead….same arise.) She sits up, he holds out his hand and he
raises her up, and presents her as living.
That,
my friends is the vision of hope, is it not?
Presented
to her friends, and to those who depended upon her for clothing and support,
Tabitha – alive – is hope for the present day and hope for the future.
No
doubt as the prayers went out in the beginning of May for Rachel Held Evans,
they were full of hope. Hope that the
doctors could diagnose the problem, figure out a solution and bring her out of
the coma, out of the hospital and back home.
But
Rachel’s outcome was not the same as Tabitha’s.
So,
for those of us still on this side of the grave, we wait.
We
wait in the light of the empty tomb as we cry out in anger, grief and
loss.
Those
of us who have experienced the death of a friend, especially a young friend,
struggle with this loss.
Those
of us who have experienced the death of someone whom they have relied upon
either financially or physically cry out as they wonder and perhaps worry about
what their future may be.
Those
of us who have experienced the death of a loved one know the feelings of loss,
of sadness, worry, anger, stress, frustration and sometimes even
hopelessness.
We
wonder what the future will bring.
We
wait. In grief, in longing and in
hope.
And
the hope, my friends, the good news this day, comes to us straight from the
book of Revelation.
“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 springs of the water of life,
and
God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
This,
my friends, is the promise of the resurrection.
This
my friends is the story of hope that we are called to tell over and over and
over again.
So
that in this broken world, in this world of death and brokenness, there is
hope.
There
is comfort and the promise of a future of eternal life.
There
is comfort in grieving together, leaning on one another and returning to this
place week after week to hear these words of comfort and unconditional love
from an amazing loving God.
Listen
to those words.
Take
those words into your hearts and your mouths and share them with those who need
to hear them this day.
This
is the story of Jesus we are called to tell.
The
story of a savior who walks with us in our darkest valleys, leads us beside
still waters, restores our soul and never, ever lets us go.
Share
that story.
In
her book Inspired: Slaying Giants,
Walking on Water and Loving the Bible Again Rachel Held Evans writes,
“Jesus invites us into a story that is bigger than ourselves, bigger than our
culture, bigger even than our imaginations, and yet we get to tell that story
with the scandalous particularity of our particular moment and place in
time. We are storytelling creatures
because we are fashioned in the image of a storytelling God. May we never neglect the gift of that. May we never lose our love of telling the
tale.” (P. 164)
Friends,
never lose your love of telling the tale of Jesus.
Tabitha,
Rachel, Mabel, these faithful women shared and showed the example of Christ’s
love in word and in deed.
We,
too are called to tell the tale, to show Christ’s love and live it out.
And
may the peace, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus and let all God’s people say, amen.
#becauseofRHE
