Charlie Brown runs into Linus and asks where he has been.

At Church School, replies Linus.

That should be interesting, says Charlie Brown.

It is, replies Linus. We’ve been reading the New Testament. Although, he continues

thoughtfully, I must admit it makes me feel a little guilty. I always feel like I’m reading someone else’s mail!

The New Testament is an intensely personal document. It contains letters, autobiographical stories and personal testimonies. In some instances we are, literally, reading other people’s mail.

The New Testament is not a collection of rational arguments. It is the testimony, or testament of individual witnesses – eye witnesses – who are intent upon reporting the experience of love they themselves encountered … an experience of love that overtook them, overwhelmed them and changed them.

In the case of the Acts of the Apostles, from which we read this morning, it is not as much like reading someone’s mail … as it is like watching an old home movie. The movie is in black and white, the picture is grainy and everything appears a bit distant and strange. And, yet, these are our people, our ancestors, our great, great, great grandparents in the faith.

            The camera opens on a room in a house in the Mediterranean seacoast town of Joppa. The home is filled with people. Some are weeping and hugging each other. Others cry quietly, staring at or fussing over the lifeless body of their beloved departed sister. Others are clustered in small groups, talking in hushed voices, deciding, making plans.

            We hear snippets of various languages: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. This is an international, multi-lingual gathering … yet everyone seems comfortable and fluent in each others tongue. Jew and Gentile get along.

They refer to the deceased with two names. Some call her Dorcas, some Tabitha. It is obvious that she, like they, was a boundary-crosser, comfortable in different ethnic and linguistic environments. Remarkably, they refer to her as a disciple of Jesus, a term otherwise reserved for men.

There are a great many widows gathered. They are young and old. What stands out about them is their poise and confidence … even in their grief. It is obvious that they belong here. In any other environment widows would keep to the edges, cower in the shadows.

Dorcas’ death has provoked such a crisis in the community of widows that a decision is made. They will send for Peter.

When Peter arrives the widows exhibit the clothes Dorcas had sewed for them. The camera moves from tear-filled eyes to articles of clothing that Dorcas had made. The lens caresses an array of colors, fabrics, textures, designs. In the faces of the widows of Joppa – in the faces of this formerly isolated and socially vulnerable community – the camera exposes a community that has found a home in the family of Christ. They are safe here. They are respected. They belong. Dorcas has seen to that.

This week I followed an on-line conversation about this New Testament story. It was a conversation among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians. They identified powerfully with the experience of first century widows who existed on the margins of society, in economic vulnerability and in family households that don’t look traditional.

In reading this on-line conversation I was reminded of the stories I had heard about Old South Church in the 1980s. In the 80’s, when the AIDS epidemic had begun to course its way through Boston, one of the ministers of Old South realized that gay men were dying of AIDS … and, that they were dying alone, vulnerable, cut off from the Christian community. This minister reached out to this group asking them what they needed. Do you need doctors? Do you need food? Do you need counselors? “No”, they replied, “we have all of these things. What we don’t have is anyone to pray with.”

Secretly, she organized an underground prayer group for people with HIV/AIDs and their supporters. It was so secretive it was by word of mouth and invitation only. It was held off-site, in her home.

This minister from Old South reached out to a vulnerable and isolated community … a dying community. Over time she wrapped them in the embrace of the Christian church, assuring them that they were welcome here. They have a home here. There is a place for them in the Christian family.

Since then Old South has welcomed people who have, in their own words, “come here to die” because they had nowhere else to go and no one else would take them in.

Friends, we are the descendants of the people gathered in that home in Joppa. We are the heirs of our sister Dorcas and of the widows of Joppa. We are the descendants of that international, multi-lingual, Christian family who adopted widows.

Today we have baptized four adults and welcomed them into this Christian family. It is a family unlike other families. You don’t have to be born into this family. You can be adopted into it. You don’t have to look like anyone else, or talk like anyone else, or love like anyone else, or think or believe like anyone else. In this family you get to be who you are and how you are. In this family water is thicker than blood: the water of baptism.

We live in a society where social isolation is a wrenching problem. People who are isolated and vulnerable feel unloved. Being unloved is a dangerous condition for humans. As my African American colleagues insist, those who join gangs have found in those gangs a family, a church if you will … a place they feel they belong. They are given a name, a home, a purpose. Vulnerable and isolated people will cling to any family they can get … even a gang.

If there is an remedy to the shootings at Virginia Tech … if there is a remedy to the gang violence in the neighborhoods of Boston …if there is a remedy to the anguished loneliness of HIV/AIDS patients and to the isolation of widows … that remedy is in the large, extended family

of the Christian church.

Today the Old South congregation is family to people living with HIV/AIDs. Old South is family to people who live with mental illness and chronic illnesses of many kinds. It is family to those whose blood relatives have rejected them. It is family to non-traditional households. Old South is family to some who are not welcome in other communities of faith. And, Old South Church is family to many, many widows.

I began with a Peanuts cartoon and I want to end with one. If you were a follower of the comic strip you know that Snoopy is an admirer of Vincent Van Gogh. A Van Gogh painting hangs in Snoopy’s doghouse. Van Gogh wrote that “being loved gives one wings, a certain surprising courage and energy. Then one is more of a complete person that otherwise.”

Dorcas discovered in the community of Christ’s followers, that she was loved and that she had wings … wings that gave her the energy to sew garments and otherwise serve the most vulnerable population of her day. By loving the unloved widows of Joppa she, in turn, gave them wings.

The cartoon I want to leave you with shows Charlie Brown and Snoopy playing together in a large pile of leafs … it’s a big pile, nay a hill, nay a mountain of leafs.

Charlie Brown takes a running jump and leaps into the pile of leafs. He sits there for a few moments, leafs on his head and cloths, simply enjoying the experience. Snoopy now takes his turn. He starts from yards and yards away. He begins running toward the pile. At just the right moment he vaults high into the air. His arms are over his head like that of a diver. Still aloft he tumbles, doing a double somersault, and then, head first, without fear or hesitancy, Snoopy dives deeply into the middle of a great, soft mountain of leafs.

For this extended moment Charlie Brown and Snoopy share an experience of pure, exuberant joy. For this moment they experience being borne aloft on wings. For a moment, even Charlie Brown has forgotten his insecurities and gloom.

It is a moment of pure joy … the sort of joy that only those who are loved can experience. No wonder the New Testament is so personal, so intimate. It is the story of people who are in love. They are in love with God. They are in love with God … because God first loved them. And, because God first loved them, they are free to freely love others.

Such is God’s love for you, my friends. Such is God’s love for each of you. It is the sort of love that grows wings. Welcome to a world where nothing can separate us from the love of God. Welcome to God’s family where water is thicker than blood.