Acts 9.36-43 Revelation 7.9-17
Today, in the Acts of the Apostles we hear the story of the raising of Tabitha from the dead, yet we do not hear the story directly preceeding it, the healing of Aeneas: “Now as Peter went here and there among all the believers, he came down also to the saints living in Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas, who had been bedridden for eight years, for he was paralyzed. Peter said to him, ‘Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; get up and make your bed!’ And immediately he got up. And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him and turned to the Lord.” (Acts 9.32-35) The filleting out of these four verses inadvertently hides a central literary motif in Luke-Acts, that of parallelism. This parallelism is a distinguishing feature of the two volume work. The author consistently sets together couples in the narratives that parallel each other: in the Gospel of Luke, Mary and Joseph (Luke 1.26-38), Elizabeth and Zechariah (the parents of John the Baptist) (Luke 1.5-23), Simeon and Anna at Jesus’ presentation in Temple (2.25-38); in the Acts of the Apostles, Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5.1-11), Dionysius and Damaris (Acts 17.34), Priscilla and Aquila (Acts 18.1-4, 18, 26). The author also pairs together incidents and stories: the raising from the dead of the widow of Nain’s son (Luke 7.11-17) and the raising from the dead of Jairus’ daughter (Luke 8.41-42, 49-56); the man with the lost sheep and the woman with the lost coin (Luke 15.3-10); the conversion of Cornelius and his whole household (Acts 10) and the conversion of Lydia and her whole household (Acts 16.11-15, 40). The writer even draws parallels in the narratives with episodes from the Hebrew Scriptures: the faithlessness of Jesus’ generation with the faithfulness of the Queen of the South and of the people of Nineveh (Luke 11.29-32); the Song of Hannah in 1 Samuel (1 Samuel 2.2-10) with the Song of Mary (Luke 2.46b-55); the incomprehension of Babel (Genesis 11.1-9) with the comprehension of Pentecost (Acts 2.1-13); the raising of the dead by Jesus in the gospel and by his followers in Acts with those effected by the prophets Elijah (1 Kings 17.8-24) and Elisha (2 Kings 4.8-37). While some scholars see these parallels as predominantly female/male parallels, they are much more than. They are also Old Covenant/New Covenant, Jew/Gentile, believing/unbelieving. Perhaps the overarching parallel is that of the relative backwater of the province of Judea in which the narrative begins at the start of the Gospel of Luke and the city of Rome, the centre of the civilized world, in which it reaches its conclusion at the end of the Acts of the Apostles.
Tradition tells us that Luke was a historian. Certainly, the aim of the work is to show the unfolding of salvation history. The author conceived of salvation history as divided into three periods: the period of Israel, the period of Jesus and the period of the Church. And yet, the parallels work to highlight the inherent continuity between all three. For the author of Luke-Acts, the God who worked through Elijah to raise from the dead the son of the widow of Zarepath is the same God who was in Jesus raising to life Jairus’ daughter and who worked through Peter in the raising of Tabitha. The writer wants to convey that the Christ who is present among his followers in the Gospel of Luke – in the period of Jesus, is the same Christ who is present in his followers in the Acts of the Apostles – in the period of the Church. The parallels are there to highlight continuity, both within each of the periods and across them. They are also there to highlight the inclusive and comprehensive nature of God and of the Good News made manifest in Jesus. From a political perspective they are there to highlight to the Roman authorities (at least) that Christianity is not a new movement, but the continuing revelation of an ancient faith; that it shares the same pedigree as Judaism. But, at the most basic level, the parallelism in Luke seeks to address that most basic of human questions: is life a series of disconnected episodes or does it have continuity and contingency; does it have meaning, purpose, direction?
Living in the post-modern world, we often think that we are unique, and that any thought of meaning and purpose is somehow challenged in a radically new way by our experience. For us, the diverse nature of human experience and disparate state of affairs at the beginning of the 21st century seem particularly and uniquely to give the lie to purpose, meaning, direction. Yet our earliest Christian ancestors too lived in a disparate and unsure world. The Roman world at the start of the first millennium was no picnic. The answer offered by Christianity and which is conveyed with a particular literary motif in the Luke-Acts is that there is meaning, purpose, direction; that things are connected one to another and that that connection has significance. The writer of Luke-Acts points out places of connection, and ways in which those connections give significance and direction to the human enterprise. The message is that we can trust, that God is faithful, that Christ is present. And how do we know that? Because our life and experiences are not just isolated episodes. They are part of an unfolding narrative that can be traced and charted, an unfolding narrative which finds its direction and purpose in the life of God, and through God’s will and power is manifested in God’s creatures and creation.
Our seemingly episodic, disparate lives and world sometimes work to make us forget the connectedness of all things in God and the inclusion of all things in God. The writer of Luke-Acts can the draw the parallels and make the connections because, in the grand scheme of things – in God – Judea is not all that separate from Rome, neither is neighbour separate from stranger, woman from man, Jew from Gentile. In God they all touch and connect, they all “live and move and have their being” (Acts 17.28). In the resurrection of Jesus, even death and life are not that disconnected one from the other. Indeed, they are revealed as intimately connected. The opposites that we so willingly accept as we move through life day to day are not the reality that is revealed to us in God.
In his novel, Howard’s End, E.M. Forster writes “Only connect…only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.” In a sense the author of Luke-Acts says the same. Through the literary motif of parallelism the author has connected stories in order to reveal and perhaps make more clear the workings of God in the world. As we re-tell the Christian story, the Good News, in our own age we too must do the same. We too must construct it and present it in such a way that conveys meaning and purpose, that allows the hearers to make connections, that reveals the unity in God of even the most disparate of things, the most disparate of events, the most disparate peoples. We must tell it in such a way that reveals God’s working in the world through the events of the world, and thereby both discern and construct meaning, purpose, direction
The message the writer of Luke-Acts is seeking to convey is simply this, that the God who worked through Peter to heal Aeneas and raise Tabitha to new life from the dead, is the same God who worked among the Hebrew people and who was present in Jesus; and he is the same God who continually works and is present in the Church, for now and for eternity. He is the same God who works through this community to raise us up as we contiue to create a cohesive narrative, as we continue to live out and live into the promises of our baptism; as we continue to live and love into the reality of the resurrection. In what we do we are everyone one of us called to draw the connections, reveal the same God, the same purposes, the same design: new life. Only connect, discern the meaning in the events, draw together in God the disparate elements. If I may paraphrase Mr Forster: “Only connect and both human and divine love will reveal their purposes and be seen at their height.”
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