NOTE: I am putting my weekly sermons on the church website. It will be on for two weeks (usually posted on Friday) and then placed in the Archives area by date. You can download in a matter of seconds.
Let me know what you think. The church Email is: slumc@direcway.com, Phone: 480.895.8766
Sunday,
May 2, 2004
Sermon: Roman or Catholic
Scripture: Acts 9:36-43
Reverend Larry Gerber
The first-century church was full of catholics. Not Roman Catholics, but catholics
— people devoted to good works and acts of charity.
Sixty million, that's the number of Roman Catholics in the United States. An
impressive number, no doubt about it. But there are many more non-Roman Catholic
Christians who nevertheless fall into one of two categories: Roman or catholic.
You are one, or you are the other.
To say you are "Roman" is not to say you were born and raised in the
capital of Italy. And to be identified as a "catholic" is not to be
labeled as a follower of the pope. In fact, we're talking "small c"
catholic here, meaning "universal."
We used to repeat The Apostles Creed every Sunday, in The United Methodist Church.
I n fact it is still in our hymnal, but has lost its impact and perhaps its
sense of meaning over the years. However, it states that "we believe in
the holy catholic church......." and at the bottom of the page it says
that catholic means universal... but every time we repeated that creed, someone
in the church would ask: "Why do we say that we believe in the Holy Catholic
Church, I thought we were United Methodsits.?"
So what does it mean to be Roman or to be catholic?
At the end of his book How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill points
out that the entire world is divided into Romans and catholics. "The Romans
are the rich and powerful," he writes; people who run things their own
way and must always accumulate more and more, because they believe in their
guts that there will never be enough to go around. The catholics, on the other
hand, are universalists — people who instinctively believe that all humanity
makes one family. Catholics are convinced that "every human being is an
equal child of God, and that God will provide."
Makes you think, doesn't it? Which camp do you find yourself falling into?
Truth be told, there is some Roman in all of us, and also some catholic. Romans
build roads and great information systems. They erect soaring skyscrapers, design
beautiful clothing, engineer incredible computer networks, negotiate complex
business deals, and keep jets in the air 24/7.
Catholics, in contrast, are committed to loving outcasts in an extraordinary
way. They volunteer in serving meals to the homeless at UMOM, offer sewing classes
at Wesley, take communion to nursing home residents, through our Stephen Ministry
program, and devote a week of vacation every year to doing mission work, and
more. Although the Roman approach to life is very different from the catholic
concept, the two are not mutually exclusive. We can be both Roman and catholic,
regardless of our denominational affiliation or our day-to-day job description.
The question is: What kind of focus does God want us to have? The world tends
to reward Romans, but the Lord has an incredible incentive package for the catholics
of this earth.
Today's story in the text takes place in the coastal city of Joppa, a town famous
for piracy and other port-city problems. It is a rough-and-ready center of commerce,
full of Romans anxious to find an angle, do a deal, and turn a buck. And when
the apostle Peter comes to town, he stays with one of these local entrepreneurs,
Simon the tanner —a man who works with animal skins, a ritualistically
unclean profession (PICTURE OF TANNER) — something that must've weighed
on his conscience, because it was on the rooftop of Simon's house that Peter
has a vision of clean and unclean foods, and hears God declare, "Do not
call anything impure that God has made clean" (10:15 NIV).
That, however, is another story. In Joppa, there is a small Christian community
founded by Philip the evangelist. One of the disciples is a woman named Tabitha,
an Aramaic name that means "gazelle," and is rendered Dorcas in Greek(PICTURE
OF GAZELLE). Thus, we have the gazelle society in our church. Through acts of
charitable giving through The Planned Giving Committee, one becomes a member
of The Gazelle Society, and is recognized for the gift. These charitable gifts
are invested in an endowment fund, and will generate funds for ministry in our
church, as long as this church exists.
The first thing we learn about Tabitha is that she is "devoted to good
works and acts of charity" (Acts 9:36), which means that she ranks as one
of the true catholics of the world.
But — we also discover that she is well known for making tunics and other
fine clothing.(PICTURE OF WOMAN WITH FINE CLOTHING) She's a Joppa entrepreneur,
a businesswoman who may have accumulated some significant wealth through her
stitching. Along with her catholicism she's got a Roman streak as well.
As the story begins, Tabitha becomes ill and dies. This loss of a leader devastates
the Christian community, and the church members send an urgent message to Peter,
"Please come to us without delay." When Peter arrives, the widows
are in an upper room, gathered around the body of Tabitha, weeping and holding
her fine tunics and other clothing. Peter shoos them out the door, kneels to
pray, and then says to the body, "Tabitha, get up." Miraculously,
she opens her eyes, sees Peter, and sits up.
You can just imagine the reception she receives.
Tabitha is restored to life as a sign of the death-defeating power of God, and
the news of this miracle races through Joppa, causing many to believe in the
Lord (v. 42). But Tabitha is raised for another reason as well, one that is
bound to hit close to home for many of us: The Lord needs Romans who are willing
to behave like catholics.
The significance of Tabitha's life was that she blended together her Roman ambition
and catholic compassion. She didn't keep the two apart, toiling over tunics
50 hours a week, and then performing an isolated act of charity with whatever
time she had left over. No, the text reports that she was "devoted to good
works and acts of charity" (v. 36), meaning that these activities played
a central role in her day-to-day life. She may even have turned her sewing work
into mission work, creating tunics and clothing for the widows and orphans of
the community. She kept the Roman and catholic sides of herself together, united
in a single, seamless existence.
What's the chance that we can do the same today?
Young people today are discovering that true happiness cannot be found in the
culture of materialism. Nor can it be discovered in the patterns of the past,
in lives based on the fantasy world of 1950s sitcoms. Young people want and
deserve something better, says Peter Gomes, auther of "It's a Good Life":
They want a good life, real happiness and an opportunity to do something worth
doing. They want to be able to live their lives and even offer them, if required,
for something worthy of sacrifice.
They want a good life, not just a good living. They want to be both catholic
and Roman.
We can pursue this goal ourselves by following the example of Tabitha, who turned
her sewing work into mission work and had a powerfully positive effect on the
city around her. We can keep our catholic and our Roman sides together by seeing
our day-to-day work as an opportunity to treat every human being as a precious
child of God.
Where is your Joppa? Where and when do you practice your catholicism along side
your Roman nature.
We have several persons in our congregation that reach out in mentoring situations
in our school system in Chandler, as well as on the Indian Reservation. We,
as a church, have raised over $90,000 to help get the church to the people in
Ocotillo, as well as vacation Bible school on the Riggs Road Corridor. We support
Wesley Center, UMOM, Camp Scholarships, Chandler agencies for the needy, as
well as individuals in times of need.
Beyond that, we have the Gazelle Society. (NEXT PICTURE OF GAZELLE) Persons
who have gifted The Planned Giving Committee with monetary gifts, or have them
listed in their Will. To date, in just the past 2 years, we have accumulted
over $45,000, to be invested, never spent. The gains from those investments
will continue to support our music ministry, UMOM, Mission projects, Stephen
Ministry, and other worthwhile ongoing projects that the donors have selected.
There are another 35 families who have named this church in their Will. We don't
know what that means monetarily, but we do know that these families are remembering
this particular charitable organization, either with upfront, outright gifts,
or planning for the time when their Roman assets will be distributed. Through
the Gazelle Society, all of us can share a little of our catholicism.
(FINAL SET OF SLIDES WITH THE FOLLOWING PHRASES, CHANGING AS I SPEAK THE WORDS,)
If you want the new life that Tabitha enjoyed, you'll need to be a Roman who
can act like a catholic, and love the outcasts of this world in an extraordinary
way.
This means:
• Loving the homeless woman who asks for your spare change every time you
walk by.
• Loving the teenager who bangs up the family car ... again … and
again.
• Loving the employee who can't concentrate because of a problem at home.
• Loving the teen who has some new body piercings.
• Loving the student with the multiple piercings and Gothic garb.
• Loving the neighbor with the rusty truck up on blocks.
• Loving the nursing home resident who can never remember your name.
• Loving the child you assist through a lunchtime Big Brother/Sister program.
• Loving the families you serve through a church mission project …
across town, or across the globe.
This is extraordinary love. It's the love that the catholics of the world are
challenged to show, love that treats everyone as an equal, as a precious child
of God. This is the love that never runs out, because it is not a Roman commodity.
Instead, it's a gift of God: both in our life time, and in our distribution
upon our death.
So find your Joppa, and be a Roman, and a catholic.
Let us prepare now for the breaking of bread and drinking of the cup, remembering
that Jesus said: "This is my body........."
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Sources:
Cahill, Thomas. How the Irish Saved
Civilization. New York: Doubleday,1995, 217-218.
Gomes, Peter J. The Good Life. New York:
HarperCollins, 2002, 4-5, 23.
Let
us pray.................
Let me know what you think. The church Email is: slumc@direcway.com, Phone: 480.895.8766