Fourth Sunday of Easter – Year C
April 21, 2013
Acts 9:36-43
Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, "Please come to us without delay." So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. 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. This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. Meanwhile he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.
Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, "Please come to us without delay." So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. 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. This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. Meanwhile he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.
A little over a week ago I had the
opportunity to hear Dr. David Trobsich speak on the some of the most recent
discoveries and scholarship relating to some of the earliest manuscripts and
copies of the New Testament. Hearing him
speak about the things that are hidden within the texts that are there to be
seen if you know what to look for, if you are willing to spend some time
digging has caused me to dig a bit more than usual. This week, as I approached the texts for
today, I went digging. And as is true in
hunting for gold or treasure, if you are willing to dig a little, if you are
willing to risk getting dirty there are rewards to be found.
When I first read this morning’s text from
Acts, the name Joppa caused my mind to awaken.
Where else had I run into that name, that town? Well, it’s in the story of Jonah. Joppa was the town where Jonah hid out,
avoiding God’s call, avoiding his call to go to Ninevah to preach to the
Gentiles that were there. The mention
of Jonah got me thinking as well, Simon Peter was referred to as ‘the Son of
Jonah’ in Matthew 16:17. Here in this
passage we have the intersection of Jonah, Simon, Gentiles and God’s sending of
messengers.
The healing of Tabitha by Peter is a unique
story in the New Testament, because of the use of a single word –
disciple. Tabitha is the only woman in
scripture that is referred to as a disciple.
Yes, there were other women of great faith, but she is the only one who
is referred to by the term used to refer to the other disciples. There was something special about this woman,
something that caused Luke to identify her with that special title. This woman, who we know little about, was
special. She was renowned for her good
works and acts of charity.
When we think of disciples, we probably think
about that group of men who surrounded Jesus and went with him wherever he
went. Or, we think about modern-day
followers of Jesus who devote their lives to following the teachings of
Jesus. Here in the description of Tabitha
we have a definition of a disciple as well: someone who was devoted to good
works and acts of charity. She was known
for the clothing she had made because when Peter arrives, Tabitha’s friends
show him the tunics and other clothing she had made. The tense of the Greek for ‘showed’ that
Luke uses when the widows showed the tunics and clothing Tabitha had made
implies they were wearing the items they were showing him. They were literally clothed in Tabitha’s
goodness.
We don’t know much about Tabitha, but there
are some things we can pretty much assume from what we do know. Tabitha was most likely a Gentile, not a
Jew. She represented that new branch of
faith called the way. She may have been
the first great person of faith who came from a non-Jewish background that
Peter encountered. After all, Peter was
coming from Jerusalem the heart and center of the Jewish faith, and most of the
early converts to Christianity converted from Judaism. And we know that she was deeply loved; that
her death was a difficult thing for the community in Joppa to deal with.
What did the community hope would happen when
they called Peter? Were they looking for
healing, or just wanting him to know of the saint who had been amongst them? It’s evident since they had not prepared her
body for burial that they were looking for a miraculous healing. And through Peter God acts and their deepest
desires are fulfilled: Tabitha is brought back to life. The message in this and all the healings of Acts
is clear: the God that was active in Jesus’ life, ministry and healings is
still active in the lives, ministry and healing acts of the disciples. There in Joppa, God is active in the lives of
those who confessed Jesus as Messiah.
That God was doing powerful things among and
through Gentiles might have been a challenge for Peter to deal with. If you remember, Paul fought more than a few
battles with the church in Jerusalem about the nature of his work among the Gentiles. One has to wonder how much of an impact
meeting Tabitha had in Peter’s developing perspective on Gentiles and their
relationship with the early church. And
if she didn’t play that much of a role, what about Simon the tanner, the man
who is mentioned at the end of our text.
That Simon was a tanner is important
information. That Simon the tanner is
mentioned three times in this and the next chapter of Acts is a clue that there
is something important we are supposed to notice about Simon. Simon is important in some way. So important that if you visit Israel today
you can visit the home of Simon the Tanner.
Why was Simon so important to Luke?
Simon was an outcast. He lived on the margins of society, separate
from the “respectable folk”. He was a
man who was dirty – in both a figurative and a literal sense. As a tanner, he worked with dead animals;
treating and preparing their hides and skin.
Can you imagine what the smell would have been like in a place without
air conditioning, drains or sanitation.
Just think about how Simon must have smelled at the end of a work day,
much less how he looked. Very few people
would have wanted to spend any time with him, people would have avoided
him. Yet, Simon seems to have found
acceptance within the early church, an acceptance and welcome that society
never gave him.
Beyond being a social outcast, Simon would
have also been a religious outcast in Jewish society. His job meant that it was virtually
impossible for him to remain ritually pure by Jewish standards. He was unclean. His was also a story of how the early church
struggled with how they were going to relate to the Jewish laws about ritual
purity.
Jewish purity laws covered just about every
aspect in life. If you read through
Leviticus you will find laws and regulations covering birth, death, sex,
gender, economics, health, law, hygiene, marriage, farming, ethnicity, and yes
even tattoos. And yes, tattoos were bad
and marked you as never able to be part of the temple community. The purpose of the rules was to help the
Jewish people reflect God’s call to, “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am
holy.” (Leviticus 20:26) Only those who
were deemed clean, were seen to be holy; and only those who were holy could
approach God.
I’m not going to say that all the laws were
bad, nor that they were all good. We
aren’t even sure to what degree the Jewish people followed every word of the
Levitical codes. But, we do know that
Jesus and his disciples were often targeted because they didn’t adhere to every
rule. Jesus (the Jew) touched lepers, ignored
Sabbath laws on more than one occasion, touched a woman with a bodily
discharge, befriended Gentiles, and handled a corpse. People complained that
his disciples ate with "unclean" hands and didn't fast.
And here we see what had become a
problem. Humans have this tendency to
make excuses for what we do, while seeking to bring others down in order to
make ourselves look better. And the
purity laws became a good example of that.
It became a way to divide, to create a hierarchy between those who considered
themselves clean (and thus closer to God), and the ‘unclean’, who were shunned
and excluded as dirty sinners who were far from God. Instead of the purity codes reflecting the
holiness of God, they became a means of excluding people who were considered
polluted or contaminated. People like
Simon.
Simon the gentile, Simon the tanner, would
have broken more ritual purity laws than could be listed. He was about as unclean a person as you could
find. Yet, it was in Simon’s home that
Peter stayed. It was in Simon’s home
that Peter had his vision of unclean animals.
It was this vision that awoke within Peter the realization that even
though the purity laws forbid him from associating with Gentiles, forbid him
from associating with “unclean” people, "God has shown me that I should
not call any man impure or unclean. I now realize how true it is that God does
not show favoritism." (Acts 10:34)
Peter’s realization was a continuation of how
Jesus had turned the purity system, and the way it divided people, on its
head. The new community, the new way,
the new Kingdom that Jesus announced would be characterized by compassion for
everyone, not how well you followed some set of laws. It would be defined by a radical inclusivity,
rather than a divisive exclusivity. It
was defined by the transformation of the heart rather than outward
rituals. Jesus replaced the call of God
to ‘be holy, for I am holy,’ with God’s call to ‘be merciful, just as your
Father is merciful.’
For Jesus, it was not possible to cast someone
far enough away that he would shun them.
Not Roman collaborators, not lepers, not prostitutes, not the crazed,
not the possessed; and not Simon the tanner.
As I’ve spent this week thinking about this
text, as I’ve spent this week reflecting on it with the tragic events of Boston
being on my mind, I found myself often begging forgiveness from God for placing
people in my outcast list. At times I
had to stop and remind myself that two individuals do not a religion make, two
individuals do not a culture make. I had
to stop and think about who else I may have given the label of outcast, of
impure, of not holy – the mentally ill, the super wealthy, the super poor,
politicians who hold views different than mine, just about anyone different
from me. How have I unwittingly
distorted the self-sacrificing love of God into something that is ugly,
unclean, and self-serving; something to make myself feel better at the expense
of others?
Peter had to spend time with Simon the tanner
to have his eyes opened to the radical welcome, the radical lack of favoritism
that God shows. In our lives God is
calling us to that same awakening, that same vision that Peter came to
understand. May we all come to know,
live and experience what New Testament scholar Marcus Borg calls a "community shaped not by the ethos
and politics of purity, but by the ethos and politics of compassion,"[1]
which sounds an awful lot like the
community the disciple Tabitha was trying to live out in Joppa. Amen.
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