SunApr252010
Acts 9:36-43
When I was a student at seminary, I was invited to lunch one day, the only man, with five women. You won’t know their names, but for me, as a beginning seminarian, it was a power-packed lunch. Phyllis Trible, a great Old Testament scholar, was the guest of honor. Hosting the lunch was Joan Forsberg, one of the school’s deans. A classmate of mine, Sandy Horne, was there. And so was Davida Foy Crabtree, Connecticut’s UCC Conference Minister, who was a part of the installation here at Federated a week or so ago of the new UCC General Minister and President, Geoffrey Black. Some of you will remember that she delivered what’s called a “charge” to Mr. Black. It was a pretty high-powered lunch, and frankly I felt honored to be a part of it.
This was the early 1980s, and you won’t be surprised to learn that, with such an accomplished group of women present, talk turned often to the struggle of women to claim a full place in the church and the society. This was in the days when ministry was still primarily a male domain. There were no women bishops in Episcopal or Lutheran circles. Pay disparities were huge. My own mother, in fact, who I’m glad to say will be preaching here in two weeks on Mother’s Day, had only recently become the first woman senior minister at any church in any denomination in this country. That was the scene in which we found ourselves.
And so there was a noticeable and understandable level of frustration among those lunch guests, and in me, and it was a backdrop to much of the conversation. Then lunch ended, and even though I was a poor student, and certainly not the host of this lunch, when the server came to the table to deliver the check, she plopped it right at my place, because I was the only man there. And all I could think was, “Oh, no!” I didn’t dare to look up at the rest of the table. When I did finally muster the courage to look for their reaction, the whole table burst into laughter. They had a great sense of humor about the rich irony they had just witnessed. Because it was a perfect illustration of the very problem we had talked about. As a man, I was presumed to be the one with the power and the money.
The men were the ones with the power and the money in the days of the early church, as well. Peter and his male colleagues were the ones in charge. So it’s striking that, in our story from Acts today, one of the two featured characters is a woman. Her name in Greek was Dorcas—certainly not a name I would have chosen for myself. And the story tells us that her name in Aramaic was Tabitha, which reminds me a little too much of the TV show “Bewitched.” So today let’s call her “Gazelle,” which is what both Dorcas and Tabitha mean.
Part of what’s arresting in the story we heard is that Gazelle is the only woman in the Bible who is called a “disciple.” So the next time you hear someone say that women can’t hold positions of honor in the church because only men were disciples, remember that that’s not true, that Gazelle, too, was a disciple of Jesus.
What’s most notable in Gazelle is evidently her kindness and generosity. When she dies, her widow friends gather at her house and weep at the gaping hole her death leaves. Gazelle has made their clothes, and must have been something of a leader among these poor and overlooked widows. She has made them feel valuable and included. She has been their glue, and their fabric.
There are several aspects of this story that insinuate themselves into our minds and hearts. And one is that it centers on a character who, in her world, was simply not considered to be that important. She was “just” a widowed woman, just a minor character in their common life. One of the notable things about the Bible, though, is that it often tells the stories of people who otherwise weren’t seen as particularly worthwhile. History books are written about kings and popes and generals. The Bible, though, is written about the Gazelles of the world, the everyday people in whose lives the power of God shines. By telling their stories, it lifts them up.
We all know people whose stories we think are not worth hearing, people who make our eyes roll and whom we may well try to avoid. These are the very people to whom the Bible pays the closest attention. Telling their stories is a subtle reminder that the lives of those on the edge have great and abiding value, and that God’s care is not restricted to those who are great and powerful, but is instead offered to all.
So, like Gazelle, our culture, too, has stories that are not at the center of our shared life, but whose voices are of supreme importance. There is, for example, still a gender inequality in our society. Thankfully, the world has changed considerably since the time when I got the check at the seminary lunch. There are now far more women ministers and senior ministers in the church. And many other fields have lessened the disparities between men and women. Those disparities aren’t gone, though. There is still, for example, a noticeable gap in pay—you may have seen the recent study noting that women are still paid only 79 cents for every dollar men are paid. Augusta National, host of the Masters golf tournament, still unbelievably has no women members. An Ohio political newsletter just this week—and it doesn’t matter what your political beliefs about the parties in question—in a Neanderthal remark, says that voters should take Medina County Rep. Betty Sutton “out of the House and put her back in the kitchen” (The Plain Dealer, April 24, 2010, p. A1. I couldn’t make this stuff up!). And rape and domestic abuse are still far too commonplace. Listening to the stories of contemporary women like Gazelle is still vitally important.
Other muffled voices beckon for our attention, too. A church member told me this week that his son and daughter-in-law had recently gone away on a vacation trip. They stayed in a Native American-run resort. When the father asked them how it had been, they said, “Lousy. It was very expensive, the food was mediocre, the service was terrible, and they just weren’t nice.” Not wishing to seem callous, the father nevertheless replied, “I suppose that’s how native peoples have felt for much of history.” After a moment of reflective silence, the son said, “Got it, Dad.” That isn’t to excuse the behavior. But it is to try to understand it. Native voices still and always need to be heeded.
Another voice to be heeded is the voice of the whirling planet on which we live. John Thomas, a former president of the UCC who also participated in the recent installation here at Federated, writes a blog for the seminary at which he now teaches. In it, he wrote on Thursday, Earth Day, that Kiribati, an island and small collection of atolls in the Pacific, is slowly being inundated by the ocean that surrounds it. It’s a small nation, with hardly any influence on the world around it. But to let it fall into the ocean would be a sign, not only of our not listening to the people there, but of our not listening to an earth and atmosphere that gets not just warmer, but stranger. Thomas Friedman calls it “global weirding.” Hearing Kiribati voices matters.
Thursday evening, PBS aired a show about the earth called, “Dirt, The Movie” (“Independent Lens”). It recited many of the conditions and statistics that we hear so often, about the increasing poverty of the soil, the rising of the sea, the danger of the air around us. What was striking to me was a man who picked up a handful of dirt and said, “Sometimes I’m the earth’s father—I take care of it. Sometimes the earth is my mother—it feeds me. And sometimes we’re just lovers.” His connection to, and affection for, the earth is palpable. He hears the earth speak. It’s incumbent on us, too, to hear what the earth has to say—to notice the beauty of the flowering crabs, to feel our intrinsic connection.
So the story about Gazelle is a story about one whose voice is often drowned out, and it invites us to hear other squashed voices, as well. There’s far more to it than that, though. That story is not just about a victim who has been pushed down. Far from it. It’s also about a woman who, even in her marginalized state, finds herself sharing with those around her. Remember, she’s the glue that holds her friends together. She’s the one who has made their clothes. She’s the one who sent them a meal when their husbands died. She’s the one who may have put them up and held them when they wept and gotten them some work to do so they could survive. The very fabric of her life is to reach beyond herself in a kind of living benediction.
There are, of course, countless ways in which we can and do give on a daily basis. It’s worth reminding ourselves this morning that one of our means of giving is financial. Despite our nagging sense of poverty—and most of us are plagued by a sense of scarcity—we are generally in the top 10 % of the world in terms of wealth. One of the ways that we show we’ve heard the stories of those who have struggled is by devoting a fair proportion of our incomes to people and places that serve others and improve lives.
On the day of Geoffrey Black’s installation, the UCC came out with its inaugural issue of a new magazine called StillSpeaking. In that issue is the story of a man named Bob Page. Page saw a TV ad for the UCC several years ago, and it drew him in. He had started a business several years before that, called Replacements, Ltd., in which he found replacements for people’s broken dishes. In its first year, the company made $150,000. It now has some 500 employees and its yearly sales are $80 million. “But success for Bob Page,” says the article, “isn’t found in the trappings of leading a rapidly growing business. He still drives the Ford Explorer [he] purchased almost ten years ago when he and his partner adopted twin boys from Vietnam. What pleases Bob the most is that the growth of Replacements, Ltd. has increased his ability to be generous.” He supports countless organizations, and provides unique and wonderful benefits to his employees. His was the first company in North Carolina to offer same-gender partner benefits. They also offer financial help for employees who are adopting children. Giving is paramount to Bob Page (pp. 14-15).
Giving is paramount for us, too. And one of the great ways we do that is to give to the church. We talk a lot in the fall about giving to the church’s annual budget, and that’s a crucial avenue for our generosity. There’s another way we can give, as well, and that’s to give to Federated’s Legacy Fund. Whether or not you’ve made out a will, I know it matters to you what sort of legacy you leave. We each, of course, have a limited time on this earth. But our giving doesn’t have to stop with our deaths. To be honest, Federated has a rather small endowment, given the lively, passionate, and generous history of this congregation. I suspect that’s because the church hasn’t been explicit enough about the benefits of such giving. Perhaps we haven’t adequately explained that your gifts, your legacy, will make a difference to people who are hungry. It will make a difference to those who have never really taken in how much God loves them. It will make a difference to people who are hungering for a song of God, a word of hope, a friend to love. Consider this an invitation to make such a gift to generations yet to come.
Because when you do that, it is a manifestation of the power of God. Yes, we know from today’s story that listening to every voice is crucial. Yes, we know from that story that giving generously matters. But what’s central to that story is that, by the inexplicable grace of the Holy One, Gazelle is given a whole new life.
By the titanic power of God, our side-lined friend Gazelle leaves her own rich and brilliant legacy. Her love lives on after her death. That love is so sublime and so beautiful that the church has told a story about God’s grace in her life ever since. May God’s power for new life bear fruit in us, as well. May we give as Gazelle gave, boundlessly and generously, with our money and our lives.