"Paree" - Sermon for Easter 4 5-11-25

How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?

This song was a hit right after World War I, when our boys were coming home after sampling all the delights France’s capital city had to offer. It seemed impossible that any of them would settle for tending the fields or minding the store or sweating in the factory.

Kate and I wonder the same thing for ourselves. Even if we can’t afford to retire in San Francisco – the American Paris – where else could we go that would offer us the delights of this piece of heaven on earth?

The Beatific Vision – seeing God face-to-face in heaven – is the hope of the faithful and the prize of the blessed. Once one has seen God in all God’s glory, surrounded by the heavenly multitude of saints and angels, what else is there? The Beatific Vision is our spiritual end.

This prize of the Beatific Vision was my parents’ hope. My mother’s sole purpose in life, she often told me, was to die in a state of grace so she could live forever in heaven with the saints and angels, the glorious eternity Saint John so vividly described for us this morning.

How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?

Tabitha’s is a curious story. Dorcas, in the Greek, both names mean gazelle, which suggests that she had a stately gracefulness about her. Being called a disciple afforded her a certain status within the earliest church. She led by example, being devoted to good works and acts of charity.

From what we know of the earliest church, its members were expecting Jesus’s return in glory any day now, and some were troubled when followers died before the second coming. What would happen to them if they missed it? Saint Paul wrote some comforting words about this, but that’s a sermon for another day. After all, he was only converted to Jesus just last week.

I don’t think Tabitha had an advance directive in place: a Do not not Resuscitate order – if I get sick and die, send for Peter to bring me back. Nor did her friends ask Peter to raise her from the dead. The story rather reads like this: Our friend has died and we are sad. Come sit with us Peter, and pray with us; come, mourn with us. Let us show you what we hope to remember her by, these tunics and the other clothing she made.

I’m not sure Peter himself knew just what he was going to do. What I’ve learned in providing pastoral care first is simply to show up, be quiet, take the temperature of the room, listen. That’s what Peter did. Then he knelt beside Tabitha’s dead body and prayed. So far, so good. And then, only after praying, did Peter hear the Lord tell him to tell Tabitha to get up, to take his hand and rise to greet her astonished friends. Tabitha’s resurrection, the story goes on to tell us, brought many to believe in the Lord – yet another good work and act of charity.

But I wonder what Tabitha thought of this? Had she, in death, beheld the Beatific Vision? The story doesn’t say; Tabitha didn’t say. If she did behold God in all God’s glory, and the heavenly host described in the Revelation to John, then it must have been quite an ask that God made of her. Go back to Joppa, Tabitha. Don’t say a word about what I’ve showed you. Simply let your life continue to be an inspiration to others.

And Tabitha’s answer? I imagine it was rather like the Blessed Mother’s, whom she no doubt saw at Jesus’s side: Behold the servant of the Lord, Tabitha said, echoing Mary. Be it unto me according to your word. Then she opened her eyes, saw Peter, and sat up.

How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?

That was quite a sacrifice Tabitha made, surrendering, at least for now, all the delights of Paree to go back to the farm, to toil in the shop, to sweat in the streets, to bring people to know Jesus. But she made the sacrifice, willingly.

You see, Tabitha belongs to Jesus’s flock, to Jesus’s sheep. Jesus knows Tabitha, Tabitha hears Jesus’s voice, and Tabitha follows. Tabitha follows Jesus to a fuller life in Joppa, where she would die once, and die once again. And in return Jesus gives Tabitha eternal life.

You and I belong to Jesus’s flock. We are Jesus’s sheep. He knows us, he calls us, and we follow. He promises Paree, and even gives us a foretaste – today! – of its delights in his Body and Blood.

But, for now, it’s back to the farm.

Behold us, the servants of the Lord. Be it unto us according to your word.

Father Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP

The Fourth Sunday of Easter – May 11, 2025

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco

“Paree”