I preached my first sermon from this pulpit on January 19, 1997. It’s been well over a year now, although sometimes it seems much longer because I am so very much at home. But as much as one can think of that as a time of beginning, it was also a time of ending.
I expect that only those of you who were on the Pastoral Nominating Committee - or are married to someone who was - really has any idea of how much work it is to get a new pastor. But you know, even with all the work, all the frustration, all the resumes read and sermons listened to, your side of the process - the church’s side - is only a small part of the whole, only a year and a half. Do you know, I started going to seminary in 1988? Nine years, from the time I started to the time I came here, and only God knows how many committee meetings. Only God knows how many jokes there are about Presbyterians and committee meetings, too. But it’s really a necessary process. It protects everyone. It protects the church as a whole from getting someone who shouldn’t be a pastor at all, and does its best to make sure that each church is matched with the right pastor. And personally, I think that all the committees that had a part in getting me here did a pretty good job. But oh, there were a lot of meetings.
Wouldn’t it be simpler if we did it the way Peter did it?
Now, mind you, my situation in Minneapolis was nowhere near as bad as Peter’s was in Jerusalem back then. I left town because there weren’t any openings there for someone of my theological views, and although the last meeting, when I was examined for ordination in front of the entire Presbytery, was unusually grueling, it couldn’t be called actual persecution. Peter left town under much more dramatic circumstances.
This chapter that we’re looking at comes right after the martyrdom of Stephen - the beginning of the systematic persecution of the Christians by the Jewish authorities - and, as it says back in chapter 8, “all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria.” And because of that persecution, people like Philip started proclaiming the good news in all the places they had fled to, like north to Samaria and Galilee and south toward Egypt.
You see, up until this time the Christians had stayed in Jerusalem, waiting for Jesus to return. It took the persecution to shake them up and send them out to fulfill the Great Commission. But God has a way of shaking things up so that he can put things back together the way he wants them, doesn’t he? God used the Apostle Paul’s zeal as a persecutor of the early church just as surely as he used his post-conversion zeal in taking the Gospel to the Gentiles.
But anyway, by the time the apostles were able to go about openly again, there were quite a number of thriving Christian communities in the area, and so Peter went down to the coast to encourage and build them up, in effect doing what Jesus had told him to do that morning by the Sea of Galilee: tending the sheep, fulfilling his pastoral call.
And the first thing that Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, tells us about Peter’s ministry is two miracles. In the passage just preceding the one we just read, Peter heals a man named Aeneas who had been paralyzed for eight years. And then when he goes on to Joppa, where apparently he had been heading for all along because he stays there, he raises a local women named Dorcas, who had just died. The accounts of these miracles are strikingly similar to accounts of Jesus’ miracles. And later on Luke recounts tales of Paul doing the same things during the course of his ministry.
And it’s clear that at least one of the reasons these miracles are performed is to establish the apostles’ credentials, to certify them as the genuine article, the real McCoy. The people had heard enough about Jesus to know what to expect of the apostles, and at least in the case of Tabitha they had sent for Peter specifically expecting that he would raise her up. But these miracles served another function as well. When people heard of these miracles, and saw them being performed, they put their faith in Jesus Christ by the dozens and the hundreds and probably even the thousands. And of course we must not forget the basic function: to minister in the name and the power of Jesus to the poor and the sick and the hungry and to the bereaved and - yes - to the dead.
And when we read these things we would not be human if we did not ask ourselves some very important questions.
And the first one is, of course, why do we not see this kind of miracle happening today? You do not expect me to lay my hands upon your sick children and heal them. You do not expect the people I visit in the hospital to get up, get dressed, and check themselves out after I show up. You do not expect me to put Barclay’s Funeral Home out of business. I do not expect to do so. And not even the Committee on Preparation for Ministry expected me to do so. Why not?
I could go into a long and somewhat defensive explanation as to why not, including pointing to places in the third world where healings, if not raising, similar to what Peter did are being reported and the church is growing as it did in Peter’s day. It’s clear that God does change his tactics to fit different circumstances and to accomplish different goals.
But even more important than answering that question is, I think, to ask different questions altogether.
The first question that I think we should ask is, how important is healing physical ailments among the various things Jesus called his disciples to do? I believe that it is clearly not the highest priority. Jesus himself asked if it was easier to heal a paralytic or to forgive sins; he could just as easily and just as pointedly asked if it was more important to heal the body or to heal the soul. Jesus said over and over again that the heart is what matters most of all. The most important gift of the Holy Spirit is to change our insides, not our outsides. And as far as raising people from the dead goes, yes, death is an enemy. And it is a terrible thing when someone we love is taken away from us before they have lived a full life. But, at least in Dorcas’ case, there is no indication that she had not lived a full life. And she would eventually die, we all do; eternal life is on the other side of the grave, not this. So how important, really, is this miracle other than to establish Peter’s credentials, as many of Jesus’ miracles established his identity as the Son of God?
And the second question to ask is, does faith grow strong when God gives you everything you ask for? Or does faith grow strong when you find that the presence of God’s Spirit is sufficient even in times of great pain and sorrow and loss? Do you think God is looking for pampered people who have all their needs met without lifting a finger? or strong people who can do God’s work even when times are tough? C. S. Lewis says something to the effect that God’s aim is to transform us into people who are able to be happy in his presence - and that calls for a degree of spiritual maturity that most of us are only able to reach through suffering.
So the question I would like to leave you with is, would you rather have a faith that is based on eye-catching, headline-grabbing miracles, or a faith which doesn’t need them?
