So we have quite a story this week, don’t we? As I am studying the Book of Acts, I really enjoyed an introduction to this book that went like this: If you’re too rational a person, Acts is probably not going to work for you. In fact, as we make our way through its different chapters, we can only acknowledge how much it is a book full of adventures and mysteries and, of course, miracles. And today, we have quite the miracle indeed: Peter raising a woman from the dead.
Now what are we to make of it? Maybe we should start by conducting a little investigation…
1 – Do we think that Dorcas’s story really happened?
According to all probabilities, it’s unlikely, and even people who teach that the Bible is true can consider that it is meant to be “symbolic”. Yet I believe there is a good possibility that it did happen because we still hear today people claiming that these things happen. We have eight stories of people being raised from the dead in the whole Bible. It’s not a lot, but it’s not nothing either and I am glad we have one of them today because it reminds us that we cannot dismiss these stories, as surprising and even as disturbing they can be. In my own ministry I have met three different people to whom it happened personally. It’s not a lot, but it’s not nothing, it’s enough for us to take it seriously. Now one of the things that makes me want to believe this very story though isn’t the big picture, but, as often in the Scriptures, it is the little details. I think it’s very touching and even poignant to imagine the widows surrounding Dorcas and showing to Peter the tunics she had made for them while lamenting the death of their good friend. I can’t see how Luke, the author of Acts, would make that up.
2 – Why did it happen?
I believe that not only this story did happen, but it had to happen, it happened to prove Peter’s authority and the veracity of his testimony about Jesus. Again, there are only eight stories of people being brought back from the dead in the whole Bible, with five of them in the New Testament and three being attributed to Jesus: The raising of Lazarus, the raising of the widow’s son and the raising of Jairus’ daughter. It’s interesting to notice that there are actually a lot of similarities between this miracle in Mark 5 and the story we have heard today: As people come to look for Peter, people came to look for Jesus to bring him to Jairus’s house. When Jesus arrived, people were weeping and wailing in the same way the widows are crying in our story. Then Peter asks them to leave, in the same way, Jesus put them all outside of the room except for his three disciples Peter, James and John. Jesus then took the hand of the little girl and said to her: Talitha Cum (which means in Aramaic “Little girl, get up“). In our story, the woman who has just died is named “Tabitha” – it looks like people called her with her Greek name “Dorcas” – but Peter would probably have talked to her in Aramaic, their native language and said to her “Tabitha, Cum”, “Tabitha, get up” and then he takes her hand. And so not only the story we have heard today resembles this story that was told before in the Gospel, but it sounds like it, it echoes it, it’s like a memory of it, and it was probably very much present in Peter’s mind who witnessed Jesus’s miracle in the first place.
I don’t believe this is a coincidence that Luke tells us this story and tells it that way:He shows us that Peter remembers what Jesus did and imitates it, and also, and mainly, he wants to show us that the same Jesus is still at work through Peter and through the Spirit. And that’s the theme from the beginning of Acts, isn’t it? Jesus began his work in his life on earth but he is still working now, through his Spirit and through all those who want to receive his Spirit, through his church. The central claim of the new Christian movement is that Jesus rose from the dead to give us an eternal inheritance with God. Yes it is about Peter’s authority but much more than that, it’s about Jesus’s authority: Jesus has vanquished death. Interestingly Paul will also raise someone from the dead (Acts 20).
3 – Why does the miracle happen to some, and not to others?
Here we understand that the miracle was made as a guarantee of Peter’s (and Paul’s) authority, but most of all of all it’s about Christ’s authority. Peter has to pray for the woman, he does not have magic powers. Now we often say that those who can make miracles must have a lot of faith and that’s true, because they pray, because they believe God can do great things but also, and mainly, because they aren’t tempted to use miracles for their own gratification, whether to be praised by others or to obtain for themselves or their close ones whatever they need from God. Yet, it is wrong to teach that if miracles don’t happen it’s because we don’t have enough faith. Actually, often God let difficult things happen to believers because through trials we can grow in faith and God gives us strength to carry it. Most of the people who came back from the dead were actually those who weren’t ready! They had to come back to finish their work. I assume our work as Christians is never quite finished, but in the story it’s very clear that Dorcas is brought back because of the people who needed her. In the first church where I worked, there was this volunteer who did everything around the place: from yard work to all the treasury, which was very good because nobody else knew how to did it. Retired, he was at church every day so I got to know him. And he told me this story that before I started there, he was quite sick and actually saw himself die until he heard a voice saying “Not now”. And he kept telling me that he had no idea why he had to come back. And you know, it made me smile because I watched him doing all this work around the church and I kept thanking God each day for him! Now I wouldn’t go as far as to say that God brought the man back so he could balance our books, but one thing is sure and it’s that, as it is with Dorcas, you don’t get a miracle so you can continue to enjoy your life and travel to a beach club. The idea is that you continue your work of witnessing Christ through words and dedication to others!
This gives us a clue about the meaning of life itself and why we are here as a church. Receiving a miracle is not necessarily a gift for you, it’s a gift for those around you, and not necessarily for your close ones, obviously Dorcas didn‘t have a family, the miracle happens for those in need. In our story, it is clear that Peter raises Dorcas so she can continue to minister to the widows, the poor in her church.
4 – What does the miracle mean?
And so the miracle could come indeed because we have some work left to do, but we also know that our job will never be finished and we know that God can also raise from the living new people to do a job, so we’re not irreplaceable either. More deeply I think, a miracle is a sign: sign of the reliability of the witnesses, sign of Christ among us, and sign that God wants to bring healing and consolation to his people. We read today from Revelation this lesson that we often have at funerals: God will wipe every tear from the eyes of his people. And this can really happen when death is destroyed for ever and we know that the central claim of the first Christians was that in Christ, we can all find new and eternal life. Peter and Paul proved by their miracles that to be true. Of course we wouldn’t call these miracles “Resurrection” per se. As it is for Dorcas and for all the other people, except for Jesus himself, those people who came back to life didn’t go beyond death, they came back to life only to die again a second time. But this Resuscitation is a sign, or even more I would say it is a manifestation, a manifestation in our own reality of a spiritual, on going, eternal reality in God’s kingdom. We talked about that during Bible study”: Peter heals a man with a limp, and it’s great for that man, but mostly Peter does that to show that Isaiah’s promises about the Messiah are coming true: When the Messiah comes, the lame will leap because their joy will be so overwhelming. The miracle we see in the here and now is like a window to show us a little bit of heaven, where we can witness what God does for all God’s people in God’s kingdom, as our lesson from Revelation affirms: People will hunger no more,and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them not any scorching heat. And so these miracles are meant for all of us, even Dorcas’ story we have heard today. One of you told us what I think is very true: We don’t all have our own miracles, but we can all have hope.
Now the question for us to day is: Are we ready to be a community of hope? Are we ready to be a witness of this on going reality of the kingdom of God, by our prayers and, like Dorcas, by our good works and acts of charity? We said last time that being a community in a time where people are so lonely is already a testimony in itself. Now another plague of our time is not only how little faith we have, but also how little hope we have for this life, not to mention beyond this life. By dedicating her life to sewing tunics, Dorcas was a witness to all of the promise of Revelation: “The sun will not strike them”. She took very literally this last parable of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, the parable of the last judgment, that it is what Jesus required of his disciples: I was naked and you clothed me (Matt 25:36). We don’t come to church to have a miracle, we are called to be the miracle, that’s what Dorcas was in the end. Wherever we are, whoever we are and whatever we do, we are to carry the presence of the Risen Christ.