A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on April 29, 2007, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

            St. Stephen’s hosted an unusual memorial service this week.  Myra Anne Bachman died several weeks ago, just a few months after she became a parishioner here.  She was mentally ill, and as some of you who volunteered to give her rides to church discovered, she could be difficult.  Like many troubled people, she didn’t always take care of her personal hygiene.  Her house was a mess—it was condemned by the health department, eventually.  In so many ways, she herself was a mess, but two dozen people gathered this past Friday to remember her in their prayers—including two of her former pastors whom she publicly denounced as incompetent. People she barely knew chipped in to see that the organist got paid; others brought refreshments so there could be a reception following the service.  Why all this attention for someone who could be so abrasive, someone who had no wealth and no personal power, no charm and no charisma?

            In part, we gathered because Myra Anne expected it.  She knew herself to be a child of God, knew that she belonged to the Christian community.  Like the hired man of the poem, she knew that “home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in.” But more than that, we gathered to pay our respects to her because we knew she was right.  As difficult as she was, we knew that she was a member of the community, a child of God.  In the long run, the Church is a pretty shaky institution.  We’re a second-class social service agency.  We don’t do a great job at historic restoration.  As amateur theatrics, our services won’t win any awards.  As a volunteer educational institution, sometimes the best we can say about ourselves is that we are sincere.  We don’t have a lot to boast about, but this much is true: if we are not a community, we are nothing much. In the end our worth is not determined by how many of the rich and famous we serve.  Our worth is determined by how we care for those without much in the way of resources—the poor, the sick, the lonely, the little children—the ordinary ones of the world.

            This truth is underscored in our first reading this morning.  Our reading from Acts is a resurrection story.  It doesn’t concern anyone important.  It is not about a dramatic rolling away of stones or the calling forth from a cave. Nobody falls off a horse.  It is not about Christ being raised.  It is about the Resurrection extending out into the community.  The person raised is from a little town in Palestine .  She doesn’t appear to have been wealthy or powerful.  All we know about her is that she was “devoted to good works and acts of charity.”  When Peter goes to her house, the wake is already in progress—and as they might in any small town anywhere in the world, the woman’s friends remember the accomplishments of her life by showing off her needlework.  It is a scene memorable mostly because it is so very ordinary.  And yet, when God decides to demonstrate that the Resurrection power of the risen Christ is transmitted by Jesus’ friends themselves, the person God chooses to raise from the dead is this one, very ordinary woman.

            The message, I think, is plain.  The power of new life is not frozen and limited to one momentous event at the empty tomb.  Christ’s resurrection power is wielded by the community Jesus left behind—and resurrection power is not lavished on the rich and powerful, but is a grace offered to the ordinary believer. Bishop Leslie Newbigin writes: “Jesus…did not write a book but formed a community.”  The biblical evidence is that Jesus’ community is one in which resurrection still takes place.  It took place for Dorcas, a seamstress in Palestine .  And it took place for those on whom Dorcas lavished her care and acts of charity.

            The implication for us today is twofold, I think.  First, we must remember that we matter.  In the household of God we are never insignificant.  We may not be rich or powerful, brainy or even particularly sane, of exceptional uprightness or self-control.  We may not be even the best we are capable of being, but in the household of God we are important enough to be raised to new life.  We are children of God, members of the community of faith.

            Second, we must always remember that those who are our brothers and sisters in God’s household are never insignificant.  There is nothing more important than spending time with our children.  There is nothing more important than reaching out in kindness to those in need: offering rides to church or visiting the sick.  There is nothing more important than a gentle word to the folks around us.  In the household of God, everyone we meet is important enough to be raised to new life.  Sometimes the people who are called to offer hope and courage, love and comfort to the ordinary folk around us—sometimes the people who are asked to bring resurrection to the world around us…sometimes those people are us. For we are nothing less than the children of God, members of the community of faith.                                                     AMEN