Resurrected life

Acts 9:36-43

Yesterday I sat and listened to life bursting from a nest near our bedroom.  The birds singing their hunger, the mother brings them food and all is silent once again. Spring has come to remind us once again that even though death surrounds us life comes once again. This is what this morning's scripture reminds us of too. Tabitha dies, the community grieves and sends for Peter. Maybe to share in their grief, maybe to bury her, we don't get the details of why. Peter comes and they show him the gift of Tabitha's which was clothing. Knowing her gift was generous and needed Peter raises her from the dead.

This has a lot to show us about our own times when we face death. When we face the time something may die in us in order to shoot forth something new. Something we have struggled with ourselves and then we find a new way to think or a new job, or a new hobby. It is all the same. Individually we struggle with death and grief. Some of us get stuck there and cannot move ahead. We grieve all our life and find only death surrounding us. Yet this is not the message of the gospel. It is not the message of today.

We as the community of Holy Cross have been struggling with this in our own way. We look around and all we see is death. A cutback of hours for our priest, a budget that is hard to even see how we might make it, even this year. And we grieve. Yet we've been grieving the fact the church today is not like the church of the fifties ever since I arrived here. Christendom is not what it once was. We can run new programs, start new projects and people will not arrive on our doorstep. Yes, we have to mourn and grieve this and then like today we need to find the one thing, the one thing which would truly effect Poplar Bluff if we were not here.

We have had a rich legacy if we look at it not to grieve but to learn from. We have been a church at the forefront of being a social place of activity and sometimes we brush on it once again. Whether it's opening our doors for Brown Chapel AME to hold some of it's activities for the Community Center or it's opening them for a High School Choir banquet. This shows we still have the possibility of life here if we open our doors.

Another area has been in fighting for groups who are oppressed. Parents of Lesbian and Gays meets here because it was the only place which would dare to open it's doors to. This group is beginning to thrive here as more and more join and meet under our roof. There is a possibility for us to dig into this rich legacy once again by being there in some way for those who would be shut out otherwise.

We must begin to recognize our rich legacy is an indicator of our future if we choose to live the resurrected life we are called to. This is not something we can wait on any longer. We are called to be the ones who help others find life. I believe we have to good examples of doing this for this community. We just have to tenderly put our grief away so we may joyfully encounter the future God calls us to. This has been the legacy of the church since it began. Just like Tabitha, just like Peter, just like the community of Joppa. 

Come live into the legacy we have been called to. Come and live in the resurrected life of Christ. Come and believe in the life we share, I do believe.