The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

The Fourth Sunday of Easter

Good morning! 

Well once again I find myself as a preacher climbing into this pulpit and once again coming off of a peculiar and difficult week.  We’ve had a difficult week.  Like you I watched the images.  I listened to as many reports as I could stand.  At some point, I confess, I got tired of the press just making it up as they went along.  But the truth of the matter is that we have once again endured a tragic and an intentional hurt and harm.  So you and I find ourselves again, this time in the mist of our Eastertide, we come again with a story that we’re familiar with.  It is the story of our faith.  This real story, a story of Good Friday and of Easter lest we forget.  Like the disciples in Jerusalem, who followed Jesus who they put their entire trust and hope in only to see it devastated literally by an intentional act of harm on the cross, we find ourselves this week going to Boston where we indeed again are invited in to the depth of grief and horror and terror, like the disciples found themselves at.  It is indeed the foot of the cross where we stand again.  And like them, who locked themselves away in fear, we might find ourselves on this day joining a lament. 

Somehow this lament reminded me of W.H. Auden’s,

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Whether we join in the grief of those who were harmed and maimed in Boston or those who lost loved ones or even with those in West Texas, killed and harmed and maimed in an accident, we people of faith rightly might raise our song of lament, we rightly might stand at the foot of the cross.  But once again, like the disciples who went to the cross, who also stared into the events of life, they like us must ask this question, “Is that the end of our story?  Do we stop at the cross and give way to the terror?  Do we allow it to overcome us?”  Or, is ours a story that finds its truth and poignancy in the midst of despair.  A story that calls us up and out.  A story that even brings a hallelujah to our lips.  And here we are finding ourselves in the scriptures today in the Acts of the Apostles.  A story of the followers of Jesus who had watched him die in despair and who are trying to make sense of his resurrection.  Perhaps we’re not so far from those disciples this day. 

Tabitha, her Hebrew name, or Dorcas, her Greek name—both names translating to gazelle, the spirit of speed and grace, of quickness and of beauty.  Tabitha was a widow of respect in the communities of followers of Jesus.  She put her heart and her trust in the teachings of Jesus and out of that she had a ministry of sewing for the naked and she fed the poor.  She lived in the small village by the sea named Joppa.  And Luke describes her with the Greek word mathétria, that is female disciple, the only time, by the way, that word is used in the New Testament.  Tabitha is a fabric of the believers in Jesus teaching.  She was one, we believe, who joined with the disciples, who knew all of the disciples, who grieved desperately and violently on that day that Jesus was killed.  And who lived with hope in her heart and the belief that what Jesus stood for and was had been risen anew in the world.  It is this Tabitha who is dead.  Peter and the disciples are known to be just 12 miles away—12 miles is pretty far in those days.  And they send for Peter, their leader to come and perhaps join them in the grieving of one so faithful to their cause.  And what happens next in the story in the Acts of the Apostles is what determines who we are should we chose it.  Peter comes to Tabitha already lying dead in an upper room.   And Peter it is who comes and kneels by her side and prays.  And as he prays, Tabitha opens her eyes.  And when she recognizes that it is Peter, fellow follower of Jesus, she takes his hand as he literally lifts her from the depth of death.  He takes her to the window and shows her to the community of believers, to the beloved, for those who love her and mourn for her and proclaims her alive.  This is an important story in the Acts of the Apostles because it is the decision point for the early followers of Jesus.  Will they be a community of believers who believed that the one they had put all their hope and trust in was dead and buried or would they become the resurrection through their witness and through their actions.  Peter chooses resurrection.  We’ve had a difficult week.  We’ve had a difficult week again in our country and in our community.  And, if you’re like me, what you want to do then is come and be with those whose voice you know, whose faces you want to see and the community that lifts you up.  So, like Tabitha, who is it in your life whose voice you most need to hear when grief grabs on to your heart?  And when you open your eyes in the morning, who is the first person that you want to see?  And when you are down and out and overcome by all that that may overcome you in this life and in this world, who is it most in your life who you wish to reach out to a hand that will lift you up?  So in it all again, my fellow followers of Christ, we’re asked to be a resurrection people.  We’re asked to say our lament for Jesus certainly knew that we wouldn’t be lifted away from the challenges of life.  But, through Jesus in the midst of those challenges, we have another song to sing.  So the images I’ve latched onto are the images of the brave who ran into the midst of that horrible chaos, the images of those who literally reached down into the muck, who literally reached down into the pain and the suffering, who literally reached down into the carnage and lifted up those who needed to hear a voice who needed to see a face of aid and who literally needed to be carried to sanctuary.   

The song we’re asked to sing is a difficult song.  And even in the midst of what is the world in which we live, we people of faith, and we’ve seen it over and over and over and over again, sing the songs of resurrection.  Which say there is life even in the midst of death.  There is hope even in the midst of fear.  There is love which overcomes terror.  Whereas Tony Campollo once said quoting an old Negro spiritual, Good Fridays indeed may come but Sundays, there always a comin’.  Amen.