Champagne for Breakfast

Here's the text of yesterday's sermon on Acts 9 - 36-43 : Peter Raises the Dead

A couple of years ago I went to hear the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright talk about the afterlife. Naturally enough, he talked about Easter, and the importance of the resurrection as a sign to all of us, that as we sang in our first hymn this morning, “Jesus lives! thy terrors now can no more, O death, appall us”.

Tom Wright has champagne for Breakfast during all the eight weeks of the Easter season! That is not because he is a bishop with too large an expenses account - and I’m sure it is a very modest glass of champagne. But he does it as a reminder to him and his family that we are Easter people. Wright complains that we Christians tend to get the balance wrong between Lent and Easter. Lent lasts for 40 days, and is of course a time of penitence and preparation - a time when we focus on the awfulness of the Cross, and of Jesus’ sacrifice for us. The season of Easter, on the other hand, lasts for 50 days - and is a time of celebration and joy at the news that death has been overcome...that we have the sure hope of eternal life.

But, we do rather tend to forget that, don’t we? We get through Lent, have a celebration on Easter Day...and then slip back into our routine. That’s why Tom Wright advocates champagne for breakfast. It’s his way of reminding himself that the Gospel is primarily about good news!

And that is also why we have been given this morning’s New Testament reading to focus on. In Acts chapter 9 Peter demonstrates the continuing power of Jesus, to raise one of the faithful new Christians from the dead - just as Jesus himself had done to Lazarus and Jairus’ daughter. This resurrection, and the healings that have gone before, serve to establish Peter’s absolute authority to act in the name of Jesus. And it shows, in word and deed, that Jesus is still alive.

We consider this story during the Easter season to help us understand that Jesus did not simply live, die, rise again, and then disappear back to heaven. We live in the days of Easter - we live with the sure hope of eternal life, bought for us by Jesus. And we live in a time when Jesus remains active and alive among us. Peter powerfully demonstrated that fact by this dramatic enactment of Jesus’ authority over life and death.

But perhaps you have a nagging doubt in the back of your mind. Perhaps you are wondering, ‘if Jesus gave the power of life over death to Peter, why do none of us seem to have this power?’. Why is it that each of us is destined to die without any realistic chance of being brought back to life on this Earth?

Well the first thing to say is that we do hear, from time to time, dramatic stories of people being raised from the dead, even today. But unfortunately, most of them take place in circumstances which are hard to verify - often in far away places. So it is difficult to be sure that God still does act in that way.

So I think we need to understand the very special circumstances in which Peter and the first Apostles were operating. Jesus had been raised from the dead, and had now commanded them to set about establishing his church. The church was to be Jesus’ means of connecting to the world, from his heavenly throne, by the Holy Spirit. It was established to be a means of his amazing grace being poured out on the world. It was to be the vehicle through which we could become, as we say in our Communion service, the very members of Christ’s body - his hands and feet to a dying planet.

It was important, therefore, that the church should be established with authority and power...but not so much that the very rules of nature would be overturned. Imagine what the world would be like if every time someone died, they were instantly brought back to life again. Suddenly, all the consequences of our actions would be taken from us. I could murder someone, without consequence. I could greedily amass as much wealth as possible, so that my neighbour starves...without consequence. What would it matter if someone dies of poverty, sickness or violence as a result of my selfishness? It wouldn’t matter at all...because just a prayer would wake them from the dead.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could be sure that just a simple prayer would heal very sickness, and even restore our deceased loved ones to us? That might be a wonderful idea in principle. We might yearn for it to be so...but how in fact would that help us to understand the importance of sin? It is sin, most usually expressed in some form of selfishness, which creates a barrier between us and God. Sin, in all its forms, is essentially about us wanting to live life on our own - without God who is the source of that life. When Adam and Eve first ate from the tree, they were essentially saying that they didn’t trust God anymore. When we acquire excess wealth, we say that we don’t need God to sustain us. When we use violence to settle our arguments, we are saying that we do not believe that God can act in human affairs.

Faith, on the other hand, is exactly the opposite. Faith is the act of putting our trust in God precisely because he is able to supply all that we need to help us on the road to heaven. Faith is the understanding that everything God is, is bent towards our salvation - not our destruction. Faith is the act of saying “Thy Will be Done” not “My will be done”.

And so I think it was to stimulate and nurture such faith that Jesus gave to Peter the ability to perform such amazing feats as the one we’ve heard about today. Not because such feats were meant to be normal for the church - but to establish the roots of faith in a real, living reality...the reality that Jesus was alive, and that he holds the power over life and death.

But for us - we live in an in-between time. There is, as I’ve said before, a sort of ‘now and not yet’ quality about the Kingdom. We are people who live with the sure hope of heaven, but not yet in heaven. God is still at work in his church and in the world. Many people here can testify to his gentle healing power - and the deep inner healing that he willingly offers to those who turn to him. That is why we continue to offer prayers for healing at the Communion rail - as I shall do later this morning. But only rarely do we seem to see the kind of dramatic acts of healing and resurrection that were witnessed by the early church. Because that, as I’ve theorised today, would turn the world upside down, and take away our understanding of the nature of sin, and of our desire to do things on our own.

Jesus demonstrated his power when he was on earth. And he showed that he was still alive by continuing to demonstrate his power through Peter, Paul, and the other Apostles. But it is interesting to note, I think, that healing, and resurrection, were not the most important features of Jesus’ and the Apostles ministry. Often, Jesus only healed people because they sought him out. He didn’t seem to go in search of opportunities to heal. And on occasions like the healing at the pool of Siloam, he seemed to step over many sick people to just heal one. He only raised two people from the dead. It is as though his healing and resurrection ministry was something he did purely out of compassion and love - it was by no means all that he was about. Instead, the main thrust of his ministry was to announce the coming of the Kingdom, and to call people to follow what the early church called “The Way”. Ultimately, Jesus - as he demonstrated through his life and resurrection - was much more focused on our eternal life.

So what does this story of Dorcas’ resurrection mean for us? It means, first of all, that we can have confidence that Jesus is very much alive and still active. Peter demonstrated Jesus’ power - and was therefore a reliable witness for Jesus, both in word and deed.

Secondly, by understanding the context in which this and other dramatic stories were written, we should be wary about making dramatic claims for what God will and will not do for people in this life. God does still act in dramatic ways - and we are entirely right to pray and hope for healing and dramatic intervention. As Jesus demonstrated on earth, God is full of compassion and mercy...and sometimes just can’t help being full of grace...giving us what we don’t deserve. But that is not the norm...life would be too chaotic if it were, and the human race would never be confronted with the reality of the sin which separates us from God and neighbour.

Thirdly, this story might encourage us to follow Peter’s missionary example - to tell our neighbours and friends that we worship a God who has reliable witnesses, and who is alive.

Finally, by understanding this story in its context, we might be encouraged to believe, and know, that Jesus whole being is bent towards giving us the gift of eternal life - a gift which he has more than amply demonstrated he has the power to bestow. That gives us what the New Testament calls a ‘sure hope’ of heaven - and is surely something to be celebrated - why not with a little glass of champagne during the Easter season?