Fr Ben Garren

Dear Siblings in Christ,

It was never sensible, this resurrection of the dead. It is not that we realized the earth moves around the sun, that life develops through the process of evolution, that electrons inhabit orbits of various shapes around protons and neutrons... and then looked up one day and said "maybe people do not rise from the dead."

There is not some Medieval Thinking that considers resurrection of the dead sensical and some modern thinking that now understands it to be nonsensical. Resurrection of the dead was always an exceptionally absurd idea. Within the disciples of Jesus and the early church the resurrection of the dead was hope for a new heaven and new earth after the end of our current reality... there wasn't a hope for individual persons to be brought back to life in the here and now.

There is only one clear example of a miraculous return from death to a normal day-to-day life in the midst of Jesus' ministry: the raising of Lazarus. Earlier miracles by Jesus and the prophets always involved individuals presumed dead, potentially on the edge of death, not fully recognized by all witnesses as dead. The clear raising of a person known to be dead to life was the miracle of miracles, a reality no one expected to see or hope for.

Yet in the Book of Acts that is exactly what a group of people are hoping the Apostles can provide them. We celebrate Peter, the Apostle who raises a person from the dead. We remember the name of Tabitha, also known as Dorcas, who is raised from the dead... but we too often forget about who asked for such a miracle and what evidence they provided. Who would dare ask for the nonsensical, the defying of all laws of life and death, the miracle of miracles? What evidence could ever be provided that would merit such an occurrence happening?

Think of all the status one would need to even dare make such a request. Think of the insurmountable evidence one would need to justify that a person needs to be raised from the dead. Understand that this is the only time in the Bible such an act is attributed to a believer in Jesus. That what we are dealing with here is the power of the divine moving in the world in the rarest of ways, responding to a plea in a way with no real precedent nor repetition. That when it comes to the "Well done good and faithful servant" we long to hear from Jesus, here we have the witnesses and the evidence that are used as proof before the judgement seat of Christ. 

And it is a group of widows, holding up the very clothes on their backs for inspection saying "She made us these, with her bare hands she made us these clothes, please, bring her back from the dead."

On this day, when we celebrate the Feast of Tabitha, when we encounter again the ever unreasonable reality of the resurrection of the dead... the questions that I feel should be pressing for us are not about the nature of resurrection but are "who are the widows who would plead on our behalf?" and "what are the clothes we have sewn with our bare hands to present as evidence?"

Pax

—Ben