Let Go

Matthew 18:21-35

I don’t like letting go of things; it doesn’t come easily to me.  In order to let go of something, the story has to change. I have to decide that since I only used it once, I don’t actually need the tea light fondu set.  I must choose to recognize that nobody in my house is clamoring for the Scooby-Do ‘Learn to Read’ books, so we’re probably done with those. Maybe that dusty basket of bleached seashells from that trip to Florida when the kids were in preschool no longer represents for me what it once did? And perhaps, with every bathing suit I’ve owned for 20 years folded neatly in a bin under my bed, instead of being armed and ready for any possible future, I could risk living in the now, and only own swimsuits that currently fit me. 

But letting go of being right? Letting go of how I know things should be?  Letting go of regrets and disappointments? Letting go of something unkind or unfair that was done to me? These are harder. If we can’t control the circumstances, at least we can control the narrative. If we can’t control what happened in the past, at least we can control what we do with it, learn from it, not make the same foolish mistakes again.  Control is a strategy we use to feel secure, to reduce anxiety, to combat fear, to give us a feeling of protection. Letting go of control? No thanks. 

The Greek word we translate as “forgive” means simply “to let go.” Sometimes we see forgiveness as giving up control, letting someone get away with something, or acting like what happened didn’t matter. We feel loyal to our pain. We stroke it and stoke it, longing for our injury to be recognized as unjust and wrong, and act as though to forgive someone else is to somehow betray ourselves. 

Peter has been listening to all Jesus’s teaching about conflict and forgiveness, and thinks to himself, Over, and over, and over again I go through the work of forgiving someone who hurts me. So when is enough? When can I stop? How much am I expected to put up with? 

Generally speaking, we are all for forgiveness, most of the time, but there’s a limit, right? So, Peter suggests a good, large, and even holy-sounding number: How about seven times? Surely that is a beyond-generous amount of times to forgive. Right, Jesus? I mean, let’s not go crazy. Surely, some people don’t deserve forgiveness.  

But forgiveness isn’t in the same zip code as deserve. They are completely different languages, contradictory accounting systems. Forgive and deserve are more like opposites, since forgiveness frees us from a system of gauging and measuring, and puts us instead into the realm of boundless and unlimited love. 

So Jesus answers, Try seventy times that. In other words, Forgive infinity times, Peter. Just keep on going till you lose track. There is no end to forgiveness. No point at which you’ve reached the limit. No lifetime maximum out-of-pocket amount. 

Then, to drive the point home, he tells one of his trademark parables with absurd extremes to reveal how we’re living trapped in the way of fear instead of free in the way of God. The servant in the parable is forgiven more than he could repay in fifteen lifetimes and then immediately and violently demands someone repay a tiny debt, and when he can’t, throws him in jail. This is like celebrating sobriety with a drinking binge, like running back into the burning building you were just rescued from, like scrapping the Ten Commandments for the golden calf and pining for the slavery of Egypt. 

He sticks with his old identity instead of the new one offered him by the king. He says, “Thanks, but no thanks.” to a life of freedom and generosity, and chooses instead captivity to a life of debt and indebtedness, where it’s all kept track of, and there is no forgetting, no forgiving, no letting go, ever.

Which currency will you use? Which way will define you and shape your life? If you choose a world without forgiveness, you stay chained to the suffering of the past. You repeat old hurts and live them current, you nurse your pain with no chance of release. Hanging onto wounds, insults, and offenses, practicing and spreading this pattern of deprivation and resentment, traps you ever more tightly in a misery of your own making.

So I can’t help thinking Jesus told his parable to Peter with a twinkle in his eye, his words like a shove on Peter’s shoulder, to highlight the absurdity of Peter’s question: 

How much forgiveness is enough, Jesus, before I can stop and be done with it already? How much freedom from injury do I have to endure before I get to be imprisoned in bitterness? At what point am I allowed to quit living in a future shaped by love? Is seven times a sacrificial and generous amount of letting go before it’s appropriate to throw in the towel and go back to hanging onto betrayal and stoking anger? 

Peter doesn’t know what’s coming—that Jesus will die and take into himself all suffering and betrayal, all pain and injustice; that none of it, ever, goes unseen, untended, unmet. God incarnate will bear it all, all that has been and all that will be.

 And as the last breath leaves his human body, Jesus will look out at his murderers and whisper, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34).
And they will cease being those who are killing God and instead become those on whom God has poured unending love. Jesus will die in freedom, and release his killers—and all of us as well, taking into the heart of God all the terrible things we think and say and do to one another, everything, every one of us. 

Setting aside deserve and debt, punishment and payback, Jesus will open to us mercy, grace, forgiveness, and freedom. All that is dead—between us, within us, around us—is swallowed up by resurrection. Our brokenness is now the ground from which new life is born, green, beautiful, and eternal. 

But how in the world do we forgive? How do we let go? 

 
Several years ago, I heard Dr. Fred Luskin speak. He’s a world expert on forgiveness and director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project. His work began out of frustration that most faith traditions speak extensively about the need to forgive but don’t tell us how to forgive. And we can get so trapped in unforgiveness. So, he began to study forgiveness. And by the time I heard him speak he had dedicated twenty-five years of research and work to teaching people how to forgive, and to measuring scientifically the effect it has on people’s bodies, minds and relationships. And do you know what his team has discovered is at the very root of all forgiveness?

Abiding in God’s love. 

Of course, they wouldn’t say it that way in the laboratory. Instead, they would talk about finding that place of peace within, about living from that place. But the way you get there? Love. 

He walked us through it. “Think of someone you adore,” he said. “Get a good picture of them in your head. Remember what it feels like to be so loved by them, so known and valued. How they delight in you! Breathe deeply. Let your heart even get warm right now as you think of this person. Hold that feeling within you. Now open your eyes,” he said. “Five minutes of this every day is more effective than psychotherapy in helping people to forgive.” 

Love drives out fear and frees us to forgive, because all forgiveness, all love and mercy and with-each-other-ness, come from God’s own love, God’s own being.  Love unclenches our heart. When we are no longer defined by our woundedness, but by our belovedness, it changes the story. 

I’m learning something right now about loving and letting go.  After 18 years of raising a person, looking out for them, looking after them, you just send them away to fend for themselves and that’s that. Of course, I know that’s not that and all that, but still, there’s a lot of letting go involved. There’s an uncomfortable surrendering that makes life feel precarious and precious all at once.  And how similar the captivity can feel, between regret and fear! Not unlike anger, resentment, harbored pain, or the obstinate need to be right. How much my worry can keep me from being present in love to those I love! All of it ties us up and keeps us chained.  

But it has helped me to recognize in my learning this letting go, that there is a kind of fundamental forgiveness to it all, a gentleness with myself, a grace for each other, an acceptance of life as it is. The truth is, none of us can go back and redo anything differently, and none of us can control what will happen in the future. Right now, these two facts could paralyze me with sorrow or anxiety. But I am forgiven, and I can forgive, which is to say, I am released from keeping score, and I can be free from illusions of control.  

Letting go, and letting in the delight, the wonder, the incredible privilege it is to love, and the awe I feel at being loved by, these particular, quirky and astonishing humans my life gets to be tangled up with, I find myself unclenching. I discover I am being set free to receive the unearned, undeserved gift of my one, limited life, bound inextricably to dear people I can only love by letting go. 

To let go, the story has to change. Life’s not about what anybody deserves or doesn’t deserve. We’re loved and held in a boundless and unlimited love. We no longer need the anger. We can let the pain go. The worry is not serving us. The story of regret, recycled over and over, no longer represents what it once did. What was may no longer fit us, and it’s time to release it so we can receive what is. Instead of living fearful and guarded, armed and ready for any possible future, we can live in the present. Instead of grasping for control we will never have, to feel a security we will never reach, we can let go, and find we are already held secure by love. God’s healing, forgiving love meets us where we are and flows through us, and we abide in the love that holds us all.

Amen.

Who's Your Savior?

 

 Matthew 14:22-36

 

There is nobody who has been in church for any amount of time that hasn’t heard sermons on this text, and 99% of the time, they bypass the whole rest of the story and zero in on Jesus’ question to Peter, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” then urge us assess our faith meter, check the balance on our faith account, and uh, oh, it’s low. So have more faith, we say, more than Peter’s little faith, anyway. Have faith enough not to doubt, faith enough to get out of the boat like he did, but not to get distracted by storms, faith enough to keep your eyes on Jesus, whatever that means. 

 

If we doubt, we call ourselves bad Christians and assume that (if there’s a God) God is surely disappointed in us.  When we’re afraid we judge ourselves for not believing and are sure God is judging us too. If we’ve learned that faith doesn’t mean certainty or fearlessness, but means trust, we conclude we don’t trust enough. 

 

So right now, let’s just acknowledge this is super messed up. The way of fear is shaping our thinking here. We’ve made faith a commodity to acquire, a product to stockpile, and so none of us will ever have enough. None of us, ever, will be worthy of whatever we think “enough faith” is supposed to eventually accomplish for us or bring us to—which is what, actually? God’s love? Our own worthiness to exist? We’ve strapped ourselves into completely winless game of our own making.  In fact, this whole thing has nothing whatsoever to do with God. We don’t even need God for this debacle. We’ve got it locked down. In our relentless pursuit of “enough” faith, God can stay a vague idea, a critic made in our image, an unreachable longing and brutal projection of our own dissatisfaction with ourselves. Then we are never expected to actually encounter God, or God-forbid, participate in anything God is doing. We are simply never good enough for the role (so, side bonus? We’re off the hook of those intimidating propositions!) 

 

But we know that the stories in scripture are to tell us who God is and what God is up to. A good indicator that we are completely missing the point is if we’ve taken God out of it and made it about ourselves. Let’s return to this story and perhaps we can hear it again as showing us something about Jesus, who is God right here with us, which, in and of itself has enormous implications for us after all.  

This year we are getting to know Jesus. If you want to follow along at home, we’re spending the next 2 ½ months in inside four chapter of Matthew: 14-18. Before celebrating Pentecost, first we were with Jesus and the bleeding woman who was healed, and the dead child who was raised. Then we were with Jesus and the crowds at the feeding of the 5000, just before the moment that opens our scripture today. There we saw how, after hearing about his cousin John (aka the Baptist’s) cruel and senseless death at a royal feast, Jesus went to be by himself, but the crowds went to be with him. Then they all spent the day together, living in the kingdom of God—in direct opposition to the kingdom that had just murdered John—a day that culminated in a radically different kind of feast, a feast of abundance and life, in which the God who created everything from nothing fed every single man, woman and child from practically nothing, with leftovers galore.

We pick up here, with Jesus sending the disciples on ahead, and finally going to be alone with God. But now he goes to be alone with God as one who is fundamentally never alone, always part of a bigger, truer story than we often see in a world filled with evil, bravado, and cruelty.  After a day of healing, sharing and kindness, going to be alone with God is another way of connecting to the ancient true belonging of all creation and all creatures to the love of God that holds the universe intact and flows between you and me. 

But meanwhile, the disciples, who had just witnessed, nay, participated in, this vast and unbelievable miracle, instead of arriving early and getting a good night’s sleep, spend the entire night struggling for their very lives against a raging storm. Wind and rain tossing their boat, they bail and battle, bracing against the gale and wrestling torn sails, coursing with adrenaline and dread, for hours and hours, with no relief in sight.

And in the wee hours of the morning, wind still gusting and waves still heaving, here comes this figure, strolling atop the water, toward the disciples, who watch, exhausted and scared.  

 

If you want to see human being doubt even what they know to be most true in the whole world, start watching when we’re exhausted and scared. Exhausted and scared are when abundance and belonging feel like a faraway fantasy, not something that we maybe, literally just experienced. Exhausted and scared are when the disciples doubt God’s love and care, and you and I, and Jesus too, actually, who, even thought he was God incarnate, even though all he did and said flowed from the deep, unbreakable connection to the Father through the Spirit, still, when he was exhausted and scared, cried out from the cross My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? 

 

If you’re measuring the faith meter, better do to it when you’ve just witnessed people being healed, and delivered, and fed, and connected, and your own belly and heart are full too, and the vast, harmonized kumbayah is still buzzing in your soul. But if, even a few hours later, you find yourself exhausted and scared, that faith supply can plumet. Serenity is impossible to even recall, let alone conjure up. 

 

So, right in the midst of the raging storm, Jesus comes to the exhausted and scared disciples. And when he’s within shouting distance, Jesus calls out, “Don’t be afraid, guys, it’s me.”  And Peter, dear Peter, trying to beef up his faltering faith, climbs out of the pitching, heaving boat into the storm, puts his feet onto the water and stands, and begins walking toward Jesus.  

 

But then, (oops, darn it, Peter!) he’s distracted by the furious sea and the roiling sky and the wind screaming around him and he begins to sink.  

 

And here is where we get told to just keep your eyes on Jesus, as though God’s goal is to get us out of storms, or perhaps God sends storms to test us, and we are supposed to have faith bigger than Peter’s little faith. Here we act like faith is a mental game of concentration and focus, like karate or zen golf, and if we only believe hard enough we won’t sink. Seeing the storm is what causes the sinking, so if we just keep ourselves from acknowledging that the elements are raging around us and threatening to break us down, somehow we’ll coast along the top of the water and everything will be peachy.  But, if we admit our fear, or notice how terrible things really are, down we go, under the waves. And apparently, Jesus is just there to get us back on track, our own personal, robed and bearded life coach, our cosmic advice columnist.  Denying a loved one’s pain or refusing to face your own fear becomes “faith.” Faith is pretending to understand things you don’t, or believe things you can’t. It’s plastered-on smiles and buried secrets, denying doubt and aggressively cultivating a deeply dishonest positivity.  This is faith without God, salvation without a savior. 

 

But here comes Jesus.  Jesus, who heals the sick, cures the injured, feeds the hungry. Jesus, grieving his cousin, needing to be with people and needing to be alone, walking steadily on an unwalkable surface, bearing calm and peace into a violent storm, reaching out his hand and catching Peter as he falls, climbing in the boat with them and quieting the wind. And those overwhelmed, exhausted and scared disciples, with shaken trust, and raging doubt, and little faith, worship him.  Truly you are the Son of God.

 

There are two places in Matthew where doubt is mentioned – here, and after the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  And both put doubt with worship. They doubted and they worshiped. Doubt belongs with worship, doubt precedes worship, doubt is part of worship. Because worshipping is turning to the presence of the living God right here, with all that we have and all that we are, (doubts included), coming in our own weakness to the source of life and salvation, with genuine gratitude, to receive the life God offers us, in whatever miraculous ways it is coming to us at this moment. 

 

We need a savior. We cannot save ourselves. This is good news. Saving ourselves or each other is not our job. Receiving salvation, going to be with those who are grieving, welcoming one another, lifting up those who need healing, passing the baskets of abundance, expressing our doubts and our fears to the One who comes to us in the storm, reaching out our own hand when our trust has collapsed and letting him grab onto us, hearing his voice gently invite us to trust again, watching the calm descend and pouring out our hearts in gratitude to the source of all life in worship – that is our part.  Encountering Christ and participating in what God is doing. This is faith: to live our fully human lives inside the story of a God who comes to us.  To let that story take us where it will.

Where it took the disciples that morning was onto gentile shores, to people who had no precedent to believe this salvation was for them, and also no reason to think it was not. And the people recognized the savior, and sent word throughout the region, and they brought all who were sick to him, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; like the bleeding woman who trusted salvation was for her too when she encountered Jesus, and whose story of faith spread far and wide making way for them to follow her lead, because we are all connected and participate, and all who touched it were healed. 

Amen.

(Check out who Jesus was and what God was up to with the bleeding woman and child raised from the dead, and with the crowds at the feeding of the 5000.  If you want to go further back in our "getting to know Jesus" series, in Lent we were with the Samaritan Woman at the well, the religious leader Nicodemus, and Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead - which was preached by Pastor Lisa Larges).

Not our best selves

Daily Devotion - May 3

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays)
while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

John 21:1-19

You know what’s fun? What if games.  Let’s play one.
What if everything shut down and you were required to stay home for 50 days and counting? 
What would you do? Would you learn a new language? Finish that decade long work on a novel, (or scrapbook, as the case may be)?  Would you transform unhealthy eating habits and responsibly get 8 hours of sleep a night? Finally read the classics? Reorganize your basement? Learn to crochet or take up woodworking?  Our best selves in hypothetical circumstances are capable of so much!

But here we are actually living in the hypothetical What if game.  Now we are bumping up against the reality of our sorry selves, and most of us are nothing like we thought we’d be.  Maybe you couldn’t right now learn a new language if someone gave you a million dollars. Or you’re are watching old coping mechanisms you thought you’d outgrown roar up like they run the show.  Maybe that organization project makes you want to shriek laugh because it’s taking more than you have just to keep up this endless treadmill of feeding and homeschooling people who are never not around.  Maybe you’re more depressed, or angry, or lonely than you’re comfortable with and it’s scaring you.

And then there’s the internet. 
It shows us things like that 100-year-old guy who walked a marathon in his back yard and raised over $30 million pounds for charity, that woman who has sewn 5,000 masks for health care workers, and those guys running a pop-up take out soup kitchen, and none of those people are us. 

The big mirror of quarantine is revealing more than all the delayed self-maintenance of haircuts and beard trims, or the single pair of pants that lasts us the whole week and the shoes we can’t even find because shoe-wearing is such a minor part of our lives now. It’s showing too that maybe we’re not nearly as motivated, or disciplined, or positive and cheerful, or altruistic, self-sacrificial and kind as we thought we were.
The hypothetical turned real. 
And maybe we feel a little like we’re failing the test.

The last time Peter saw Jesus in person, Peter was standing at a charcoal fire and across a courtyard Jesus locked eyes with him, just after the rooster crowed three times. 
And the words Jesus said just a few hours earlier rang out in Peter’s head, “Before the cock crows this very night you will three times deny even knowing me.”
Jesus! I would never deny you!  had been his reply. 
And then the hypothetical turned real and Peter failed the test.

After Jesus died, eventually Peter went back to fishing.  What else could he do? It was simple and familiar, and didn’t feel like hypocrisy.
That night is a terrible night with not a single fish.  It’s a night that presses in on you with long, dark, empty hours, shouting inside, See? you can’t go back to how it was!  Who are you now? Not what you were, that’s for sure. What happens next? Who knows?  So catching nothing, they kept at it all. night. long. What else could they do?

And then Jesus appears to them, and once again nobody recognizes him until he does something so utterly impossible and unexpected and also familiar.  He tells them to put the nets to the other side of the boat and when they do, those nets come up busting with fish. 
And even though they are close to shore, dear, anxious, impetuous Peter pulls on all his heavy clothes and jumps from the boat to swim to Jesus, while the boat filled with his friends and the fish paddles calmly past him and lands on the beach ahead of him.

Jesus says, “Bring what you caught.” So Peter goes to the boat by himself and eagerly drags the heavy net holding all 153 fish right up to Jesus, who is standing at another charcoal fire, this one topped with warm bread and grilled fish.

And in the words of the grandma at the stove to pajamaed children, and the mom with a mug of hot coffee to her hungover teenager, and the husband to his exhausted wife just home from the night shift – Jesus says to them,
“Come and have breakfast.”

Come and be cared for. Come and receive. Come and let me bless you. Come and be nourished. Come and sit, warm yourself, fill your belly, rest a while, come and simply be.
Also bring what you have –your catch can be part of this meal.

Ripe with longing and dread, taut and pain-filled, Peter stands there, just beginning to dry, and Jesus walks up and locks eyes with him, like he had that night before his death, and asks, 

“Peter Do you love me more than these?”
  Yes, Jesus, I do love you.  
 “Then feed my lambs.”

Do you love me, Peter?
Yes, Lord, you know that I love you!
Then tend my sheep.

Peter, do you love me?
And now it hurts.  “Please Jesus! You know everything! You know that I love you!”
And Jesus looks at him right in the eye and says to him a third time, “Feed. My. Sheep.”

Resurrection is life out of death, and it only happens when the real Jesus meets us in our real lives – right in our places of death.  Peter is dead inside. It’s to that place that Jesus goes.

Right now there is a lot of pressure, from within and without, to be our best selves.  Peter has learned, and we are perhaps just now discovering, that our best self is unpredictable at best, foolish and unreliable. We say things we don’t mean; we seek safety over fidelity, and choose the approval of others over what’s right, and when push comes to shove and things heat up, it’s more often than not our worst self that comes out, and we hurt the ones we love the most.

We can’t really plan on or count on our best selves. And for comparison’s sake, there will always be those heroes and martyrs whose best selves are better than ours could ever hope to be. They’re the ones, we might think, who really should be entrusted with the sheep.  If God is looking for excellent representatives in the world, we are surely the wrong pick. Apparently, we can barely keep our own stuff together when all we are being asked to do is stay home and not spread a dangerous virus to others.

But that’s not God’s way of seeing, that’s ours.  God is not calling us to be our best selves, or perfect representatives, or model helpers or heroes.  Not us, not Peter.

God is calling to be the only you or me that has ever or will ever be, our real selves.  Even if what we are is our very worst selves.  Our denying, flailing, grumpy, hiding, self-serving, addicted, self-protecting, scared selves are who God loves and claims, and Jesus calls.  When “the night is long and full of terrors” – and we can’t go back to how it was, and we wonder who we are now,
Jesus says,
Come, my beloved, come and have breakfast. 
Come and rest beside me.  Let me feed you, nourish you, and care for you.  
Come, abide in my love, and also, bring what you have, what I have provided for you, bring that to the table too; you have things worth sharing.
Do you love me? Then care for one another – tend each other.
Feed my sheep. Not hypothetical ones, but the real people in front of you, the ones you’re connected to. 
Resurrection happened for Peter when Jesus’ love claims him at his worst and reminds him he is part of God loving others.

You and I are not called to be our best selves, not now, or ever.  We are called as our true selves into the tenacious love of God, to receive it, and to share it. That’s it. 
There is no test. Only love.  There’s no failing, only feeding and forgiveness -only being loved by God and joining in God’s love already and always happening.
Amen.

Here are the other's we've journeyed with this year:



(You can see their stories/sermons here: Hannah, Mary, Anna & Simeon, John the Baptist, Samuel, David (we had a theater performance, here's an older sermon about David), The Samaritan Woman, Mary of Bethany (preached by Pastor Lisa), Martha, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, Thomas (preached by Pastor Lisa, follow up devotion here, Cleopas)


CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight at bedtime, whenever that is in each of our homes, we might pray in this way and so join our hearts.

In this strange season, Holy One, reorient me to you,
in whom my life is found.
In this time apart, remind me whose I am.
Teach me to abide in your love and generosity,
grow gratitude within me, and compassion between us.

In this strange season, Holy One, renew me in you,
in whose image we are made.
In this time apart, remind me who I am.
Draw me again into full and joyful life,
call me into brave, enduring hope.

Let me now release what I have left undone,
the worries that plague me,
the fears that pressure me,
and the burdens I carry.

I lay down the anxiety that would prevent me from being free
in your presence, Oh God.
Rest me in your love.
Sleep me me in your arms,
and wake me to a new day.
Wake me tomorrow
to the gifts of a new day.
Amen.

(Prayer by Kara Root)
 

The measure of a life

Acts 9:32-43

My favorite uncle learned this week that he has a 5-inch tumor in his lung.  He has just retired and is building a house, just like his father, my grandfather, who died rapidly of cancer 36 years ago this week.  My uncle has three recently launched kids, and a 3-year-old grandchild.  When he heard the news he wept, and said, “I have so much to do!”  

Life doesn’t give us a blueprint, or a timeline in advance. We make our choices, each day, each season. We live our circumstances, waking up each morning and doing that day, and then laying down at night, satisfied or not, to do it all again.  One day it ends.  Our life is summed up and the verdict is rendered.  What will we leave behind us; what will our story have been?

There are people who make an impact in the world.  People whose kindness and goodness shapes those around them.  Their presence seems to leave a wake, or carve a path for others to follow, for us to emulate.  They make their world a better place.  When their story is told, it is that they were a good person. They lived a good life. It is what we all aspire to, perhaps, and secretly wonder if we’re getting there.

Tabitha was one of these people. She was a respected leader, referred to with the title disciple- the only feminine use of that noun in the whole bible.  We are given her Aramaic name, Tabitha, which means ‘grace’ and her Greek name as well, Dorcas, which means ‘gazelle.’  Giving us both names means she may have been widely known, she spoke more than one language, perhaps traveled between communities. 

In any case, Tabitha was deeply treasured and greatly respected, so much so that when she dies, they send two men to Peter, to ask him to come. He should know she's gone.  Really, she’s too good a person to let go.

Peter gets up, he arises, and goes.  And when he arrives the room is filled with grieving people. They’re holding up tunics and clothing she made for them, displaying tangible proof of her impact and care.

It was a big deal to make a piece of clothing in those days. Rare and labor intensive, there was even a law that if you borrow a tunic you return it by sundown – it might be the only one someone owns.  And here the whole room is filled with them. Tabitha was a busy, productive, good and impactful person.  A benefit to her community; a blessing to the world.  She was a model follower of Jesus.  She’s become a saint, in fact, she is now St. Tabitha the Widow in the Greek Orthodox church, her feast day is October 25.  The Catholics commemorate her as Dorcas, and Dorcas societies, which provide clothing for the poor, are named after her.  Protestant churches commemorate her together along with Lydia in January.  Tabitha was without doubt an exemplar disciple.  

Rewind the story to the first person Peter prays and asks Jesus to heal.  

The text names this man too: Aeneas.  This man is paralyzed. He’s been confined to his bed for 8 years already, and will, presumably, remain there until he is transferred from his bed to his grave.  If he is known in his community, it is not for his contributions, but for the burden he is.  Everything that he needs, others must do for him.  Bathing, dressing, bathrooming, eating.   His story went quiet years ago.  His possibility quenched.  Any chance Aeneas had of living a good life, making an impact on the world, being productive and contributing things of value, are long over.  

Death is the absence of life.  She has died.  Her life is over. The ink is dry; the hourglass empty.  In effect, he has too.  He is living in death, waiting for death.  

And then the word, a command that interrupts their death with life, Anesthi!

I once spent six months in West Africa on the volunteer hospital ship, The Anastasis, which is Greek for resurrection.  Children, women and men with tumors, twisted limbs or cleft palates were brought aboard. They were laid down in the hospital wing, and put under for surgery, and when they awoke, when they arose, they had moved from death to life.  A new life opened before them, a life with hope and possibility that had been dead to them before. God interrupted their story with a different story, and their lives became a witness to the love of God, a window to God’s grace.

Get up! Peter tells Aeneas. Anesthi! Arise. Get up and make your bed.  You make your bed when you leave it, when you wont be in it but will be out and about in the world.  Instead of a bed for sickness, Aeneas, make yourself a bed for rest.  Move from death into new life, Aeneas. 

Immediately Aeneas gets up, and his arising becomes the story that turns the hearts of all those in the region to Jesus, witnessing to God’s love, giving a window to God’s grace. 

Aeneas, the man God healed, Aeneas, the risen one.

Back to Tabitha of the tunics. 

She mattered so much to so many. Her life mattered.  She was a good and faithful disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The evidence of her goodness, her faithfulness, her worth, is all around her in her death. On display in the very room. See how good she was? See what an impact she made? 

But before Peter prays for her, he banishes all of that from the room. All the people, and the tunics, and the grief, all the stories of her faithfulness, the symbols of her value, and the signs of her impact. 

Now, Peter kneels down and prays. 

Then he turns to the body and says, Get up. Anesthi! Arise!

Tabitha opens her eyes and sees Peter. She sits up. 

He reaches out his hand and helps her get up.  

Calling back in all the people, he presents her to them.  Alive.  And this story spreads just like the last, and just like the last, turns people to Jesus, a witness to God’s love, a window to God’s grace.

The Christian story celebrates a good life lived. 

We should all aspire to a life like Tabitha’s. We should help each other be disciples.  

But Tabitha is not resurrected because she has lived a good life.  

Tabitha is resurrected and given life because Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

Aeneas has no value that society could affirm; he makes no impact.  He is no model disciple or productive contributor.  He’s certainly not changing the world. His life already over. To some he might be considered worthless. 

And yet, God resurrects him too.  

Tabitha is trying to live a good life inside the story of Jesus Christ. But the story of Jesus Christ is so big that it even comes to those who don’t live a good life.

Remember when we talked about self-righteousness? How insidious the temptation is to try to earn or prove our own place? How Saul was the perfect follower of God, stomping out dangerous corruption and shutting down those who would pollute the true faith? And how Ananias, a faithful follower of Jesus, questioned God’s instruction to go to Saul?  And remember how God crucified both their stories and gave them a new story, one of finding the risen one and new life in the presence of their enemy?  It wasn’t their own goodness and faithfulness, but the act of God through one they despised that became their window of grace.

We might be tempted to believe Tabitha has earned the right to resurrection.  But that’s not how it works. God’s resurrection is so generous and promiscuous, that it comes also to the ones who can’t possibly earn a thing. And even though she is a model disciple whom we should strive to emulate, even so, Tabitha too needs God to act for her. 

When Aeneas dies, they wont hold up what he accomplished. They will hold up what God did for him. And the same is now true of Tabitha. She is no longer defined by what she has accomplished. That died with her first death.  Now she too is defined by what God has done for her.  Their stories were interrupted with resurrection. Rise up, get up, and live.  Anesthi! 

I’m willing to bet that in this room we all want live in a way that when we die, they will tell stories and hold up examples and symbols of what a good life we’ve lived.   But even when circumstances act to make it impossible to live the kind of life that would earn us that, God’s act reaches us, comes to us, and gives us new life. 

Because that is who God is. That is what God does.

Before anything even happens, this story is already subversive; the gospel always flips the cultural script.  The one who has lived a good life and is a respected leader and a true disciple is a woman.  This woman has done so much for everyone.  The one who can’t do anything for himself is a man.  He has no good acts to commend him, for 8 years he’s been nothing but his need.  And the story of Jesus’ incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection gets played out equally in both their lives.  They both become part of the story of the church, shared and treasured, alongside each other.  

Because it is is Peter who comes to them, Peter through whom they are healed, Upon this Rock…! The foundations of St. Peter in Rome are built on their stories.  

In the name of Jesus Christ, to the paralyzed man, Peter says, Arise! Get up! Anesthi! 

To the dead woman, in Jesus' name, Peter says, Arise! Get up!Anesthi! 

And both of them do.

Their story speaks the Easter message: the resurrection of Jesus changes everything.  Death does not get to have the last word.  Not when it comes to us as suffering, or injury, or loss of mind or mobility, or the end of a dream or plan, and not when it comes to us as a life ended, and our accomplishments on display amidst our weeping loved ones.  

One of my very most favorite parts of being a pastor is doing funerals.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed on the bulletins at these things, but we don’t actually call it a funeral, a memorial service, or a celebration of life.  We call it “a service of witness to the resurrection.”  And all the loved ones who want to tell stories of their person, how good they were, what an impact they had, that is good and lovely.  It’s inspiring to see someone’s life defined by discipleship or charity, marked by goodness and kindness.  

It’s beautiful and important to celebrate a life well lived. 

But even those who’ve lived a good life, that’s not the totality of who they are.  There is the darkness too, inside all of our stories. The pain we’ve caused, the pain we hide.  The failures and struggles we’ve never overcome.  Sometimes it feels like there’s an invisible scale held up, and we feel the need to pile up our good on one side against the bad on the other and hope it tips us enough in the right direction in order to have been considered a worthy life.

But what about the life cut short? The life misdirected? What about the secret sins we hide, the failures we fear ever letting out into the light in case they cement our unworthiness around us? 

When we gather, the final word spoken over us is witness not to the goodness or worthiness of our lives. It is a witness to the resurrection of our Lord.  That each of our lives, in myriad ways, reveals the grace of God that comes to us in our places of death, and brings new life.  That each of us is a unique window into the story of the Divine who joins us and redeems us, and connects us in love to God and each other.  

No matter how worthy or worthless, well-lived or wasted, impressive or depressing, productive or paralyzed, no matter what proof there is of goodness or lack of opportunity to try, each life is a witness to the love and grace of God. 

My uncle doesn’t even know his diagnosis or prognosis yet.  He’s stuck in the horror of waiting and dread.  (Lord, have mercy, O God, draw near!)  But none of us knows our trajectory or our end, really.  We get the chance to live as good a life as we can.  And we should help each other do that.  But we should also know this: we will not be measured by how well or poorly we accomplished that.  

When this life is over, we will be mourned and missed, and we will be embraced and welcomed by the God who took on all sin and death so that nothing might ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.  The value and worth of our lives is already declared over us by the God who claims the world in love, and names each one, Beloved, child of God.  Everything else is the canvas on which that story is painted, the paper on which that portrait is written.  

When all is said and done, the infinite grace of God shines through the windows of our lives, witnessing to the limitless love and resurrection power of the God who repeatedly and continuously interrupts death with new life, Anesthi! Arise, Get up and live!

Amen.