Scripture can be found here…
A woman of many names and many roles. Tabitha – Did you know her Aramaic name? She was also called Dorcas, her Greek name. A name she probably used in running her business of woven fabrics and garments.
Before she is called Dorcas in our text, and before she is called Tabitha, she is called “disciple.” This disciple’s account is often told as Peter’s story, for, after all, he was the one who brought her back to life.
Today we focus on the only woman in our holy writings to explicitly be called disciple. We speak her name, like Peter, “Tabitha” and hear how her life brought glory to our God. For her story was life-giving long before her resurrection.
Perhaps she is curious to us because she is unlike so many of the other Biblical women we meet. She is never lauded for a role as a wife or mother. She is never upheld for her chastity or domestic toil. Yet, her story is one of love.
Tabitha’s home was Joppa, it was where she built her trade of textiles. This port city has a mixed-ethnic population. There were Jews and non-Jews of various Greek-speaking backgrounds. It was a center for import and export.
A place known for its production of woven fabrics, wool and purple dyes, this was the place where she made her life and livelihood. As we examine Tabitha’s work in Joppa, we may also recall the prophet Jonah turning away from his work there.
Tabitha’s work was on behalf of her community, and in her death, her community searched out Peter, whom they knew to be in Lydda. “Please, we beg of you…” Did they come in grief or hope? Or in both?
The unnamed men, who were part of Tabitha’s community found Peter, “Come, without delay.” Peter went. Perhaps he knew Tabitha, for he posed no questions and took up the long journey from Lydda to Joppa without hesitation to be present for the funeral rites of a dead woman.
When Peter arrived in Joppa the rituals of mourning had already begun. With care and love, her body and been washed and anointed, and then laid out for her community to come and to mourn. They did not simply mourn a boss or benefactress, the mourned the woman who was their co-worker, for by her very own hands she created both craft and community for the people there.
In this humming port city, Tabitha built up commerce for people who became her community. In Tabitha’s home, that was also her workshop, her community that was comprised of widows and workers, the saints who did not flee from the smell of death, gathered to grieve.[1] Tabitha had been their bold benefactress and their courageous leader. She was genuinely loved and now sincerely mourned.
The widows, who lived every day of their lives in vulnerability, at the edge of death, remained by their friend’s side in her time of death.[2] They wept, sharing mementos of their time with her – pulling out the fabrics they had woven together for Peter to see, clutching them closely, smelling the sweet scent of her perfume fading away.
They wept because they shared life and labor together. The wept because they loved her. Maybe the widows also wailed in grief because by this creative community Tabitha had given them a glimpse of abundance. On earth as it is in heaven, but with her death that life had the possibility of fading away.
“Tabitha use[d] her home, her means, and the profits of her business in service to community.”[3] She was not remembered only as a community leader or simply as a business owner. She was a woman, who despite her [elevated] status, worked alongside of others. She worked alongside of the women who normally lived on the edge of community, for the benefit of the entire community.
The widows and workers had experienced the miracle of life-giving love through the disciple, Tabitha. They knew stability, had income, and lived in community in a society that would have cast them to the edges. And while this may have been innovative in that time and place, it was not innovative for the God of whom she was a disciple.
When Peter cleared the upper room, in Tabitha’s house, he ushered in hope that the presence of the risen Christ was among them. He brought the hope that the life-giving power of God could restore the life-giving work of an independent woman, even in the face of death.
In his outstretched hand, Peter brought with him the reminders of all the stories this community had heard Tabitha, the disciple, tell them as they worked alongside of her.
He brought the stories of the prophets Elijah and Elisha who brought the dead to life.
He brought the testimony of Jairus and the widow of Nain, whose children Jesus raised.
He brought the witness of Mary and Martha who heard Jesus call Lazarus out of the tomb.
With his outstretched hand he brought with him the history of a people who believed in a life-giving God and the power and presence of the risen Christ.
All this witness, power and promise in Joppa, a port-city where textiles came and went, that was Tabitha’s home, where she built a livelihood and community among the widows and saints, whose good works and just acts challenged unjust systems.
All of this, for one woman, named Tabitha, a disciple, devoted to good works and acts of charity. These could have been funeral words – the sum of a life dedicated to love. Tabitha, disciple, weaving the fabric of new life into her community:
Tabitha, the volunteer sitting cross-legged on the ground reading storybooks to children
The one in the dirt with trowel and spade in the community garden
The kind-hearted helper who sets up chairs, takes down tables, sweeps floors, and gathers rummage
The one collecting bedsheets and frying pants, clothing, and diapers for the refugees among you
The gentle soul who cooks the food in the soup kitchen and stocks the shelves at the food pantry
The one marching in protest, lobbying and petitioning
The Grandparent who is faithful caregiver for their grandchildren.
The one beside you on their knees in prayer, weeping and wailing and hoping
In the face of death and despite the systems that oppress, suppress and tear apart, a community blanketed in love, was given hope. Those are not words of death; they are words of life.
We are not invited to give a eulogy for the brokenness we grieve around us, but to give witness to the power and promise of the resurrection - and to all the ways that God takes hold of us to be a part of this abundant new life. We are given a lifetime of love for this very task.
Our Tabithas are alive and well, drawing us out of the boxes that are the walls of the institutional church, our narrow-mindedness and our own attempts at self-preservation, and into a place of persistent action and unyielding love that exemplifies the God whose love is relentlessly expansive.
If we believe in the power of the Tabithas among us to effect change in our communities, we are claiming the power of the church to create new life: bodily, concretely, locally.[4]
On earth as it is in heaven, woven into our very existence by the saints among us who can look the power of death in the face and say “no more.”
On earth as it is in heaven woven into the fabric of our daily lives by the Tabithas who grasp the hands of the prophets, and preachers, disciples and dreamers, and get up and get to their good work.
Tabitha, get up! Amen.
[1] https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2007-04/blogging-toward-sunday-0
[2] https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2007-04/blogging-toward-sunday-0
[3] https://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1334&context=luc_diss, 185,
[4] https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2007-04/blogging-toward-sunday-0