Mothers, Women Everywhere, Arise! Easter
4C
Simon who is called Peter is traveling along the coast near Joppa. Joppa was a port city, and therefore a truly cosmopolitan trading center: goods came in and goods were sent out by ships. The previous day, in a nearby village, he found a man, Aeneas, perhaps named for the main character of Virgil’s Aenid – written between 29-19 BCE – thus, a fairly recent poem at the time of Jesus, likely still on the “Best Sellers List.” The name suggests that Aeneas, like the Trojan who flees the fall of Troy, is a gentile. He has been paralyzed lying in bed for eight years. Peter says, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; get up and make your bed!” [i] Sounds like everyone’s mother: “Get up and make your bed!” Aneas does get up, and all the townspeople turn to the Lord.
Meanwhile, in Joppa there was a disciple of the Lord whose Aramaic name is Tabitha, which in Greek, we are told, is Dorcas. Both names mean “gazelle” – a doe, a female gazelle. Tabitha was devoted to good works and charity. And she is the only woman in the New Testament explicitly called a disciple. She wove tunics and other clothing for those in need. Tabitha lived and worked with a group of other women, identified as widows. The disciples in Joppa sent two men to bring Peter to Joppa: “Please come to us without delay.” For Tabitha-Gazelle was already dead. Her body had been ritually washed for burial. Peter went with them, and when he arrived, they took him to her room, while showing him the tunics and clothing she had made for the poor. [ii]
Peter orders everyone to leave the room. He kneels beside her bed and simply says, “Tabitha, get up.” The verb is “Arise!” In Greek it is aniste¯mi. It’s the same verb he used with Aeneas. More importantly, the same verb found elsewhere to refer to Jesus’s resurrection. Peter used it when addressing the crowds in Jerusalem for the annual Pentecost Festival, “This Jesus God raised up!” [iii] He now invokes that same Spirit to perform the same miracle for Gazelle! She sits up. She sees Peter. He takes her hand and helps her up. Then he calls the widows and the saints, that is all the disciples, both men and women, and they see that she is alive! Again, this became known throughout the whole town of Joppa, and many believed in the Lord!
Simon then went out to the edge of town, near the sea, to stay with another Simon, a tanner of hides. Handling dead animals renders Simon ritually unclean, and often tanners were Gentiles. Two strikes against them. Because of the acrid smell in the tanning process, tanners lived at the outskirts of town. Despite all of this, Simon called Peter chooses to stay with Simon the tanner, foreshadowing Peter’s soon dramatic vision in which God convinces Peter to accept Gentiles into the Way of Jesus. And note, no one gives Peter credit for these miracles – people recognized that it was the healing and life giving power of Christ’s Resurrection that was being spread throughout the Empire and to the ends of the Earth!
For many decades, the story of Gazelle, Tabitha, a disciple, a woman of faith, was not heard in our Sunday worship. Only with the advent of the Revised Common Lectionary did we finally reclaim stories of these early disciples, many of whom were affluent widows like Mary Magdelene who supported Jesus’s ministry, and they supported the life of the emerging church. Tabitha, and many other women like her who followed Jesus, faithfully served those in need as he had once said, “As you serve the hungry, the thirsty, the prisoners, the strangers and the naked, you have served me.” [iv] The disciple named Gazelle made sure there would be no naked people in Joppa!
Who knows, Tabitha may have heard Jesus tell that parable of
judgment. George MacDonald (1824–1905) was a Scottish author, poet, and
Christian minister who seems to think she had, or at least was inspired by
hearing about it from others in this poem of his simply titled Dorcas:
If I might guess, then guess I
would
That, mid the gathered folk,
This gentle Dorcas one day stood,
And heard when Jesus spoke.
She saw the woven seamless coat--
Half envious, for his sake:
"Oh, happy hands," she said, "that wrought
The honoured thing to make!"
Her eyes with longing tears grow dim:
She never can come nigh
To work one service poor for him
For whom she glad would die!
But, hark, he speaks! Oh, precious word!
And she has heard indeed!
"When did we see thee naked, Lord,
And clothed thee in thy need?"
"The King shall answer, Inasmuch
As to my brethren ye
Did it--even to the least of such--
Ye did it unto me."
Home, home she went, and plied the loom,
And Jesus' poor arrayed.
She died--they wept about the room,
And showed the coats she made.
Tabitha has been canonized as a Saint in Episcopal, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches. Pope Francis recently elevated October 25th from a memorial to a feast day, recognizing her faithfulness in serving the poor, those in need of clothing. As many of us watched for the white smoke on Thursday, and witnessed the first North American Pope, the former Robert Prevost from Chicago, Illinois, we learned that he has chosen to be named Leo XIV. It has been noted, that like Francis before him, Pope Leo XIII, the fourth longest serving pope in history (February 1878 until his death in July 1903) had a deep concern for the poor and working men, women, and children of the Industrial Revolution who were being poorly treated by the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age – the millionaires of that time.
We can be certain that Leo XIV is familiar with the story of Tabitha-Dorcas-Gazelle. And we can be certain that despite gains made by women over the past century, there is still a long way to go to recognize their leadership in the early church and society, and then support them in leadership roles in today’s church and society, while also recognizing the work Mother sand Wives do to maintain families and homes. May Simon Peter’s cry “Tabitha, arise!” become today’s “Mothers, Women of the World, Women of the Church, Arise!” in this time of Pope Leo XIV – as we watch the erosion of women’s rights happening right before our very eyes. May God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit inspire and empower us to reclaim the rights and needs of all women everywhere. Amen.
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