Which
comes first, faith or action? You might think that it’s faith, but in reality, it’s not always quite so clear. Sometimes it is the experience of faith that
moves us to put it into practice. Sometimes we have to see others put faith
into practice before we even begin to see how it might work for us.
Let me
give you an example that has nothing to do with faith in God, but everything to
do with belief. As a child, I believed in a creature called “the Wampus.” It
was something like a cross between a raccoon, a mountain lion, and a beaver. It
had a terrible disposition. I believed in this creature’s existence because
they had one in a cage at a little country store not far from my grandparent’s
house in North Georgia.
My
brother was the one to discover it. On one side of the box you could see in,
and you could just make out the raccoon tail. The sign clearly warned you not
to open it, but my brother wanted to see it so bad that he did it anyway. The
door of the box was spring-loaded, and when it opened all I could see was that
tail flying at my face. I thought I was going to die! Then I realized the trick of
it all. It was just a tail on a leather strap, and I immediately became a
co-conspirator while we looked for our next victim together.
You
see, for a moment, I believed in the wampus, but after experiencing it I
believed in the joy of the inside joke. Now, like I said, this is a story about
belief, but not about faith. It’s not about faith unless our faith has become
some bizarre inside joke. It’s not about faith unless our joy is limited to
getting people on our side.
No,
faith in Christ is about so much more, but here’s where it gets a little
tricky. Faith in Christ is an exclusive claim about an inclusive reality. Even
Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and you, Mr. Religious leader, are not one
of my sheep.” That was a little harsher than most of us like to think of,
but faith in Christ is an exclusive claim with an inclusive aim. It is a claim
that God has revealed God’s self through the life, death, and resurrection of
Jesus, so that we might all be made one with God and one with each other and
all of creation!
Yet, sometimes
it seems that Christianity becomes like a private club where membership has its
privileges. We go to church. We pay our pledges. We are reminded to bring
Peanut Butter for the U.C.O. We are told of God’s love and forgiveness, and we
go live our lives. What is it that separates faith in Christ and church
membership from any other club or activity?
Well,
according to David Loose of Luther Seminary, the difference is that when you
are part of a faith community – unless limited by physical circumstance – you
can’t just be a Christian in theory. Following the way of Jesus is not just a
moral philosophy – or belief system – either. In other words, there is a direct
connection between what we do and what we believe, and each impacts the other.
The witness
of scripture today tells us that we are distinguished from becoming an insider’s
club by listening to the voice of Jesus, by following him in our daily lives,
and by living into the resurrection of Jesus.
Now,
how do we do that? The first one seems pretty easy until we try to do it.
Listening to the voice of Jesus would be a lot easier if we could just get a
burning bush or an app for our phones. Although let’s face it, we’d probably
use that phone to call 911.
You
know the standard church answers, though. Pray. Be still and silent. Listen for
God. Watch for God in the opportunities around you. Read scripture. Talk with
other believers about what you see and hear, and about what you aren’t seeing
and aren’t hearing.
That’s
easier said than done for most of us, but it’s all true. The last part is as
important as all the rest, and I believe that’s why God has given us one
another. We are better together than we are apart because together we can make
sense of the senseless.
I
believe that’s why the believers in Acts called for Peter. They were not
expecting resurrection. Tabitha was dead. They expected a funeral. They were
grieving the loss of a woman that had been so integral to their faith that they
weren’t sure what to do without her. She was a widow who clothed other widows because she was a disciple of Jesus. In fact, this is the only time in the new
testament that the feminine form of the word disciple was used.
Tabitha’s
life and witness are important here, and we have to be careful not to skip past
her or let her restoration become a prop in the story of the Acts of the
Apostles. Not only did she exemplify putting faith into action, but she was also a
recognition of the importance of women in the faith community as leaders from
the very beginning.
It is
no small thing to recognize the importance of the voice of women in scripture.
It’s no small thing to recognize that even today we are arguing over the need
to legally protect the rights of women, even as women provide much of the leadership for our
country. Even today, it is no small thing that my daughter gets excited when
women have positive roles in film and media because of so much of our culture
still relegates women to the role of fulfilling the desires of men.
Today
happens to be a day culturally set aside to remember the importance of women of
faith and the examples of women who have helped us to put our faith into
action. The first Mother’s Day was in 1908, and it was begun in West Virginia
by three women who believed the voice of women to be essential to stopping the
ravages of war, curbing a culture of wasteful excess and protecting the lives
of children.
Julia
Ward Howe wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” because she was appalled by
the evils of war and wanted to create a day where women would come together to
make a change in the world. Juliet Calhoun Blakely came to the pulpit in
her Methodist Church in Michigan when the pastor was too drunk to finish the
sermon and preached about temperance. Anna Jarvis was a Sunday school
teacher who advocated for children’s health and welfare and promoted peace in a
community torn by political rivalries.
It is
on their shoulders that we stand today. It is through their example, and so
many others, that we see and hear and respond to the call of Christ. It is
through their voices that we hear the call to simply “get up” out of the death
of complacency and live into the resurrection of Christ!
Hearing
their voices and finding our own is what makes this exclusive faith into an
inclusive reality. We aren’t just including people in our club. We are
accepting the invitation over and over again to rise and become a part of what
God is doing.
We have
the example of a widow who meets the needs of other windows, because she knows
what it’s like for them. We also have the example of Peter as the one who
recognizes that God is active and present and there is still work to be done
and Tabitha’s voice is the one that needs to be heard. Then there’s this throwaway line at the end, “he went to stay with Simon, the Tanner.”
Tanners
were unclean in Jewish society. They dealt with blood and animal parts, and
Peter chose him to stay with him. What we are seeing in Acts is the movement of
the Holy Spirit toward greater and greater inclusion, and next week’s reading
becomes explicit about it.
As God’s
people, we are living in this legacy of greater and greater inclusion
together. This week a team of us will go to our sister church in Sabanilla,
Cuba. Together we will say to that community, “Get up!” as we work together to
install their Living Water filtration system. Meanwhile, we will all continue to
listen to the voices that others would silence. We will all continue to follow
God’s voice together, and we will all live into the expectation of a new life
where there has been death. At least I pray it may be so with me – and I pray
it may be so with you – and to God be the glory, now and always. Amen.
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