May 8, 2022 “Good Woman” – Acts 9:36-43

Acts 9:36-43
“Good Woman”
May 8, 2022 – Fourth Sunday of Easter

“Who can find a virtuous woman?” That’s the question asked by Proverbs 31:10, making it sound as if such people are scarce. It’s not one of our texts today, but it often appears on Mother’s Day cards, followed by verse 29 of the same chapter, “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” It’s a sweet thing to say to your wife or mother today as we remember our mothers or other women in our lives who have blessed and guided us.

That Proverbs chapter celebrates the character of a truly good woman, wife, and mother, but if you turn there and look it over, she seems almost too good to be true. I know I can get a rise out of my wife by suggesting she too ought to rise early to prepare food for our household or spend all night working at a money-making small business (I’m not sure how those two activities fit together). Yet some of the qualities celebrated in that ideal feminine figure of Proverbs are the very characteristics we find in the person at the center of our reading from Acts 9. Tabitha, Dorcas, is a diligent seamstress who cares for the poor and lives a faithful life in fear of the Lord and service to others.

So I propose we take a closer look at this real, historical good woman, whom Peter helped in Joppa, and consider the example she might be for us. Of course, the focus of the text is the miracle which was done for Tabitha, her restoration to life. It’s in our readings during the Easter season for just that reason, another demonstration of our Lord’s power over death and the gift of life we received in His own resurrection.

Yet before we spend too much time on the miracle, let’s consider the woman. Luke takes the time to tell us a bit about her. Reflect on the portrait he paints of her. The first thing we’re told is that she is a “disciple.” That is notable. We have a tendency, even millennia later, to think of the biblical disciples as men. We focus so much on the male followers of Jesus that we forget that women received the very same designations as the men did, not only “disciple,” but in at least one case, at the end of Romans, also “apostle.”

Over and over we find in the Bible that the story is not just about what men said and did. That’s especially true with the arrival of Jesus and the constant place important women had in His life and ministry. Egalitarian roles in Jesus’ church are not a modern innovation. They were there from the beginning.

The second thing we’re told about Tabitha is that she lived a cross-cultural life. She apparently was known both by her Jewish name in Aramaic, Tabitha, and by the Greek name Dorcas. They both mean the same, “gazelle.” As the story of Acts unfolds, one of its major themes is how the Gospel bridges Jewish and Greek culture, bringing together people who existed side-by-side in cities around the Mediterranean, but who spoke different languages and viewed the world in different ways.

So we find Tabitha, like the apostle Paul, with both a Jewish name and a Greek name. She is one of the early Christians who stood at the cultural crossroads and demonstrated that our faith is meant, from its inception, to be multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic. As I mentioned two weeks ago, the Lord’s net of love draws up fish of every kind. His church is meant to welcome and include people of all backgrounds. In her two names Tabitha embodied that great vision we read from Revelation 7 this morning, of “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and people and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”

Tabitha is also an example for us because of what Luke tells us she did there in Joppa. In verse 36, “She was devoted to good works and acts of charity,” the latter of which many translations elucidate as “helping the poor.” Reading on in the passage we realize that those who received her “good works” were likely the socially disadvantaged class of “widows,” who in verse 39 are putting on quite a display of mourning. The language suggests they are not only showing Peter items of clothing made by their patroness but actually wearing what they displayed to him. They held out their arms to show him the sleeves of their tunics and lifted the hems of their robes for him to see.

Those weeping women who surrounded Peter show us Tabitha’s deep generosity and faithful service to them. We find here that social concern and ministry to those whom we now call the “marginalized” people of society were part and parcel of church life from the start. Helping the poor and the oppressed is not an extra we add on to sharing the good news about Jesus or teaching the Bible. Helping those in need is just what good Christians, like this good woman of Joppa, do.

Then there is what is not said in this account of Tabitha. There is no mention of any family weeping there for her, no husband, no children, nor any other relatives. Perhaps she was a widow herself, childless and now alone. Perhaps, like Jesus and Paul both clearly identified and endorsed, she had never married so that she might better serve the Lord and others. Yet it’s clear from the emotion that surrounds her passing that she did have a family of another sort. All those women there in that room were her sisters in Christ, her daughters in the Lord. They wept for her with the same deep love one has for family.

Today on Mother’s Day I invited you all to acknowledge not only mothers and grandmothers, but those “who have been like a mother to you in some way.” It was an opportunity to remember that our lives and the body of Christ are not complete without relationships in the Lord which go beyond blood ties. In times like this we honor the important role in the church held by those who do not marry or bear children, both women and men. We may want to offer such good people a particularly special honor for the love which they offer willingly from their hearts, apart from any natural familial obligation or connection. They’ve loved us not because of biology but by their own choice.

Christians therefore have a distinctive place and honor for those who live good and godly lives in households of just one member. We can see that in the fact that, when Tabitha died, verse 38 tells us the Christian community there in Joppa quickly dispatched two men to fetch Peter from the nearby town of Lydda. They asked him to, “Please come with us without delay.” Her death was not just the sorrow and concern of a few poor women, but was an urgent matter for the whole congregation.

Likewise, the role and honor of Tabitha is apparent in verse 39 when we read that Peter did not delay. He just “got up and went with them.” The first and foremost of the apostles, the leader of them all, dropped whatever he was doing to attend Tabitha’s deathbed. This woman who sewed shirts and other clothes for poor widows mattered hugely in God’s plan for that time and place. The Lord sent Peter there not just to console and comfort that church in Joppa. The apostle came to make Tabitha a living sign of God’s love and approval for Christians like her.

Luke doesn’t tell us what the saints in Joppa expected when they sent for Peter. We are told just before this that Peter had healed and raised a man named Aeneas near there in Lydda. Aeneas had been sick and bedridden for eight years. Perhaps they hoped Peter could do something for Tabitha, but they also must have known their situation was different. Tabitha was dead.

It’s hard to imagine the Christians in Joppa thought Peter would heal Tabitha. Her situation was not like that of Aeneas. Verse 37 says “she became ill and died.” Then they washed her, washed her body, and laid her out in an upper room. You don’t do such things if you suppose someone is unconscious or ill and might wake up soon. Yet in faith they also sent for Peter. They put their sister in Christ in the apostle’s hands and thereby also put her in the Lord’s hands.

We don’t know what the church in Joppa expected in that room at the top of the stairs. Maybe they did hope that Peter who in the name of Jesus healed a paralyzed man by the gate of the Temple and raised up that bedridden man in the next village could do even more. Maybe they already understood that if Jesus Himself was raised from the dead, then He has power over death for anyone who trusts in Him. We don’t know exactly what they were thinking. It’s just very clear that Tabitha mattered enough to them that they sought the greatest spiritual help they knew.

It is also very clear that Tabitha mattered to God, that she was one of the Lord’s sheep we heard Jesus claim in our Gospel reading. In John 10:28 He said, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” Peter came, Peter was sent to Joppa, to demonstrate vividly and overwhelmingly the truth of that statement. No one, nothing, can snatch Jesus’s sheep from His hand, not even, especially not even, death.

Read verse 40 and maybe it will ring some bells for you. Peter put them all out of the room. Turn over to Mark chapter 5 and verse 40 and you find that is just what Jesus does at the bedside of a young girl who has died. Peter then knelt down there and prayed, prayed to his Lord Jesus who came to bring life, whom he had seen years before give life to that girl by telling her in Aramaic, Talitha cum, “Little girl, get up.” Mark tells us she did get up and Jesus gave her back to her family.

Now Luke here tells us there in verse 40 that Peter turned to Tabitha and said almost exactly the same words Jesus said to the girl, “Tabitha, get up.” In Aramaic that would be Tabitha cum, just one letter different from Jesus’ own words. That same power over death which Jesus exercised was now manifested through Peter’s prayer and faith.

We need to remember of course that what Jesus did for that little girl and for a man named Lazarus and for others, what Peter did for Tabitha, and which Paul would soon do for a man named Eutychus, are none of them quite that eternal life Jesus promised to bring. These risings, these getting ups, were all returns to life, but would eventually be followed again by death. As we remember in this Easter season, only Jesus has risen yet to an eternal, everlasting life that faces no death to come.

The story of Tabitha is here, though, to remind us that the Good Shepherd knows His sheep. They hear His voice and answer His call. In the end, we who believe in Jesus will hear Him say, Cum! Rise! Get up! And we will. From every nation and people on earth, from the depths of the sea to the tops of mountains, the graves will open. We and those we have loved and lost to death will get up into that eternal life which Jesus came to give.

Alongside that glorious hope of resurrection, Tabitha’s story is also here for us today on Mother’s Day to teach us and remind us of our Savior’s tender love for half the human race and of women’s full and equal role in His work on earth and in His church.

So in memory and recognition of Tabitha I’d like to recall today good women who have blessed me as a Christian. My wife, my mother, and my grandmother are givens in such a list. But I also think of those who gave their lives like the martyrs Perpetua and Felicity of Carthage, and others who wrote inspiring and beautiful accounts of faith, like Julian of Norwich in the middle ages, or like present-day authors Madeleine L’Engle and Marilyn Robinson and Annie Dillard.

I also want to remember some good female colleagues in ministry. I’ve learned so much about preaching from Fleming Rutledge. I’ve been blessed and encouraged by Covenant pastor friends like Dawn Taloyo, who will be here to preach next Sunday, and Tammy Swanson-Draheim, who will be the next president of our denomination.

And today I’d like to thank and praise all the good women of this congregation alongside whom I’ve been able to serve all these years. Trudy was church chairperson when I came here and other women have often served in that role. You women have worked with me on the church council, prayed with me as deacons, taught our children in Sunday School, fed us delicious snacks and meals, served unhoused people in our community, and been the finest partners in ministry one could ask as a pastor. God bless all of you. You are the blessed and faithful Tabithas of Valley Covenant Church.

Near the end of our text from Acts verse 42 says, “This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.” That was surely part of the Lord’s intent in raising up Tabitha as well. The miracle for her was a sign for the whole city that the message about Jesus was the truth, that He truly is risen from the dead and can bring life to those who believe in Him. Let it also be a sign for us that our own work of sharing Jesus and demonstrating His life-giving power goes on in our community. Let there continue to be faithful Tabithas here alongside all their brothers in Christ whose lives and examples call those around you to believe.

Right here before you today, we baptized a little boy who will need faithful men and women to teach him about Jesus. You all actually promised to do just that a little while ago. Thank you then for serving him in the nursery and perhaps in children’s church or Sunday School one day, as well as all the other children God will continue to bring among you.

Thank you for serving the poor like Tabitha did, housing them, feeding them, clothing them as God gives you the opportunity. Thank you for welcoming people who don’t look just like you, who speak other languages, who are not just white, middle-class people like most of us. Thank you for learning how to bridge cultures like Tabitha did, reaching across human barriers to share the love of Jesus.

May God reward you like He did Tabitha. May the day come when you hear Jesus’ own voice saying what she heard, Cum! Rise! Get up! Get up into eternal life and the joy of your Lord and Savior as He commends you for a life well-lived, for being, by His grace, a good woman, a good man. May that blessing come to you, and to us all.

Amen.