Fourth Sunday in Easter, Year C
May 11, 2025
Acts 9:36-43
Not only is it Mother’s Day, but it is also Good Shepherd Sunday! Our reading from the Book of Acts remembers a woman, Tabitha, called Dorcas by the Greek speakers in her region. Tabitha is representative of first-century women who were exemplary disciples of Jesus and she is highlighted this Sunday as a Good Shepherd to the people in her community.
Good Shepherd Sunday is in the midst of what the Church refers to as Eastertide, still in the joys and alleluias of the Resurrection. Eastertide is a time of wonder, surprise, and new possibilities. Things are not what they appear to be. Tyrants don’t always win. Confusion gives birth to insight and Jesus appears in unexpected ways through the faith and actions of his followers.
That’s why the lectionary asks us to listen to the Acts of the Apostles during the weeks of Easter. Acts makes no promises about trying to prove or explain Jesus’ Resurrection. (Who can do that, anyway?) The book does, however, put us in a resurrection state of mind. The thrills and amplification the story Acts tells, urges us to put aside cautious rationality and the canned wisdom of consultants for a few weeks, and say: look at what becomes possible in a post-Easter world. Our faith in resurrection is about possibility and surprise.
These passages are not to be read as dusty eulogies of Peter and Paul’s heroism or as moralistic tales about the power of standing firm in your faith. During Eastertide, these passages prompt us to consider: what does Resurrection mean? To what, exactly, are we bearing witness as people who believe that death and the powers of this world do not have the last word? What kind of testimony do we give, as people whose encounters with a living Christ make us reject the cynical assumption that nothing will ever change? Our Easter readings are about how God breaks through the barriers we see before us to get us to consider that there is a lot more going on than meets the eye or that the institutions of religion have taught us to believe.
Today we are presented with such an opportunity in our reading in Acts. Luke, the author of Acts, is recounting an important event and an even more important insight into the early Jesus movement known at that time as The Way.
This story that Luke included here is not about Paul, but neither is it about Peter, really. It is included because Tabitha, her given Aramaic name, was a prominent important disciple of The Way. She is included in the scripture readings for Good Shepherd Sunday because she was also a Good Shepherd, following the way Christ modeled to his disciples. Clearly she is well respected and loved because when she dies they send two men to go get the top dude, Peter, presumably to comfort the community and to do her funeral. Her death clearly triggered grief and alarm and it is obvious that it was felt deeply by her community.
In the Book of Acts she is called a Mathetria in Greek, which specifically means a female disciple, denoting her as a true disciple of Jesus and a leader of this community in Joppa (a town known today as Jaffa near Tel Aviv.). Throughout his account of the Jesus movement, Luke points out both in his Gospel and in the Book of Acts the prominence of women disciples and leadership amongst the followers of The Way.
Tabitha was devoted to good works and acts of charity, making clothes for those that needed them. Her impact was so great in the community that the widows had brought examples of her work and craftsmanship to display. It’s as if they wanted to show Peter and the others gathered there, “See how she loved us! And we loved her.” Good works and acts of charity can never be abstractions, and here she clothed the naked, not only covering their bodies with fabric, but wrapping the marginalized with dignity and respect.
In Western churches today, we tend to elevate intelligent, entertaining speakers and not notice those who serve the disadvantaged. The Christians in Joppa had it right when they valued Tabitha.
Although it appears she must have had some wealth to be able to afford to make these clothes, as a woman and a widow she would have been “powerless” in the 1st century world, but Jesus’ teachings have “lifted up the lowly” and given her a ministry of love and grace to other widows. Through her service she sewed together a group of people. Did the mention of both her Aramaic and Greek names mean she was a bridge builder, too, forging connections between groups separated by language and cultural differences?
Tabitha’s story is about Resurrection. Peter is called to come without delay and when he arrives he finds a dead widow surrounded by mourning widows who—like the women who went to the tomb of Jesus—were preparing her for burial. Peter entered the room and knelt to pray. Then he told Tabitha to get up, and he gives her his hand to help her up.
This line stands out for me so powerfully as an important piece to Tabitha’s Resurrection story. It is not Peter but the Spirit of God working through him yet it takes his cooperation with the Divine and an offering of his hand to help her up. He calls the saints, including the widows, and he shows Tabitha to be alive. The different use of language in the way this story unfolds reminds us that there are many ways to understand death, not just the physical death of the body, and likewise many ways to understand what it is to be alive.
The Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead brings back to life this faithful woman whose acts of compassion are central to the new reality of God’s reign. This is a strange turn of events according to our standards, but God has a different value system. It should not surprise us if we have been listening to Mary’s song about how God “lifted up the lowly.” There are many ways we are all resurrected. Later in Acts, Paul will describe a new distribution of power where God uses what is lowly and despised in the world to bring about a new reality. What our society may view as lifeless and worthless, God sees the possibility of renewed life and vitality, of value and worthiness.
How we participate in breathing life back into people’s lives and into our communities is by participating in the work of the Spirit, and like Peter, holding out our hand to lift one up. You have met Tabitha. We have known her in every faith community and church. She has no power except her deep and abiding commitment to give expression to God’s compassion for those in need. She is tenacious about practicing her faith by serving others. Her power is not defined by the powers of this world but by the inner power of the resurrected Christ that resides within her.
Tabitha’s story is, after all, about the church, the community of Jesus followers, and what the church is called to be. We gather as a community to receive the sustenance of Christ and we walk back out those doors, renewed and transformed, to be the Tabitha to each other and to those in need around us.
The church grew, not because they had entertaining programming to draw people in, but because they responded to the cries of distress around them. Remembering the words of Jesus, they loved their neighbors no matter who they were and fed the hungry, offered shelter to the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the poor, brought healing to the sick, and visited the prisoner. When they became the people of The Way, they knew what they had signed up for. Jesus’ words were still fresh in the memories of his disciples. It was this love in action, visible and seen in the community, that caused them to grow even in a time of the Roman Empire and governing powers of cruelty and oppression.
As I mentioned at the outset this morning, Easter is a time of wonder, surprise, and new possibilities. Things are not what they appear to be. Tyrants don’t always win. Confusion gives birth to insight. Jesus appears in unexpected ways through the faith and actions of his followers and lifts up the lowly. This is how we live Resurrection every day. And it is why we remember Tabitha.
Magdalena's Musings 