Sermons & Services

I am thinking right now of the blowout celebration we had three weeks ago. Do you remember? Of course you do. The beauty and fragrance of the flowers, the full pews, the kids ringing their bells, the return of our Alleluias, the organ booming and the trumpet flaring, the assurance that Jesus conquered death and that we too shall rise up, all of us joining our voices or hearts together for grateful and powerful Alleluia chorus! The reverberations of that day continue to fill this holy space – continue to fill this holy people. And those reverberations – or even better, those waves – of new life continue to spread out from that Easter day.

I think that’s really a good way to envision what is happening in the Book of Acts – which, by the way, could really use a new title, and I just happen to have a suggestion: “Waves of Resurrection.” And given that women buy and read far more books than men, I’d put Tabitha on the cover – slaying it in some outfit of her own design from material she made by hand.

But I get ahead of myself.

As the book of Acts unfolds, it’s like the stone that was rolled away from Jesus’ tomb was cast into the stagnant waters of the world, and the ripples, even the waves of life that the resurrection sends forth shake things up and renew a wider and wider circle of creation. It’s all about waves of new life.

The waves start at the epicenter, the empty tomb outside of Jerusalem, and first the lives of the women disciples are changed, then the rest of the disciples glimpse new life, then hundreds more are filled with the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, then wider and wider the waves extend, those who were once enemies become friends, and the waves spread throughout the world.

Critically, this book doesn’t tell us how the waves of resurrection hit the rich, important, and powerful. Most writing from late antiquity, and from today for that matter, tells the story of the elite. But Acts tells how the waves of resurrection blessed the poor, the non-binary, women of all people, those forgotten, hidden simply by being unimportant. In Acts, the waves go north and roll over and renew people previously unable to walk and unable to see, they go south and renew a man of questionable sexual identity, they go west and renew people in Syria, and they go east, to the city of Joppa, to a woman, a disciple, named Tabitha, Gazelle – yes here in Joppa those waves come upon a woman who has died.

That’s the wave of resurrection we are focusing on today. I have only preached on this story once in 25 years, and I have enjoyed getting to know this story again. And by “enjoyed” I mean “had my assumptions completely upended and reformed.”

The first time I preached on it was in the 1990s at my first church in a small farming community in northern Illinois. As I think is common in such places, social change happened a little slower in those parts, and gender roles were somewhat more traditional. This meant that the Women’s Association of the church was a powerful force. There was enough patriarchy built into the history and leadership of the church that woman did what they often did – formed alternate realms of power. To get anything important done in the church, as the pastor, I had to have the official approval of the church board, and the unofficial approval of the Women’s Association.

The Women’s Association was divided into Circles of about 15 women, each one named after a different strong female from scripture: Mary, Martha, Deborah, some others, and the Tabitha Circle. The Tabitha Circle, true to the name of this woman of the Bible, made textiles – blankets, quilts and clothes to give to people in need – and in a rural farm community, there were always people in need. The women in Tabitha Circle were getting up there in age, but they kept going, kept working, kept producing, kept giving. They were known for their good works and for the giving of alms.

Maybe it was my experience with the Tabitha Circle that tripped me up, or maybe it was the patriarchy within me, but for whatever reason I always thought of Tabitha from today’s scripture reading as an older woman, a nice widow, quiet and kind, going along at home sewing a few tunics and robes to give to the poor. In other words, I figured she was known for her kindness, but not for her impact. She was known for her generosity, but not for making a difference.

So what a joy it has been to read the more recent work that has been done, much of it by feminist and womanist scholars, about Tabitha and what was likely really going on here. Because Tabitha seems to have been, as we say in Chicago, Daa Boss.

First of all, Tabitha is, individually, called a disciple. Now, clearly there are other women in the New Testament who were called disciples – but only as part of a group. In all the New Testament, however, this is the only time the feminine form of the noun is used and a woman is individually called a disciple. It really sets Tabitha apart as a significant player in the life of the early church.

Next, when women are named in the New Testament, they are almost always identified by the male that they are related to, Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, for example. But for Tabitha, there is no mention of a man: no husband, father, son, brother. She is just Tabitha, named for who she is, not for a man she is related to. The text doesn’t say if she was single or married or widowed, or whatever, but in any case that status is not what is important about her. She’s Tabitha, the disciple, and she matters for who she is.

Next, we can all pick up from the story that Tabitha made tunics and robes, and generously gave them to the poor. But when you catch the nuances of the story, it because clear that this is not a woman sitting her rocking chair, sewing and turning out a dress or blanket once a week. This was a businesswoman, at work in her shop, employing others, cranking out product that made a difference for a huge number of people. It sounds like the people she employed included widows, probably poor widows at that, women who needed to be making a living wage in order to survive, and she almost surely employed slaves who were earning money to be able to buy their freedom. Through her business, this woman was a woke, social justice warrior!

She was Da Boss. Now you can’t go to Merriam Webster to get the definition I’m using here, but the Chicago street-dictionary says Da Boss is an independent person, in control of the situation, who leads rather than follows. Like, when Tabitha entered the room, everyone noticed, and felt honored, knowing they were in the presence of Da Boss.

It is extraordinary in the culture of the day. This was the Roman Empire. And in the Roman Empire there was a disconnect between reality and public discourse. We know from careful research of surviving legal documents and tax records and memorial inscriptions that women could have a fair amount of power and independence in the first century. But what we see in the writers of the day, all of them men, is this call for women to quit being so independent, have babies, and respect their husbands. It’s your basic social conservatism, aimed at making the Empire great again. But in this story, Luke highlights and clearly admires, an independent, respected, woman who is a leader in her community. This is Luke’s evangelistic strategy you might say, “Hey all you women reading or hearing this, we don’t restrict women like this, we celebrate women like this. Be like Tabitha!”

But then, of course, the story turns. Tabitha fell sick and died. It was clearly a crushing blow to the community around her – to her business community, to the other disciples around her, to the poor of Joppa, who looked to her for employment and kindness and help in crisis. There was wailing and worry a plenty when Tabitha died.

So her people summon Peter from a nearby city – Peter, the lead apostle, the Rock on which Jesus would build the church. But, as you can tell, I feel like Peter has gotten enough ink in all this. Up until a few years ago, Biblical scholars and most people reading or preaching on this text, focused almost exclusively on Peter, and Tabitha was only important as the passive recipient of his wondrous work of resuscitation.

But in the story, it’s clear that when Tabitha rises up, it is not even Peter doing the raising. Peter is merely a conduit for the work of God. And when we stop focusing on Peter and pay attention to who Tabitha really was, the role she played in the Christian community in Joppa, the impact she had on others, you can see the miracle of this passage in a new light. It’s not just that death has been overcome – I mean, to be clear, Tabitha was resuscitated, not resurrected – she would still go on to die someday.

But if we look at the passage holistically, we see not just a resuscitated woman, but a resurrected community. We see a community of disciples that has been made new by waves of resurrection. It is not just Tabitha, but the community she was a part of and led, that is raised from the dead.

That is ultimately what the Book of Acts, Waves of Resurrection, shows us, that the good news of Jesus Christ, the transforming good news of Jesus Christ, the good news that heals people and relationships, the good news that makes women better than, I mean equal to men, in every sphere of life, the good news that erases the margins and embraces the whole human family, the good news that raises people from all the shadows of death, and one day – in God’s good time – from death itself, that good news is embodied in small groups of Jesus’ followers: the community gathered around Tabitha and the community that is gathered right here, right now.

The good news is not simply that Tabitha was given more time of life, but that she could live as part of, and lead, a whole community of resurrection. The good news is not simply that we have more time of life, but that we get to live in a community of resurrection, and we get to share that community with others. Yeah, the waves of resurrection are still going out, and we get to ride them into the world.

Thanks be to God.

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Particularly useful background work for this sermon taken from:

The Lord Opened Her Heart: Women, Work, and Leadership in Acts of the Apostles

Teresa Jeanne Calpino, Loyola University Chicago

https://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1334&context=luc_diss