I'm back after a week off in Golden Bay... more on that soon...
The text for Sunday is Acts 9:32-43, the healing of Aeneas and the raising of Tabitha. Here's a quote that has got me warmed up...
“Every community, every family, every congregation exists within certain settled, fixed arrangements of power and weakness, life and death. People are told that there is a divinely established chain of being, a fixed order in which we are to find our place and stay there. Tabitha is to stay home and let the men devise an affordable welfare system. Peter is to stay with his fishing nets and leave theology to the scholars, and Aeneas should obey doctor’s orders and stay in bed. But the Word comes to these people in the presence of those who, like Peter, come out among them and stand beside them. These miraculous events are subversive of the present order, for they announce a new age, an age where reality is not based upon rigid logic or cause-effect circumstances but upon God’s promise. Each miraculous intrusion is a sign that “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (Luke 11:20). Every time a couple of little stories like these are faithfully told by the church, the social system of paralysis and death is rendered null and void. The church comes out and speaks the evangelical and prophetic “Rise!” and nothing is ever quite the same.”
William H. Willimon in Acts Interpretation Bible Commentary 1988 p85-6
The text for Sunday is Acts 9:32-43, the healing of Aeneas and the raising of Tabitha. Here's a quote that has got me warmed up...
“Every community, every family, every congregation exists within certain settled, fixed arrangements of power and weakness, life and death. People are told that there is a divinely established chain of being, a fixed order in which we are to find our place and stay there. Tabitha is to stay home and let the men devise an affordable welfare system. Peter is to stay with his fishing nets and leave theology to the scholars, and Aeneas should obey doctor’s orders and stay in bed. But the Word comes to these people in the presence of those who, like Peter, come out among them and stand beside them. These miraculous events are subversive of the present order, for they announce a new age, an age where reality is not based upon rigid logic or cause-effect circumstances but upon God’s promise. Each miraculous intrusion is a sign that “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (Luke 11:20). Every time a couple of little stories like these are faithfully told by the church, the social system of paralysis and death is rendered null and void. The church comes out and speaks the evangelical and prophetic “Rise!” and nothing is ever quite the same.”
William H. Willimon in Acts Interpretation Bible Commentary 1988 p85-6
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