What Will People Say?

Acts 9:36-43, 

How do you want people to remember you when you die?
What should people miss? What do you want them to say about you?

Writing your own obituary is an exercise used in writing workshops, career-counseling or life-planning, to help clarify insights about yourself, or change the direction you’re going with your life.

It’s said that Alfred Nobel was inspired to create and fund the Nobel Prize, to leave a profoundly humanitarian legacy, after seeing the headline for his own premature obituary, calling him “the merchant of death,” for his work inventing dynamite.

Writing your own obituary can have a lot of power for transformation. Or it can be simply practical. A way to save trouble for your loved ones, wrestle some closure out of your life, or tell the story you want to tell. In fact, some of you here may have done that.

I haven’t. I’ve never actually been very good at these exercises. So I asked Facebook.

And in that entirely unscientific survey, I discovered that we mostly want to be remembered for our creativity, our kindness and compassion, certain quirks and joys, and for love.

It seems to have worked that way for Tabitha, who was remembered by her friends and community for her needlework and generosity, for the beautiful clothing that she had made and given to others. They seem to have had a bit of a fashion show at her wake, wearing and displaying her creative, loving, unique gifts as they wept and told stories.

Tabitha’s later eulogists – biblical scholars and occasional preachers – have tried to fill in other details: what it meant that she is the one woman specifically named as a disciple in the Christian scriptures, why she was called “gazelle” in both Greek and Aramaic, whether she was wealthy and charitable, or poor and marginalized herself, but still intent on giving to others, details we don’t know, and won’t, because they weren’t how her friends remembered her.

These later eulogists also speculate about why Peter was summoned to her wake. We know he was relatively nearby, and had just healed a man paralyzed and bedridden for eight years. But did the mourners summon him to heal Tabitha, desperate in the loss of someone who was clearly gone beyond healing? Or did they summon him as a pastor, to comfort and console them in their grief, and plan a burial?

We don’t know. Can’t know, because they didn’t tell us, but I have another idea.

I wonder if they summoned Peter in desperation, not for healing or comfort, but for answers.

To ask: “Why are we dying???”

It was all going so well. People expect Jesus back any day, and with that confidence, many are being healed, the good news of Jesus is being shared, the faith is growing, good work is being done, the church is blooming. And Tabitha, such a faithful example...

She wasn't supposed to die before the Messiah came back! We weren't.  

How can it be that she died, when we have been promised transformative, abundant, eternal life,

instead of moldy, miserable, familiar death?

The trauma in this community isn’t only the sudden loss of a friend, of a good and generous and creative woman. It’s a blow to their faith, to the promise of abundant, everlasting, life they’ve given their hearts to. It’s doubt, even disaster, undercutting their trust and confidence and hope.

How can we be dying, when we are doing so much good, and keeping the faith?

It’s a question that’s become familiar in the church, these days, too.

Not quite the same way, of course.

In the nearly two thousand years since Tabitha’s death, Christians have had to get used to the idea that individuals die – extraordinary, marvelous, best-beloved individuals, as well as ordinary ones – that, in fact, it’s fairly likely that all of us here will die before Jesus comes back.

But people in the church – all over this country – are asking Peter and one another that same question: “Why are we dying???”

We’re doing everything right.

We care for others, we raise money and volunteers for important healing work, we change lives, we raise wonderful children in God’s care, we keep the faith, we work to grow in our faith, we see successes.

But all that isn’t keeping us from dying.  We lose people to soccer and coffee and work and indifference. We don’t raise enough money to sustain our buildings and our programs.

The diagnosis is in – it’s a terminal illness.  Not today, or necessarily soon, but in a predictable someday, the church we know will die.

In some ways, perhaps, the church as a whole should be working on that eulogy exercise,

writing our own obituary, to seek closure, perhaps, or to be inspired about what we need to change, to do differently.

We’re wrestling with that a bit at Calvary.  We’re imagining what, perhaps, might be different in our future, when the money doesn’t meet our basic needs. We have no cause for despair, and much cause for rejoicing, but we’re still wrestling with a puzzling diagnosis. And some are already asking, like Tabitha’s friends, “Why are we dying,

when there’s so much life in us,

so much life in God??”

Peter doesn’t answer their questions. He doesn’t soothe their fears, invite their trust in God, lead the community toward acceptance, and closure. He shuts them all out of the room, prays, and says, simply, “Get up.”

“Tabitha, get up.”

And she does.

Peter 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.

What matters about resurrection is never the person herself. It’s the impact on the rest of us after the story is over.

When Tabitha died, what mattered was Tabitha herself. Her artistic gifts, her generosity, her friendship, her presence, and the pain of that loss.

But when Tabitha is resurrected, it’s God who matters, not her.

It’s God who people talk about.

“Amazing!” they say. “Thanks be to God!” But what else did they say about what God had done – to one another, to friends and strangers, that made it so compelling, that so many believed?

When we die, people will talk about us: Our gifts, our quirks, our good and our bad,

and we get some choice in what people will say; how we want to be remembered.

But if we’re resurrected, people will talk about God.

And that’s what matters most.

Matters more than death, matters more than what we leave behind, matters more than the creative, generous, holy, faithful work we do or lives we live.

Tabitha’s story insists that what matters is not what people will say about us, but what people will say about God.

And that’s an exercise I’ve never heard or seen: not in life-coaching, writing workshops, senior yearbooks, or on Facebook. 

Not one I’ve ever tried, have you?

What will people say about God when you’re resurrected?
What will people say,

about what God has done?

Do we have a choice in that?
Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

But it’s an even better question to shape and direct our lives – as a church, as individuals – than how we want to be remembered at our funerals. That’s the question that should draw us forward, that demands our whole imagination, and opens unlimited possibilities if we take it seriously.

When the world sees you –– when people see us –– in the light of resurrection, what will people say about God?

Ask that one.

Keep asking.

It will matter.