April 29, 2007

The stories we tell of a person shape the impression that others have of that person. We have a lot of influence about how others are viewed through the stories that we select. And it is not just true of famous people. Ordinary people are perceived in certain ways depending on the stories we are told or the images we have of them. Once I buried a man in Massachusetts whom people described as a wonderful person. I didn't know him so I met with the family and got to know them as I prepared for his funeral. Only later when an older friend asked about the funeral and I described my moving experience with him and his family did she raise an eyebrow and suggest his life had been otherwise lived.

If I told you about my dear friend, I could give you a fabulous picture of her life or I could present her in another light. She is a hard-driving business woman, currently vice president of her company. She is married for the second time. She is meticulous in her intensity at work. When her building in New York went non-smoking, she just cracked her window in her office and smoked. She would stay up all night to perfect a presentation in her early years with a company, until her colleagues would beg for mercy and sleep! She is a mother and her husband stays home with their child.

You might now be picturing a cold-hearted businesswoman climbing her way to the top, former chain-smoking woman who might stop at nothing to succeed. But that wouldn't be further from the truth. In fact, this friend is one of the most loving, joyful people you will ever meet. She is creative and full of life, and she would go to any length to help you. She has a loving husband. When her first marriage crumbled, she was on her way to the top of her company and she decided to take a lateral job and have a few calm years to reclaim her life and nurture her personal life. She told me a story at the time of asking the V.P. and President of her company to come in to her office, to explain to them that she was stepping down from her job and requesting a lower job for personal reasons. Her two supportive executives tried to dissuade her from taking a lesser job. "You are on track to go as high as anyone can go in this company! People don't just take a lesser position on the way up without sabotaging their career." She thanked them for their collective concern and said she needed time after a painful divorce. She needed a life for a few years. When she got married for the second time she asked me to perform the wedding and she got married in a small chapel in New Hampshire. She surprised her artist husband by picking up a guitar during the service and singing him a love song.

Depending on what stories I told you, you would have a different impression of this friend of mine. Selective history is what I am alluding to here. It's not just true with people, it is true with Church History as well. The book of Acts in the New Testament gives us a snapshot of the early years of the formation of the Church. It is in this book that we hear of the disciples who are following the "Way" of Christ. It is hear in this book that we first hear the term "Christian" used in the Bible. It is not the entire story of the early church, but "the story that the church decided should be remembered about its earliest days so that the later church could look back on its idealism and exuberance and remember teachers long since gone and the Spirit that shaped that earliest community of believers." (Jon M. Walton in Christian Century, April 17, 2007, p. 16)

The early Church selected these stories out of all the stories that circulated in the first few centuries of the early Church because they exemplified what the Church wanted to be in the world. It is history and fact but it is deliberately chosen storytelling that presents history and fact. We learn what the Church valued and wanted to lift up through these narratives and through the people that it focuses on. Over the next few weeks, I will focus on this book in the Bible to educate us about what was foundational for the early church. I will share stories and themes from this book so that we can see what values the Church still has today that was present long ago, and perhaps what values have shifted for part of Christendom.

The most famous story we know of Acts is the Story of Pentecost in chapter 2. This is about the giving of the Holy Spirit to the early followers of Jesus. This day of Pentecost, with the receiving of this disruptive and fiery Spirit to the apostles, is celebrated 50 days after Easter, so this year we will read the story of Acts Chapter 2 on May 27th. All the stories you will hear about today and in subsequent weeks will be from later chapters of Acts. We are building up to the day of Pentecost in a backward fashion.

Today we look at two separate stories found in the 9th chapter of Acts. I only listed the first story in the bulletin for us to hear, but I decided to share both stories. The first is a story of Saul, who is a Jew and a persecutor of the early Christian community. We hear of his dramatic conversion story. The second is a story of Tabitha, also know by her Greek name of Dorcas. She has died a left a wake of grieving widows and friends in despair. On the surface these two young disciples couldn't be more different from one another. But if we look at them together we see some of the diversity of the early Church.

Let's start with Saul, who is known to all of us as the Apostle Paul after his radical change. Saul torments the early Church community and has quite a reputation for doing that. He binds up both men and women and has them put in prison and some even put to their death for their allegiance to Jesus Christ. It is fair to say that he hates these young Christ followers. In fact, on this very day he was headed to Damascus in search of people he could persecute. On that famous road Paul is struck with a blinding light and he hears the voice of Jesus speaking to him. He engages the voice and is so overwhelmed by it that he is unable to get to Damascus on his own. He is led there by hand and there he stays for three days, unable to see or eat. Only when a disciple named Ananias comes and prays over him and lays his hands on him is he able to regain his vision and claim this transforming experience. At the end of this story, Saul is baptized and is able to eat and resume his life, a totally changed person. People were amazed at his dramatic reversal of his energy and zeal and as we know, Saul who is renamed as Paul went on to live out his life committed to the establishment of the church all over the region of Israel and the Mediterranean as far as Rome and Greece. What do we remember about Paul? Persecutor and killer? Missionary? Writer of letters encouraging the fledgling churches in Rome, Galatia and Corinth among others? Willing to be imprisoned repeatedly for his faith and witness? All are true. What the Church wants us to know is that God can use anybody to build the realm of God on earth - even an unwilling, angry, murderous man named Paul who turns out, was an amazing and committed missionary of the Lord.

By contrast we also hear the story of Tabitha in this chapter. She is also known as Dorcas, which is the Greek pronunciation of her name. Both Tabitha and Dorcas mean a gazelle. Here is a quiet, unknown woman in Joppa who is lifted up from quiet obscurity by this biblical witness. She has died and is surrounded by those who loved her and were the recipients of her love and outreach. Apparently Dorcas was an early saint of the church - a woman who devoted herself to compassionate care-giving of others. She made tunics and shawls for others and was of particular importance to widows. Pastor Jon Walton of New York imagines that Dorcas was one of those tireless disciples who "inspired a network of support that undergirded an entire church community. You can almost see her looking after others, taking food, dropping by with flowers or spending an afternoon babysitting... Everyone there had a story about how her life had touched theirs, some selfless acts of devotion that she had performed for them." (Ibid)

Why is this obscure woman held up in the same chapter as the apostle Paul? I agree with Jon Walton that she is a model of compassion for the early Church. "It is the primary characteristic of incarnation. It is what God is doing in Christ when God reconciled the world to God's self." (Ibid) This is what the disciples are supposed to be doing with their lives. This is what the Church should be exemplifying in its work. Dorcas, the one with the goofy name, fully embodies the risen Christ who builds ca ring community around her by her compassionate love.

In the stories of Paul and Dorcas, we hear the beginnings of the early Church - how God can use anybody's life to build God's Realm here on earth; how the church in its core needs to be a compassionate and loving community and not just an individual's path to enlightenment. Again, Paul and Dorcas could not have been more different people, but the story of Acts includes them both because it needs to show us a church that is composed of a wide range of people who have differing gifts to be shared.

Today we begin to learn about the story of the early Christian movement which evolved into the Church. We will continue next week as we hear how other themes of: inclusivity, community, transformation and compassion are some of the major components of this early community of disciples. Amen.