Acts 9:36-43
There’s something fascinating about this woman
Dorcas or Tabitha (whose name in English would be Gazelle), and about the role
that she played in one of the earliest Christian communities. We’re kind of like Peter, in that the first
thing we learn about her is that she is dead and that there are a lot of people
upset about that.
If
it were made into a movie, the scene would have the potential to come across as
dark comedy. Peter is escorted into the
room in an unfamiliar house where the corpse is laid out; basically, they walk
him into the viewing – which is not an abnormal kind of situation. When he enters the room, though, he is
overwhelmed by a group of women shoving clothing at him.
“All the widows stood beside him, weeping and
showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them.” [Acts 9:39]
I can
imagine them all talking at once, and Peter trying to figure out what was going
on, why they had to show him every little piece of stitchery and needlework
while they’re standing next to the body, and all the traditional middle-eastern
weeping and wailing going on at the same time, to the point where he has to
have them all shown out of the room so he can even think.
When he did get a moment’s peace,
the first thing he did was kneel down and pray, and whether he was praying for
it to happen, or whether the Lord spoke to him while he prayed and said to do
it,
“He turned to the body and said, ‘Tabitha, get
up.’ Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her
up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive.” [Acts
9:40-41]
Again, if this were in a movie, I could see the
swarm of widows engulf her again and all of them move away in a big clump, like
the family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding
that shows up and leaves like a weather front.
That may be the point of it, too.
The Church is, at its heart, a strange and funny family and within it
there may be someone who has a role that is not necessarily visible from the
outside but which holds them together in a vital way.
That
can go wrong, mind you, in ways that are more or less serious. Let me give a bad example first. I knew a church where the United Methodist
Women produced a lot of wonderful pickles and jellies and canned fruits and
baked goods and salads for the church bazaar every year. It was a big deal, with dozens and dozens of
pre-orders and a display that took up about a quarter of the outside wall of
their Fellowship Hall. It was organized
by one woman every year, who had been doing it since John Wesley was a child. The way she did it was by keeping all the
recipes in a big, black binder, each page laminated against spills. She would hand out assignments a month or so
before the bazaar, and give each cook a copy of the page that was needed for a
particular dish. She gave out that page
and only that page and collected the copies at the bazaar. The time came, however, when she began to
show signs of dementia. There was some
quiet discussion on the side and when the bazaar’s organizational meeting was
held, everyone in the room was prepared for trouble because the chairwoman at
one point looked at her and asked her to share the whole binder so they could
make a backup copy. Before the evening
was over, someone had pried the book from her hands and the promise was given
to her that it would be kept in the church’s safe when it was not in use. Later it was discovered that there were some
recipes with secret ingredients that she had left off the master copy.
Folks,
it is not a good thing to mess with the process in order to make yourself
important. You are already
important. It is not always the
prominent person whose ministry has the greatest effect. In that city of Joppa in the very earliest
days of the Church, you would think it would have been one of the great
evangelists whose work would have been key to the sharing of the gospel, or
maybe someone in the group who had spent time learning of the Kingdom of God
from Jesus himself when he had been in the neighborhood, who could have
repeated his words and described what it was like to be near him. But, no.
It was a woman who knew how to sew well, and who pieced together clothing
for the people around her and who cared for the poor. Maybe the person in this room whose good
deeds will have the greatest lasting impact will be somebody who can only think
about helping a child with homework or babysitting. Maybe it is someone who makes a point of
saying, “Hello,” to someone they don’t know.
Maybe the most important member of this congregation is somebody who
cannot even get out to church but who spends time at home praying for those who
can.
The example of Dorcas, and why she matters
enough to be remembered for her sewing two millennia later, is that she was
somebody who did her work for the good of others.
“She was devoted to good works and acts of
charity.” [Acts 9:36]
That turned out to be what the church in Joppa
was good at, and her example kept them focused on the way that
“We love because
he first loved us. Those who say,
‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a
brother or sister whom they have
seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” [I John 4:19-20]
Keep things clear. Love God and love your neighbor. The rest will then fall into place. It is so easy to get side-tracked by details
and demands, by cares and concerns, that situations (and sometimes people) can
come unraveled. That’s when having someone
who keeps things clear for herself and for the community and who stitches all
the loose ends together becomes all the more of a blessing.
The
women who pried the recipe book out of their sister’s hands were doing that for
her. It wasn’t about the recipes and the
food. That was to help the bazaar. It wasn’t about the bazaar. That was to raise funds to heat the
church. It wasn’t about heating the
church. If people really wanted to be
there, they could keep their coats on and if it had really come to that, then
they were hanging onto a building that wasn’t serving its true purpose. That purpose was to be a gathering place
where people could encounter God’s grace in their own lives and give
thanks. God’s grace for that woman at
that moment was to be taught to let go, because she would need to let go of
much more as her disease progressed, and to learn that the love of her friends
and the love of God did not depend on her fading ability to get things done,
but that she was loved simply for herself.
Thank
God for the people who saw that instinctively, and who pulled things together
that day. Thank God for the people who know
how to keep us seeking, sharing, and showing God’s love – whoever they may be
and however they have to do it.
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