SERMON Circles

Easter 4(C) (2007): Acts 9:36-43 Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30

Today is the Fourth Sunday of Easter, and it is Good Shepherd Sunday. It is only appropriate that we dedicate our newly restored Good Shepherd window today.

Good Shepherd Sundays are always about sheep as well as the Good Shepherd. Our window depicts the story of the lost sheep -- almost. And I say "almost" because this window always reminds me of one of our daughters. When she was in college she was not exactly lost, but she certainly was not flocking (if that is what in fact sheep do). I knew this. But in case I didn't, I would have known it when I was visiting her shortly before she graduated.

That spring the women in our home church in Evanston had decided to send newsletters to all Immanuel sons and daughters away at college. I happened to be with our daughter when she received the Immanuel newsletter in the mail. She held the newsletter both bemused and unbelieving. Shaking her head and looking me in the eye, she dead panned, "Mom, what is this? Is this some sort of program for wayward lambs?" It was, of course.

You can probably see why our beautiful window reminds me of Immanuel Lutheran Church Women's wayward lambs program. Look at the window. Jesus is decidedly not holding a sheep. Rather he is cuddling with great gentleness what can only have been a straying lamb. This is not only the Good Shepherd window but, for me, the Wayward Lamb Window as well.

Wayward lambs and lost sheep are, however, the gospel for another year. As we do every year, we just heard the 23^rd psalm. We also heard the stirring words from Revelation about the great multitude that no one can count standing before the throne and before the Lamb who is also their shepherd. And we listened to Jesus, that shepherd, say: "My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me."

But then there is what we just heard from the Acts of the Apostles. A real outlier on this the Sunday of the Good Shepherd. An outlier in which Peter travels to Joppa where, without reference to lambs, sheep, or shepherds, he restores Dorcas to life.

Now other than having been reminded in recent years that lambs and sheep are susceptible to hoof and mouth and mad cow disease and can be cloned, I really know little about sheep. (Although I will admit that, when our granddaughter was younger, the two of us spent many Sunday afternoons playing with two favorite toy wind-up lambs. What I know now, as I knew then, is that they say, "Ba.") By contrast, I have always known about Dorcas.

When I was growing up, Dorcas was one of maybe a half dozen or so circles at First Lutheran Church in Sioux Falls. At Wicker Park Lutheran Church there was a group called "Doorkeepers" that was similar. I knew about the Dorcas Circle at First Lutheran because my mother was a member of the Mary Circle. And I knew about the Mary Circle because, lacking a babysitter, my mother took me to Mary Circle meetings and activities before I was five and started school.

Several years ago, my mother sent me a 1949 photograph of the Mary Circle, the president of the Ladies' Aid, and me. When I look at this photograph, I am reminded not only how I had been adopted by all of them, but how vividly I still remember each of them.

They were extraordinary women. A few of the "older" women (who were probably in their fifties or early sixties at the time) were from Norway and had strong Norwegian accents (Mary Hart's grandmother who is standing behind me in the photograph was one of those). There was a great deal of laughing and good humor in this group. Always associated with the smell of egg coffee. The decibel level could at times be staggering.

But there was also a great deal of serious business. The meetings were focused on a Bible study or a speaker. All the while, items were sown for the hospitals and orphanages and unwed mothers. Outside of the meetings, food was brought to the grieving. Latvian families displaced by World War II were helped in resettling. Wayward son and daughter lambs were embraced. Wedding receptions and funeral luncheons were planned and served. (The first wedding that I ever saw was one that Mary Circle served -- I was enthralled.) And every year, Mary Circle and the other circles crocheted, knitted, embroidered, and sewed countless afghans, sweaters, aprons, bibs, towels, and layette sets for a fall bazaar -- a bazaar that included feeding hundreds of people over the course of three days and culminated in a lutefisk dinner (the only function I do not recall ever attending).

So when we hear this morning about "a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas . . . [who] . . . was devoted to good works and acts of charity," I feel as if I know her well. I can also identify those saints who wash her and lay her in the room upstairs. And I recognize the widows who stand beside Peter and show him "the tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them."

And I am also so aware that there never would have been a Mary Circle or a Dorcas Circle and all those extraordinary women I knew as a child or a Doorkeepers without a church that recognized from its inception that women as well as men could be disciples of the Risen Lord.

Within the new church, Christian women were accorded respect and status that was virtually unknown in the Greco-Roman world. Because they were, not only could Dorcas be a disciple, but widows were cared for so they were not forced to remarry and lose their inheritances. And because they were cared for then, they are cared for now. But even more, in part, as the sociologist Rodney Stark demonstrates, because of the respect and status accorded women in the early church, "the obscure, marginal Jesus movement became the dominant religious force in the western world in a few centuries." Heady stuff.

None of which makes Dorcas or the Joppa saints and widows –- or the Sioux Falls Mary Circle and the Wicker Park Doorkeeper saints for that matter -- seem very sheep like. Somehow the image of Beatrice's and my windup lambs who said "ba" seems very far removed from these strong women.

Until we hear Jesus say, "The Father and I are one," and "What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand." Until we realize that, in the beautiful vision of God's kingdom that we hear the author of Revelation describe, Jesus is both lamb and shepherd. The Lutheran liturgist, Gordon Lathrop writes:

Lambs do not sit on thrones. Nor do they act as shepherds to the flock.

In Israel -- and in the Near East generally -- the tradition was indeed to call the kings and leaders "shepherds" and the people "flock."

But what is meant that the lamb is the shepherd? It is, of course, the truth about Jesus that is so spoken. He is made a weak and finally a slain man. A nothing. Yet this very one knows his own, calls them by name, will allow no snatching out of the flock. One who is no king at all is the only king. One who is no shepherd is the good shepherd for all peoples.

It is the resurrection of the crucified one which is spoken by these images. In his "knowing us," that is his being in the midst of our agony, knowing it by sharing it, we are placed irrevocably in God's hands.

But how shall we know that?

Come to the table. Eat and drink. In the address of the body and blood to you, hear the shepherd's voice calling you by name, knowing you and your need. Here is the end of the hunger and thirst, the beginning of the wiping away of all tears, the flowing of the life-giving waters.

And it is here, secure in a relationship that makes us one with the Father as well, that we are enabled and emboldened to serve others. Enabled and emboldened to be Dorcas. Enabled and emboldened to be the Body of Christ in and for the world.

Amen

April 29, 2007

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

Chicago