Disciples

Acts 9:36-43

Almost every biblical commentator with something to say about Tabitha’s story makes a point of noticing that she is the only woman to be referred to as a disciple in the whole of the Acts of the Apostles. In all of Christian scripture, actually.

She’s hardly the only woman to follow Jesus. There are many women, named and unnamed, who follow Jesus in the gospels, who learn from his teaching and support his ministry. There are also many women in the earliest communities of post-resurrection believers, named and unnamed. Apostles, who work with Paul to bear the good news of Jesus to new believers. Businesswomen and leaders who host and support and encourage the newborn church. And widows – in the early Christian communities, “widows” sometimes describes a group of women dedicated to prayer and service to the community.

So Tabitha is not really unusual. But she is still the only woman explicitly called a disciple in the Christian scriptures. Which means, I think, that we are supposed to pay attention to this.

Maybe by introducing Tabitha as a disciple, Luke wants us to know what motivates her to the good works and acts of charity that she’s known for.

Maybe Luke wants us to know that she was one of the women who followed Jesus when he was alive. Or that she was one of the hundred and twenty gathered in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit blew fire into them and launched a preaching movement.

Maybe Luke just wants us to know that Tabitha is a person who follows Jesus right where and when she is right now, regardless of whether she met Jesus in person during his lifetime.
Because Luke also tells us about the way that Tabitha lived like Jesus – that she was notably committed to doing good for others, and giving generously – so much that it was noticeable even in one of the Christian communities where those were probably general standards of behavior. 

Her attention to others and her unselfish giving were so remarkable that when she dies the community can’t stop talking about her generosity and care. And the community obviously expects more. They send for Peter, another well-known disciple, and tell him their need is urgent.

And when Peter comes, they get a miracle: a resurrection, just like the healings and the raising of the dead that Jesus did. A miracle that shows the power of God, present and active.

That’s the other thing that marks disciples: the power of Christ.

Disciples are people who follow Jesus.

People who live like Jesus.

And people who share in Jesus’ power.

Over the last year, I’ve been doing some work with our bishop and other leaders of our diocese on helping Episcopalians in New Jersey focus on a common purpose:
to form disciples of Jesus who participate in Christ’s mission in the world.

And I’ve noticed that some people get excited and inspired by that idea, and others get a little uncomfortable or intimidated.

Disciples? Those are people in the Bible, right? Not people in my class, or office, or pew! Not me!?

It turns out that the idea of being a disciple yourself (myself!) sounds wonderful to some people, and a bit…ambitious, or even embarrassing, to others.

Just out of curiosity, how many of you here would say that you know a disciple of Jesus outside the Bible? in this congregation?

Who here is already used to the idea that you are – or at least can be – a disciple of Jesus your very own self?

And who here is not really sure about any of this and would like some more time or information before you have to raise your hand for questions like this?

All of you who raised your hand to any of those questions I just asked: you’re not alone. There are disciples of Jesus in this congregation, right here and now, and in your life, whether you know it or not. Whether they claim it or not.
And there are a whole lot of people around you – in this congregation, in the diocese, all over – who are not sure about any of this. Who aren’t even sure what it means to be a disciple, if it’s not Peter in the Bible.

And if you’re wondering about that, there are some pretty solid clues to what it means to be a disciple in Tabitha’s story today.

We’re starting to say to one another in the Diocese of New Jersey that “a disciple is someone who lives and loves like Jesus, and helps other people do the same.” We got that from a couple of people who study discipleship and help others themselves. And you can see that happening in this story.

There’s Tabitha herself. Everything we know about her – other than the fact that she died and was raised to life again – is that she cared for others with remarkable generosity and attention. She was a giver, helping those in need, and she worked with her own hands to clothe and beautify her community. She’s a model of care and attention that might remind some of the Good Shepherd. She lives like Jesus. Loves like Jesus – loves not just the people who love her, but the people who need love.

Then there’s Peter. By this time in the story everyone knows Peter as a disciple, a follower of Jesus. Peter who demonstrates that, as a disciple, he shares in the power of Jesus, working miracles, raising the dead.

And there’s the community of Joppa, the people who lived and worked and loved with Tabitha: her church. Luke calls them disciples, too. They send for Peter, after Tabitha dies, demonstrating their trust in God’s power.

Those are the markers of disciples of Jesus. Living like Jesus. Sharing Christ’s power. Trusting in God.

And when you have one of those, you generally have them all.

Tabitha doesn’t just live like Jesus. Her generous loving care shares in the power of Jesus, too.
How many of you have – once or many times – found yourself able to help someone more than you thought you could?

Maybe you found loving words to say when there just are no good words. You were somewhere unfamiliar and were able to give directions to someone more lost than you. Your moral support or half-baked idea turned out to be the nudge or the solution that a colleague or friend needed. You shared in the power of God.

The community of disciples, too, acts with Jesus’ power: calling Peter with God’s purpose, causing him to “arise” also, to get up from what he was doing in Lydda, and follow God’s call all over again. Their trust in Jesus’ power lets God work through them- not just Peter, but them.

Have you, perhaps, ever asked for help in an impossible situation – anything from a dead end at work to a personal financial crisis to an unbeatable illness or despair – and, impossibly, gotten help, even if it wasn’t the help you thought you needed?

Asking for help and giving in to trust lets God’s power work through you.

Peter’s sharing in Jesus’ power also steers him into living like Jesus – responding readily to a community’s need; literally imitating Jesus in calling a dead person to get up, helping others to believe.
That’s why you sometimes give more than you thought you could, emotionally or financially or physically. Because the power of God working through you makes you act like Jesus, whether you mean to or not.

In fact, if you’re willing to follow Jesus in the first place, the power of God working in you may just be making you into someone Luke would point out as a disciple, if the Acts of the Apostles were written in twenty-first century South Jersey.

A disciple just like Tabitha. Just like her community. Just like Peter.

You might still be unsure about all this. And that’s just fine. You don’t have to be sure right now.
God is sure of you.

Fed by God

John 21:1-19 (Acts 9:1-6)

Last month I started watching the Netflix show “Queer Eye”. It’s a makeover show of sorts, but really it’s a series of stories about transformation, renewal of heart and life, not just for the focal person in the episode, but also for the “Fab Five” makeover team.
The stories in each show are conversion stories; not with dramatic flashing blinding light like Saul on the Damascus Road, but the quieter and still profound kind of conversion you and I are more likely to experience in our lives, the kind that comes with investment in true relationship and openness of heart.

After every episode, I don’t want the story to end. I want to know what happens next. What do you do next with a life transformed?

I’ve never been on a makeover show, but I think there are moments of transformation or revelation in all our lives. Sometimes they happen around a sacrament, like baptism, or a rite of passage like graduation or marriage. Sometimes they come from a tragedy resolved or survived, or from a moment of powerful insight. And mostly, we change, but the world doesn’t change with us.

So then, how do we live with transformation in an un-transformed world? That’s the story we hear today about Peter and his friends, learning to live on after resurrection, when the world has changed but the new world hasn’t come.
It’s also a story about us, living two millennia after the great resurrection. A story about what we do next. Now that death is conquered, and I still have to get up every morning and feed the cat, wash the dishes, and pay the mortgage. Now that we’ve been freed and saved, and the news is still full of evil and death and the internet is still full of crazy.

The first thing we learn from Peter’s story about how to live after resurrection is that sooner or later, you go back to work. Not necessarily the same old office, but certainly the work of the everyday, whether that’s grandparenting or neurosurgery or fishing. You keep mowing the lawn and reading client documents and clearing out the email inbox.

And sometimes, while you do that, Jesus is going to show up and give directions. Often directions that seem foolish or overly obvious; and mostly we won’t know it’s Jesus when we get directed to throw the net on the other side of the boat, take on that project you’ve been putting off or promotion you’re nervous about, or say no to that request from someone you need to impress.

It’s only after you start to haul in 153 impossibly large fish, notice the narrow escape from disaster, or see the unexpected benefits of the new project that you start to recognize just who it is over there calling out directions.

Part of the way you recognize Jesus; part of the way you recognize resurrection showing up to direct your everyday life, is because Jesus feeds you.

It may be a literal meal of grilled fish on the shore, or a lunch with a treasured friend; but it will always be spiritual food.
In the early centuries of Christianity, the Eucharist – the miracle of Jesus’ presence in a meal – was usually symbolized with bread and fish, not the bread and cup we are used to today. Communion, in the centuries close to Jesus, remembered not only as a last meal of bread and wine, but the feeding of the five thousand with a bit of bread and fish, a meal of miraculous abundance echoed today in 153 large fish.

Resurrection breaks in to the ordinary, shapes and directs our everyday life, any time Jesus feeds us. Here, this morning, with a wisp of wafer and a sip of wine. With a gift of a meal when you’re physically hungry and pressed for money or time; when you’re sick and can’t feed yourself. And in satisfying the hunger of your heart.

We don’t live in a world where it’s easy to admit to spiritual hunger; especially to a longing you can’t fill without God’s help. And it’s easy to lose our appetite for spiritual food if we aren’t getting regularly fed. But Jesus starts grilling on the shore to stir up the disciples’ appetites, and yours and mine, because God wants so very much to feed our deep spiritual hunger.

What your soul craves – the basic daily nutrition of love, rest, and meaning in life, or the sense-tingling gourmet experience of knowing the reality and presence of God from your toenails to your tastebuds – what your soul craves is what God wants to feed you.

Resurrection breaks into the ordinary when God feeds us. And also when we feed others.

We overhear today a long conversation where Jesus tells Peter, over and over: feed my sheep. And before that, Jesus tells all of the disciples to bring some of their freshly caught net-straining abundance of fish to add to the breakfast; to feed one another.

You can feed others very literally tomorrow evening. It’s the first Monday of the month, and outreach volunteers, maybe you, will be making sandwiches which the Christian Caring Center will deliver to physically hungry people.

But we also feed God’s people spiritually. All of us, not just those of us with fancy church titles and outfits.
In a few minutes this morning, as we baptize Sophia and Reid, and every time we baptize someone, we all promise to feed others spiritually in a whole lot of different ways: by striving for justice and peace for all people, by proactively loving our neighbors, including the ones we fervently wish would move out of the neighborhood!
Both of those promises might involve physical food. Both of those promises definitely demand spiritual food: that we share the soul-strengthening protein of love, respect, and justice.

We promise to feed others’ hearts by “proclaiming the good news” – sharing the goodness of our own relationship with God, with or without words. We promise to nurture our own souls with scripture and holy relationships, prayer and caring community, by seeking and accepting repentance and renewal as often as necessary. We promise to be fed, because we can’t give away what our hearts don’t have, and because we feed one another by participating in safe, honest, generous community.

We feed each other with love, as Jesus feeds us. That’s why Jesus keeps asking Peter about love, telling him to feed and tend his sheep.

Their conversation reminds me of something we learned in the RenewalWorks process, as we received the data from the Spiritual Life Inventory you took this winter, and started plans for how to feed Trinity’s spirits better.
We learned that the spiritual journey doesn’t have a goal line, a place to stop and call it done. People at the deepest stage of the spiritual life, people like Peter, who can say to Jesus without any hesitation, “Yes, Lord, I love you more than anything,” must keep growing spiritually.

Jesus asks Peter over and over to commit his love, because committing our love (again and again) helps us to keep growing. That’s true for those of us who are just starting out, or wandering the middle of the road, as well as the deeply committed, like Peter. When we baptize them today, Sophia and Reid are completely embraced in God’s love. But they – and we! – aren’t done growing into God’s love at 16, or 45, or 78, or 102. And recommitting our love, receiving God’s love anew, and feeding others with that love are what helps us to keep growing at every age and stage.

Jesus is telling Peter, telling us, that our story doesn’t end when we think it does – at the end of the TV hour, or when we cross a threshold of age or accomplishment or learning or time. God’s story in the world, God’s story in you, in me, doesn’t end with death or resurrection, with one transformation, or with a single declaration of love. God’s story in the world, God’s story in us, keeps growing through all the ordinary days.

After the magic is over, when the service today is ended, after the credits roll, the story goes on as we live the life of love, feeding others, fed by God.