A Divine Estate Sale - Acts 9:36-43; John 10:22-30

I love estate sales. I love estate sales so much, that I subscribe to a weekly email that details upcoming sales, so that I can scroll through pictures to help plan out my Friday morning jaunts. Some of my favorite treasures have come from estate sales, like my olive wood nativity set, my walnut desk chair, and a Saturday Evening Post scroll calendar from the year I was born. But stumbling across treats isn’t the only reason I love estate sales. I also love to explore old houses and see how other people decorate and make a home. I love to imagine the lives that once inhabited these spaces.

For example, I can usually tell when an estate belonged to an Episcopalian based on their book collection. In fact, this is precisely how my passion for the history of Christ Church began. (If I’ve told you this story before, just stop me.) I was meandering through a stately dining room one weekend, not long after I came to Christ Church, when a precariously stacked coffee table book caught my eye. It was titled A Treasury of Anglican Art. Obviously I bought it. But! Underneath was a barely held together copy of The Annals of Christ Church by Mrs. Ellen Cantrell, published in 1899 and filled with marginalia. I was entranced. The rest, as the third floor archives will tell you, is history.

We can learn so much about people from the items they leave behind. Although they cannot speak to us directly, the things they cherished speak volumes about who they were and how they lived and what they loved. I often wonder what folks might think perusing my estate sale someday. Will they advertise the estate of the late Rev. Hannah Hooker, premier collector of rare and out of print books about the state of Arkansas? A girl can dream. It’s more likely that the classifieds section of the Democrat Gazette will say “garage sale: lots of half dead house plants and orthopedic loafers.” But I digress.

I don’t know whether you noticed or not, but you and I attended a biblical estate sale just a few moments ago. When Peter arrives in Joppa, he is met by a horde of mourning women who are wailing over the loss of their beloved matriarch, Tabitha. We know very little about Tabitha, but the faith community has seemingly always adored her. She was certainly a pillar of her community, particularly for the poor, which is admirable to say the least. But I don’t think it was anything she did that endears her to us. It’s how she was remembered.

We can’t be sure whether Tabitha’s friends sought out Peter in hopes that he could raise her from the dead, or if they were looking for consolation from a spiritual leader they knew and trusted. Either way, these women trotted out all of Tabitha’s treasures for Peter to see. They displayed her prized possessions and more importantly, the things she had made for her neighbors. “Look,” they say to Peter. “You didn’t get to meet her, but look at all these beautiful things that tell the story of our beloved friend. Look at her handiwork and you’ll know who she was.”

Now it may seem like Peter shushes the women and moves them along, but I actually think Peter is on board with Tabitha’s estate sale. This is a perfect opportunity for him. His ministry, as is ours, is showing people the life saving power of the risen Christ. He’s looking for ways to show people who God really is. And here in Joppa, he is handed a group of women who already understand that what someone makes and treasures shows who they are. So Peter shows them God’s handiwork by restoring Tabitha to life. If the widows were wondering about the love and power of God, now they know, and Peter didn’t have to explain a thing.

Jesus doesn’t have it quite so easy in our Good Shepherd Sunday passage from John’s Gospel. His disciples witness his handiwork every day. They are living in a divine estate sale of treasures, and yet they ask Jesus, “could you just explain this Messiah thing to us one more time, maybe a little slower?” How maddening. No wonder Jesus calls us sheep. Again Jesus explains, “the works that I do in my father's name testify to me, but you do not believe.” The message today is loud and clear: in a post-Easter world, it’s more about the show, and less about the tell.

This makes total sense to me. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to explain resurrection to children, but it can make you feel very foolish. There’s nothing worse than a four-year-old looking at you like you’ve lost your marbles. And honestly, it's not much different with adults. The paschal mystery is just that, a mystery. And the best way I've found, and I think Peter will agree with me, to explain who the resurrected Christ is, is to point to his handiwork, to trot out his treasures and prized possessions, which are of course, all of us.

I would love to hear what you think we might learn about who you are from your estate sale, but I’m also curious about what we might learn about who God is by being in relationship with you. If I've learned anything from estate sales, it’s that every little item can be meaningful. Nothing is too old or too small or too broken to be loved, and it’s the same with us. Everything God has created reveals, in one way or another, that God is good and holy and magnificent. If people learn from my life that God cares about half-dead house plants and foot health, that’d be great! Each of us is just the treasure that someone has been looking for to open their eyes to the wonders of the Kingdom of God.

Although we know very little about Tabitha, what we learn from her estate sale is that she loved her neighbors deeply, and was loved in return. This simple fact is such a powerful witness to the resurrected Christ. She created beautiful things, but she herself was a beautiful and careful creation of God. Let it be the same with us. In this Easter season, when words fail us because the presence of God in our lives is nothing short of miraculous, let it be our love for one another, the finest of God’s handiwork, that shows the world who God really is. Amen.