SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ON THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
25 APRIL 2010
“Peter gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive.” (Acts 9:41)
If you happen to be in the church one Saturday afternoon while the members of the Altar Guild, that army of unsung heroines and heroes who make worship in this place not only possible but beautiful, are about their duties, ask one of them to let you into the narrow working sacristy in the southeast corner of the church. There you will find a stained glass window dedicated to Dorcas. Dorcas is the Greek name for Tabitha, whose story from the Book of Acts is our first lesson this morning. All that we know about her is contained in seven verses, but those verses are chock full of information --- information which may provide a clue to us as to why Peter dropped everything and responded to a summons to raise this woman from the dead.
She was a woman “devoted to good works and acts of charity.” Most commentators believe that she was a woman of considerable means, a benefactress and philanthropist in the town of Joppa. She made clothing --- or perhaps even ran a clothing factory --- for poor widows in town, and distributed that clothing without charge.
Next, it is clear that she enjoyed a certain prominence in the community. We know this because of the way her body was treated --- it was washed, and then put to lie in state in an upper room --- maybe her own house, maybe a place where worship or church meetings took place. Why didn’t they just bury her? Some believe because they expected her to be restored to life. And in that room, the people of Joppa had a wake --- talking about the good works she had done, and even incorporating a fashion show into the event --- the widows, in a tribute to their departed sister, wearing the tunics she had made for them!
Another clue to her prominence was that two men were dispatched to the nearby town of Lydda to fetch the apostle Peter. The people of Joppa may well have heard that Jesus’ commission to the apostles was to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers and cast out demons.” Obviously they felt that Tabitha was so essential to the life of their community that she merited resuscitation.
But perhaps the most important description of Tabitha is that Luke tells us that she was a disciple --- the only woman so described in the whole Book of Acts --- and for the record, for the philologists in the congregation, the word used was the feminine form for the Greek word for “disciple,” the only place it appears in all of the New Testament. Dorcas was obviously a respected leader in the local church. Some even believe that she was among the first women to be ordained.
Now few would describe me as a card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool feminist, but I would like to suggest to you this morning that Dorcas was raised from the dead because she was a woman. Throughout the New Testament, the evangelists go to great pains to show that Jesus went out of his way to uphold the ministries of women, and to challenge the prevalent view that women were inferior human beings. Elsewhere, we chuckle when Luke tells us “Many people followed Jesus, and also many women.” But the point is that Luke is reminding his hearers that women were part of humanity too --- something that would not have occurred to them otherwise.
Jesus holds up Mary and Martha as the Ying and Yang of the Christian religion, who provide examples of contemplative and active service, respectively [Lk. 10:38-42]. Jesus scandalizes the disciples by engaging in a long conversation with the Woman at the Well, who had the added distinctions of being an unwashed Samaritan and a person of questionable morals [John 4:7-32]. One of Luke’s greatest justice parables is that of the importunate widow, who prevailed over the unrighteous judge who would have deprived her of her inheritance [Lk. 18:1-8]. In another resuscitation story, Jesus raises to life the son of the widow at Nain, to save her from a lifetime of penury [Lk. 7:11-17]. Jesus challenges the smugness and hypocrisy of the men who were ready to cast stones at the woman “taken in adultery” [John 8:7]. Mary, Jesus’ mother, whose Magnificat contains the words “He will put down the mighty from their seats and exalt the humble and meek,” has become the patron of the feminist movement [Lk. 1:52]. And lest we forget, we are in the season of Easter, which began when two women, people whose testimony would not be admissible in court, bear witness to the Resurrection [Lk. 24:1-11].
So what happened? Why is it that despite this clear trajectory of a theme of women’s empowerment, the church has traditionally led the parade when it comes to sexism and misogyny? Why is it that it is only in our recent living memory that women, despite the example of such notable Biblical women leaders as Lydia, Chloe, Phoebe and Dorcas, whom we honor today, have assumed, to any real extent, positions of leadership? The answer is that the church ignored that recurrent theme and opted instead to adhere to the teachings of St Paul, who tells us that women should be silent in church, and should seek their husbands’ counsel at home if they have any questions; who tells us that the man is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church; who tells us that wives should submit themselves to their husbands (that passage goes on to say that husbands should submit themselves to their wives, but no one ever seems to remember that). People hold up these statements because they are convenient, because they justify the beliefs they already have. Their hermeneutic (a branch of theology that studies Biblical texts in their context) is to take Paul’s writings as true for all time as opposed to being a culturally conditioned truth for the time in which he was writing. (His millinery edict --- that women’s head should always be covered in church, falls into the same category.) The same can be said, by the way, about passages that purport to condemn homosexual behavior or condone racism.
As I was thinking about what I would preach about today, the mailman came and delivered The New Yorker. It contains an excellent article entitled “A Canterbury Tale: The Battle within the Church of England to allow women to be bishops.” I read it at a single sitting. What becomes abundantly clear is that that debate reduces the American debate over gay bishops to the likes of the proverbial Sunday School picnic. The debate can exist at all because of a radically different theology across the Pond. When the Episcopal Church voted to allow women priests, it made it possible for them to become bishops as well --- in one fell swoop. The C of E, because of what I think is a flawed theology, made it possible for women priests but not bishops. So for a decade and a half or so they have been debating the issue --- and let us remember that the Church of England is established, which means that whatever decision General Synod comes up with must be also approved by Parliament (there will always be an England).
The battle lines are drawn, and as is often the case in such controversies, they have made for strange bedfellows. In this case, there is an alignment of two poles ---- the Anglo-Catholics, on the one hand, who believe that male priesthood represents Jesus’ clear and unambiguous intention, arising from his choosing only male apostles; and the Evangelicals, on the other hand, who are firm believers in what they call “male headship,” which maintains that since God intended for men to rule over women, he by extension would want men to rule over the church that includes women in its ranks.
Why, you may ask, is the problem in England more serious now than it was when there were only women priests? The answer is simple. The ministrations of women priests can be avoided by going to parishes where they do not officiate. But since bishops are deemed necessary to perpetuate both lay and ordained ministries, through Confirmation and Ordination, respectively, it means that those believing in a male episcopate believe that any sacramental act performed by a woman bishop is null and void, resulting in an arrest in the continuity of the church itself. Such people cannot receive the sacraments at the hands of anyone ordained by a woman bishop, whom, of course, they do not recognize as such --- since the rite which purported to consecrate her was flawed because it simply won’t work, in their opinion, with a female subject.
For all of these reasons, the Church of England is bracing for the possibility of a mass exodus at such time as the consecration of women bishops is approved --- likely this summer. Some, at the invitation of Pope Benedict, will swim the Tiber, as we say, and affiliate with the Roman Catholic Church ---- although it remains to be seen how Rome’s recent difficulties will affect the desirability of such a move.
In some ways, none of this should surprise us. Ever since the debate recorded in the book of Acts as to whether uncircumcised Gentiles could become Christians, the church has seen fit to exclude one group or another. Race, gender, sexual orientation, and more recently ideology have been used as barriers to full membership. Throughout the ages, people have spelled church c-l-u-b, and have long forgotten the admonition of Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple who said that the church is the only organization that exists primarily for the benefit of those not its members. And nor does the church have a corner in the market of such exclusion. Certain groups, in their political rallies, are using such unveiled phrases as “taking America back,” and I would remind you that the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, one of whose recent predecessors was an African American, has declared April to be Confederate History Month!
Back to Dorcas. At a recent neighborhood gathering, one parishioner expressed the wish that we at Calvary not become smug. That person recognized that smugness is an occupational hazard in a community which, while not perfect, holds up the ideal that we welcome all in the name of Christ, a community in which diversity is not a buzzword, but a living reality. If that community is to grow, we must, like Peter, hold out our hand to lift up those who are weary or faint, even those whose spirit has died. The raising of Dorcas teaches us that every man, woman and child has a place in the Kingdom, and a job to do, and it is our job, as the saints of God, to show them to be alive.
Let us pray:
Breathe on me, Breath of God, fill me with life anew,
That I may love what thou dost love, and do what thou wouldst do.
Breathe on me, Breath of God, so shall I never die;
But live with thee the perfect life of thine eternity. [The Hymnal 1982, 508]
AMEN.