What happens when your story gets lost between the headlines?

It happens, doesn’t it? Sometimes, the “important” stories suck all the oxygen out of the room, leaving everything else to seem like a footnote.

Think about our text today. Acts is packed with major plot points. In chapter eight, we're cruising with Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. Chapter nine opens with Saul—hellbent on violence—blinded by the light. Then chapter ten unveils Peter's vision and his journey to Cornelius, a gentile soldier. Three chapters. Three seismic shifts in early Christianity.

Three chapters. Three big narratives. Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. Paul on the Damascus road. And Peter goes to the house of Cornelius the gentile. A lot going on there.

Pretty heavy hitters, wouldn’t you say? Lot of history tied up in those three stories. And not just “boring-we-learn-it-because-it’s-going-to-be-on-the-test” history, either.

No, Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, the conversion of Saul into Paul, Peter and Cornelius?

Those stories shaped the very life of the early church. We wouldn’t be stretching it at all to say that the church, as we know it, wouldn’t exist without those stories. And wedged in there between these epic accounts is the little story of the healing of Aeneas, just before our text, and the little story of the raising of Dorcas.

Now, I say “little story,” by which I do not mean insignificant—although, I fear, as an apparent sapling in the shadow of three such towering Redwoods, Dorcas does receive short shrift. What I mean by “little story” is exactly that: it’s little, brief, doesn’t take up much room. Almost an afterthought, really.

But don’t give up on Dorcas too quickly. For one thing, Dorcas is one of only five people named as a disciple in either Luke or Acts.

Know who else gets named as disciples in this two-volume narrative?

James and John in the book of Luke (9:54), Ananias, who helped Paul with his conversion (9:10), and Timothy in the book of Acts (16:1). Pretty stellar company Dorcas finds herself in. She’s—at least according to Luke—no small-timer, no bit part in the story. She’s a disciple.

Indeed, Dorcas is the only woman in the whole Christian Scriptures to whom the word “disciple” is directly attached. Very few people get such special treatment in the Bible. So Luke wants us to understand that the church suffered a devastating blow when news came down that Dorcas had died. She’s not just a member of First Christian Joppa’s Tuesday afternoon bridge club. She’s the straw that stirs the drink.

So Luke can name Dorcas in the same breath as Philip and Paul and Peter with a clear conscience. Within her sphere of influence, Dorcas is a heavy hitter, just like those guys.

But her stature within the young Christian community isn’t the primary point Luke seeks to make, although he does want us to know that this new enterprise called “the church” has some rather revolutionary ideas when it comes to women. In a culture in which women were, by and large, still considered property, the church subtly put forward the subversive notion that women were capable leaders, too.

In other words, from the very beginning, those who follow Jesus are schooled to trust women to make good decisions. That we ought to have confidence in women’s abilities to exercise their moral agency over their lives, their vocations, their families, and their own bodies is encoded in the DNA of those who want to live as Jesus lived.

However, Luke's primary point, which he is looking to underline with his narrative mastery, is encapsulated in a single word.

That’s it. Luke ties together these narratives with one word. It doesn’t jump out, probably because you’re reading an English translation. But if you were hearing these stories read to you in the original Greek—and assuming you spoke Greek—you’d hear something quite extraordinary.

Luke ties these stories together with the same word he uses to announce Easter: resurrection. Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, the conversion of Saul, the healing of Aeneas, the raising of Dorcas, and the conversion of Cornelius hinge on normal, everyday resurrections.

And you say, “All right. I can see how you might twist the raising of Dorcas into a resurrection moment—even though I don’t see that word in the text—because she is, after all, raised from the dead. But I think you’re stretching it on the other stories. I don’t see resurrection with Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, the conversion of Saul, the healing of Aeneas, or the conversion of Cornelius. You’re just making that up.”

Nope. It’s in the book.