The
Bible is filled with stories of little known but talented, courageous, sometimes
simply good, and sometimes wily women.
Frequently overshadowed by the tales of their men, they often fade into
the background and are skipped over.
There
was Leah, Rachel’s older and physically less attractive sister, who over time
bore Jacob six sons, one of whom was an ancestor of the great King David.
There
was Miriam, who put her baby Moses in that woven reed basket and kissed him
goodbye even as she pushed his floating cradle into the Nile River, a
courageous move that saved his life and, one could say, the lives of the Hebrew
slaves in Egypt as well.
There
was Anna, who was the first to recognize the infant Jesus for the Messiah he
was, when Mary and Joseph brought the child to her husband, Simeon, to be
blessed.
And
there was Tabitha (or Dorcas as she is known in Greek). Her story, almost like a Biblical
afterthought, is wedged in between the very dramatic conversion of Paul and the
equally dramatic vision of Peter – a vision of animals suspended from heaven
that caused the apostle to expand his diet to include a whole bunch of previously
prohibited impure and unclean animals, a very big deal for one who had been a
devout Jew.
And
in between is the story of this Christian woman. In fact, if you were to read Tabitha’s story
in Greek, you would find that she was referred to as a disciple, the only instance
in the Bible that a named woman is specifically given that title. One can presume then that Tabitha was a
leader in her church, which would necessarily shoot down the notion by the way
that women were relegated to making the coffee and washing the communion cups
in these early faith communities.
Apparently,
however, Tabitha did not care for all the haggling and arguing that inevitably
goes on among the leadership of any organization. What I mean is that, according to a sermon
preached by Presbyterian pastor Thomas York, “earlier
in the book of Acts (in the 6th chapter actually) we know there had
been a problem in the Jerusalem congregation when Greek speaking and Aramaic
speaking Jews argued over the distribution of the welfare checks for the
widows, the Greek speaking Christians complaining that their widows were being
neglected.”
One gets the feeling that the men spent a great deal of time
quarreling over the exact formula for this early social security system and ended
up creating what might have been the first church committee to explore the
issue. Tabitha, however, perhaps
intuitively knowing that more important than all the task forces on which she
might serve and more critical than all the discussions in which she might
participate, recognized that she was now the hands and feet of Jesus in the
world – and so spent her time “doing good and helping the poor” rather than
deliberating on the issue of entitlement programs for the destitute.
However, in spite of all her good works, one day Tabitha
became quite ill and died. Amidst rivers
of tears, her body was prepared for burial.
However, so loved was Tabitha and so crushed was her faith community by
her passing that it sent for Peter, “Please hurry and come to us.”
What did they expect him to do? Pray with them? Weep with them? Raise her from the dead? What an interesting similarity we have here
between this little story and the one about Jesus being called to heal the
daughter of Jairus, who had also died.
And the likenesses between the narratives continue. Just as Jesus went into the room with the
young girl, accompanied only by Peter, James, and John and closed the door
behind him, so Peter went into the room where Tabitha lay in state, shooing out
the scores of weeping widows and impoverished ones who showed him all the
shirts and coats and tunics and prayer shawls that Tabitha had made over her
time of ministry.
Now alone, what was Peter thinking – being new in the
resurrection business himself? Of
course, we have no way of knowing what was going through his mind. However, we do know that, in the end, he did
what Jesus did.
He prayed and then, just as Jesus had commanded Jairus’
daughter (“Talitha Kuom, which means “Little girl, get up”), so Peter, with an
authority he was not even sure he had, changed one letter and commanded the
dead woman lying at his feet likewise: “Tabitha Kuom - Tabitha, get up!” There was that endless moment that
followed when Peter held his breath, but then Tabitha’s chest began to move,
and she opened her eyes.
In
doing so, Tabitha had the distinction bestowed upon her of being the first
person – man or woman – raised from the dead following Jesus’ resurrection. As evangelical pastor Peter Loughman notes, “Now, for us,
Tabitha is one of those people who is almost a footnote in Scripture. She is
someone who many of us pass over when we read the Bible. For us, Tabitha is a
minor character in the building of the early church, a person of no real
significance. But for God, Tabitha is so significant, that (God) raises her from
the dead.”
Why
Tabitha? Why does the writer of Acts
choose to include the story of someone who makes this single appearance in the early
Church’s narrative history? The writer of Acts could certainly have included a
lot of other stories. Why is Tabitha’s
story particularly worth remembering?
As one blogger
wrote, “What was it about her life that made her death the occasion for this
miracle? (After all), Tabitha was not an eloquent preacher or theologian. She
didn’t make her mark by performing brave deeds or giving major financial gifts.
She wasn’t out in the forefront or in the limelight where
all her actions could be seen and admired.”
I think there
are two reasons that the writer of the Book of Acts chose to include this tiny tale
of Tabitha, this little vignette that I believe lies at the very heart of the
Christian faith.
First, the
story of Tabitha is a marvelous example of how we who call ourselves followers
(disciples) of Jesus should be spending out time. That is, we are not here in the church to
talk about service and to dialogue about mission and outreach. As St. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the
Gospel, and when necessary, use words.” Words
have their place, to be sure, but they are not the be all and end all of
Christianity. As the church, we are here
to do mission. We are here to serve.
And there are
opportunities. There are so many
opportunities. That is why Polly invited
all of you to come and make school kit bags this past week. That is why Tom and Bonnie have invited all
of you to be a part of our summer mission trip to Maine Seacoast Mission in
Cherryfield in July – whether you can be there for the full week or just for a
few days.
That is why Sarah and Judy and Carol and others of
you and even people who do not come to worship here continue to knit literally
hundreds of prayer shawls, some of which we blessed this morning. That is why our Youth Group went to HOME last
fall and plans to go to the Common Cathedral this Spring.
And
if what we do seems small, insignificant, and hardly worth doing (What
difference can a single prayer shawl make?), then remember that story of a man who
was walking on the beach and saw someone in the
distance throwing something into the ocean. As the man got closer, he saw that
there were starfish – thousands of them - on the beach, stranded by the
outgoing tide. A child was tossing them far enough out, so they could swim
away.
The man asked, “What are you doing?”
The child replied, “I am throwing the starfish back out to
sea. If they don’t get back into the deeper water, they will die.”
The man replied, “I understand that part, but look at this
beach. It is covered with starfish. There must be tens of thousands stranded
out here. You cannot make a dent into the problem, and you certainly can not
make a difference.”
The
child bent over, picked up another starfish, hurled it out to sea, and with a
smile on his face said, “Made a difference to that one!”
We
are the hands and feet of Jesus in this world, called and committed to making a
difference, as Theresa of Avila recognized in the 16th century.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours; (she wrote)
No hands but yours;
No feet but yours;
Yours are the eyes
Through which is to look out
Christ’s compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet
With which he is to go about
Doing good;
Yours are the hands
With which he is to bless now.
The
other reason why Tabitha’s story is important is because it reminds us of the
continuous and ongoing power of the resurrection, a power that, in some ways, is
placed in our hands. In the movie, “Bruce
Almighty”, a TV reporter named Bruce continually challenges God. “You're not
doing your job!” he complains.
Finally,
God calls Bruce's bluff: “You want the job – you got it.” Bruce (now) has the wondrous working power.
However, it does not help; it fails to change the world.
So
God tells Bruce, “Your problem is that you spend too much time looking up. All
the things you've been doing with the power I gave you – they're not miracles –
just magic tricks….Stop looking up all the time,” says God, “and stop looking
to me all the time. Look at yourself – you be the miracle!”
We
are all still reeling from the bombs that exploded this past week at the finish
line of the Boston Marathon. As usual,
there has been some amount of finger pointing – conservative and liberal
pundits both using this tragedy to take pot shots at each other (no pun
intended).
However,
there are also the folks who were in Boston, the ones who took people in, who
found water and food for exhausted runners, who jumped over barriers even as
they prayed there would not be another explosion that would claim their lives as
they helped the fallen, the bloodied, the severely injured.
Those
acts of kindness, that selflessness, that reaching out and really serving one
another - that is the power of resurrection entrusted to us – you and me - that
courage we sometimes do not even know we have and that faith in something
bigger than us that enables us to say no to death and all it symbolizes –
fear, terror, hatred, a world without love. In the Koran, the Islamic Holy Scriptures,
there is a verse that says “If you find evil, do good.”
That
is what the story of Tabitha is saying to us.
As Lutheran pastor Eric Barretto wrote, “In these weeks after Easter, it may
be that our wonder over the resurrection (has) abated somewhat. Perhaps we have
heard the story repeatedly… and our hearing has grown dull.”
However,
remember, as he goes on to say: “The
gospel looks out over a world characterized by death…and loss and yet declares
that…life is the new order of the day, that Jesus himself embodies and assures
us of the promise that death will not have the last word.” We should all be out training for the 2014
Boston Marathon – as participants for peace, as resurrection runners.
Oh, Tabitha,
you may be small. You may only appear
this single time in our Bible, but you are one of the mighty ones. You show us how to live as followers of
Jesus, and in your death, you remind us of God’s promise of life, in the end,
always life.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
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