Resurrection Appearances - Acts 9:36-43

If Easter season is the time to compile a list of resurrection appearances, then I am going to add mine. I saw Jesus on the Internet. At least I some videos of him and learned a little bit about what he is doing these days. 

In one of my trips down that rabbit hole called YouTube, I discovered the videos of Christopher Tock. I think that he now lives in Dallas, having formerly lived in Minneapolis. His story is that he once wanted to go to a Cosplay event, one of those meetups where you dress as authentically as possible in an outfit of your favorite character, but he had no costume. He had no idea how to make one, so he simply walked into a Jo-Ann Fabric store and purchased a sewing machine, thread, and yards of fabric and began sewing. He reports that in the process of learning to sew he made lots of mistakes, but he liked what he did, and started doing YouTube sewing videos in order to teach others, and started making Cosplay costumes. The “I saw Jesus” part of the story is that he has long, dark brown hair and a matching beard, and looks surprisingly like one of those Warner Sallman paintings of Jesus: you know, the dreamy-eyed guy in a beige toga staring into the distance or knocking on a door or holding a lamb.

Well, Tock’s looks and his fascination with sewing and his YouTube videos got him the nickname “Sewing Jesus.” And indeed, take one look at him, and you really could imagine Jesus sitting at a sewing machine making up some clothes for a Cosplay event: Picture Sewing Jesus asking you, “Just what do you think you need to look like for the big event?” And then turning you into that person.

I suppose the resurrected Christ can appear in any number of ways, and Sewing Jesus reminds me of that truth. If you have been following the lessons we have heard in Easter season, we have so far heard about Jesus in the garden, Jesus in a room with disciples, and Jesus on the lakeshore cooking fish. Last week’s gospel told us that the lakeshore appearance was the third such appearance, with the inference being that that appearance itself was relatively close on the heels of the events of Good Friday.

But as Christianity took hold, what such appearances would look like, and more specifically what the body of Christ would look like as the church developed its theology of resurrection, had to be told in new ways if people were to understand that Christians are called to see the risen Christ in everyone; it is then that Christianity would have the power to dramatically change lives and restore relationships. Thus, we get today’s lesson from the Book of Acts.

Remember that the Book of Acts is a continuation of Luke’s gospel, so in some ways it is still going to be about Jesus, only now about Jesus with new language and new images. Last week in Acts, we heard of Saul encountering Jesus in the personage of people Saul was persecuting, the lesson in part being that so to experience Jesus in the flesh and blood of others will hopefully stop you from persecuting them. That sounds like a lesson still needed in 2022 when the persecution of others is on the lips and hearts of many. And this week we hear the story of a group of widows who see Jesus. Those women are the acquaintances of Tabitha, who was a garment maker, by the way.  In this case, the risen Christ is not called Sewing Jesus, but rather is called Peter. 

I believe that what physically happened with Tabitha, whether she was actually dead or merely dead-like, is not the point of the story. What Luke, presumably the writer of the Book of Acts is doing, is recasting the stories of Jesus and his ministry and his appearances so that his readers can understand such appearances of the body of Christ contemporaneous with where they find themselves, not simply stories consigned to history. So, the stories in the Book of Acts mirror gospel stories, just as the stories of Jesus’ own pre–Good Friday life and teachings mirrored Old Testament stories. In this story, Peter goes into a room of the afflicted like Jesus did; Peter orders the person to arise, like Jesus did. And Peter raises her up and presents her to others, just like Jesus did. For a comparison, sometime read in Luke’s gospel the raising of Jairus’s daughter. It is the pre-Easter mirror to this story, so to speak. 

What we see today in the Book of Acts is nothing less than the risen Jesus in the form of a fisherman turned disciple, turned deserter, turned apostle. If you need some assurance that this is what the author is trying to get across, look at the people’s reaction to the healing. Luke tells us that after seeing it, they believed, but believed not in Peter, but in the Lord. They were, as we would say in our baptismal covenant, finding in all persons the Christ whom we seek.

The message to the reader is as follows: look around, especially at people who are bringing new life and healing to others, and you will get a glimpse of the body of Christ long after the events of Good Friday. Fifty or one hundred or one thousand years after a crucifixion outside the walls of Jerusalem, the risen Christ will be seen bringing life where there was once death. That is the sort of Christianity that is not an historical relic, but rather is a current gift that can change lives because it changes how we treat others, how we might bring life in the face of the death-dealing ways of the world.

You may look back to the beginning of this sermon and my example of Sewing Jesus as simply the hook that any sermon needs to start off with, the hook that keeps your attention. As my mentor priest John Logan once told me, if you don’t catch them in the first thirty seconds you have lost them. But look at the example more carefully. 

What turns Christopher Tock into Sewing Jesus is not his beard and long hair. It is his ability to look at the ordinary people who walk into his shop and see them as someone grander, as people who will feel better about themselves when they put on their outfit and walk out. And then he sets out to do exactly that: turn ordinary people into someone new.  As a cosplay woman said, by the way, in a quote for the Merriam-Webster dictionary, in cosplay she saw a strong, capable woman. And isn’t that what the risen Christ does? Gives strength and new life to anyone who walks in wanting something better? Isn’t that what we are called to do? Offer a better life to anyone who walks in, or in more general terms, to anyone whom we meet? Make them know that they are valued by God, and we see something holy, something grander in them, and will make certain that they walk away from any encounter with us feeling stronger and more capable than when they arrived on the scene. That is a simple goal for Christians to aspire to, and wouldn’t it change the world if we lived that way? After all, much of the war and political and electioneering mess we find ourselves in and the discrimination that is so rampant are the result of people who deep down feel left behind and not so valuable in and of themselves, and then strike out at others to prove their own worth. It is at the heart of racism and misogyny and those veneers of moral superiority. 

I am glad I found Sewing Jesus online. I learned something about our calling from his story. And I hope to see Teaching Jesus and Checkout Jesus and Banking Jesus and Nurse Jesus and Next Door Jesus as I continue this Christian journey. We need more resurrection appearances. We need more examples of people who live like members of the body of the risen Christ. We need more people given new life, so that the death-dealing ways of this world—its prejudice and greed and contempt—will be things of the past.  Amen.