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February 1, 2009
First Friends Meeting
Acts 9:36-42
‘Tabitha’
Doug Gwyn
We’re continuing with our look at the personalities and group
dynamics that formed the earliest Church in the decades following the
death of Jesus. I’ve mentioned that the author of the Book
of Acts is also the author of the Gospel of Luke. Now, in the
Gospel of Luke, more than in the other three gospels, we hear of the
concern Jesus had for the poor. In Luke, the message of Jesus
seems especially meant for the poor. For example in the
Beatitudes, Matthew has Jesus saying “Blessed are the poor in
spirit.” But in Luke’s version, Jesus simply says
“Blessed are the poor.” Luke’s gospel also contains
the most references to the women who followed Jesus. For these
reasons, Luke is seen as the most socially conscious gospel.
But when we turn to Luke’s sequel, the Book of Acts, that concern
for the poor quickly seems to evaporate. In the early chapters,
we hear that the earliest Church held all things in common. The
common treasury was used especially to support widows and
orphans. But this arrangement seems to have been used only in the
earliest days, around Jerusalem. The Christian communism of the
earliest Church drops out of the picture as the movement expands.
But Acts doesn’t really forget about the poor. Luke
maintains his focus on what the gospel means for the poor and for
women. But as the early Church quickly evolves, that concern
couched in new terms. It’s just that from a distance of
2000 years, it’ hard for us to recognize how the concern for the
poor evolves with the growth of the Church. Evangelical
Christians today especially love the Book of Acts, because they read it
as a template about how you grow a big Church. If your concern is
simply to grow in the fastest and most efficient way possible, you miss
a lot of what Luke is saying in Acts. For example, the consensus
among Church growth experts is that you grow fastest by building
homogeneous congregations. That is, groups where people are
generally of the same race, the same class, the same social and
educational background. But that’s opposite to the way the
early Church grew.
Martha has just read us the story of Tabitha, or Dorcas. It
offers a snapshot of the early Church’s evolving social
profile. But we don’t readily recognize what we’re
seeing here. We hear that Tabitha was a disciple. That
meant she was some kind of leader in the early Church.
That’s significant already – the early Church had women as
well as men as leaders. Tabitha’s name is a Hebrew word
meaning ‘gazelle’ – but Luke also gives us the Greek
version of her name, ‘Dorcas’ (meaning the same
thing). This probably indicates that she was one of the
Hellenistic Jews of the early Church. As I’ve said in
recent weeks, that suggests that she may have returned to Palestine
from somewhere else. She was one of those earliest Christians who
understood what Jesus meant in Jewish terms, but could also make the
gospel speak to the Greek mind.
Were told that Tabitha was devoted to good works and acts of
charity. A woman of great virtue, yes. A socially aware and
committed Christian, to be sure. But more than that.
We’re told that when she died, her friends, widows, wept and
showed Peter the tunics and other clothing she had made with
them. From our world, we think, well, they had a little sewing
circle. It was a hobby they enjoyed together, and gee, she was
really good.
But scholars believe that more is being said here. This is a
group of widows. Perhaps Tabitha/Dorcas was herself a
widow. She was a leader among them. They had formed a
cooperative of some kind. They made clothes probably as a
money-making venture. Remember, in an ancient, patriarchal
society, widows were defenseless. They couldn’t just go out
and get a job. So these widows had formed a cooperative and were
supporting themselves by making clothing. They were also clothing
the poor, or using their proceeds partly to aid the poor. So yes,
Tabitha was a disciple and a virtuous woman. But that virtue had
real social and economic meaning, not simply personal morality as we
conceive it today. The widows of Lydda had lost not only a dear
friend – they had lost their leader in business.
Last Sunday, we had a wonderful time with Alan Kolp, one of our former
pastors, who is now working with people in business. He is
helping people apply the classical virtues – prudence, charity,
______, etc. – to their business practices. In Alan’s
words, he’s helping leaders in business find ways to do well by
doing right. In the hyper-capitalistic era of today,
there’s a strong imperative to grow faster, grow bigger. If
you don’t, you’ll lose out. That has made it
challenging for virtuous women and men in some areas of business to
maintain their personal and business ethics. The global economic
crisis we now face is the bitter fruit of these times. The
bankruptcy of this finance-driven economy is not only economic, it has
been partly a moral bankruptcy. If I had said that a year ago,
you might have thought me out of line. But now it’s the
story of each day’s headlines.
The story of Tabitha offers us a snapshot of how the earliest Church
evolved. It was growing rapidly and in very interesting
ways. It was increasingly diverse, with women leaders as well as
men, reaching out first to Samaritans and then on to other Gentile
groups. It was forming cooperative communities where wealthy and
poor people met not only to worship but to help each other, even to
form businesses together. The growth of the early Church was
growth in social capital. As the Church spread geographically and
grew numerically, it also diversified and folded in all kinds of
ethnic, social, and economic groups. These were not the
homogeneous groups of today’s Church-growth strategists.
These features made the Church a stunning success in the Roman
Empire. The Empire grew by military conquest and
domination. It thrived economically on various forms of
slavery. The whole system was ultimately under the thumb of
Caesar, a reign of terror. By contrast, the Church grew on an
ethic of love and mutual aid. It thrived by including all kinds
of people – it helped many slaves obtain their freedom, it
economically empowered many women, it combined ethnic groups like Jews
and Samaritans, who had hated one another for centuries. And all
this was not under the thumb of Christ – all these people were in
Christ, they were Christ risen from the dead. Jesus Christ, whom
the Roman governor Pilate crucified, was now at large in the bodies of
thousands of men and women. It was spreading in networks all over
the Empire, and it was unstoppable. It was a spiritual, social,
economic revolution from the grassroots.
So the concern of Jesus for the poor, that the Gospel of Luke records
so movingly, doesn’t disappear from the Book of Acts.
Indeed, the things that Jesus did more as teachings and as signs during
his brief ministry are really put into action in many creative ways in
the movement that survived him.
But what about that miracle in the story? Acts doesn’t say
that Peter raised Tabitha/Dorcas from the dead. It seems she was
only apparently dead and that he revived her – still a remarkable
event. But I noticed that this story has a familiar ring.
It reminded me of the story Luke tells about Jesus reviving a little
girl. She was the daughter of a synagogue leader in
Galilee. She was gravely ill when Jesus was asked to come.
She was apparently dead by the time he arrived. Jesus told the
people she was only sleeping, but they laughed at him. Peter was
there when Jesus sent everyone but the family and three disciples out
of the room. Peter saw Jesus kneel by the little girl and say,
“Little girl, get up.” The Aramaic Jesus spoke in
that moment was “Talitha, cum” (Mark 5:41). Of
course, Peter would have spoken Aramaic to Tabitha. His words
would have been “Tabitha, cum,” “Tabitha, get
up.”
I’m not sure what to make of that, but the parallel must be meant
for us to hear. Perhaps Luke is suggesting something to us.
Symbolically speaking, the little girl, the “talitha,” the
daughter of the synagogue leader, is now a grown woman, Tabitha, a
spiritual and business leader in the early Church. Of course,
Tabitha would someday really die. But perhaps this story is more
about the spiritual and economic miracle Tabitha was part of –
and that would not die.
How do we as a Church today keep that miracle alive? How do we
continue to fold new people of different backgrounds into our
fellowship? How do we continue to diversify our social capital as
a people of God? How do we make our faith real in social and
economic ways? Our Missions & Social Concerns Commission has
formulated an exciting new plan for this new year. You can read
about it in our latest newsletter. I hope we’ll support it
well. In these economic times, we will surely face many new
challenges. But with the eyes of faith, we will also see new
opportunities. Let us continue to step faithfully and creatively
together into this new year.
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