Long
Live Tabitha, A Disciple in Deed!
© by the Reverend Dr. Byron
E. Shafer
(Rutgers, May 13, 2001; 5th
Sunday of Easter, Year C;
Mother’s Day; Holy Communion)
John 13:33a, 34–35 (NT, p. 112);
Acts 9:36–42 (NT, p. 133, from 4 Easter)
As
we hear in our First Lesson, from the Gospel of John, Jesus talks to those at
his dinner table, those who belong to his family of followers, very much like a
mother when he says to them, “Little children, …love one another.
…[A]s I have loved you, .…have love for one another.”
(John 13:33a, 34–35)
Perhaps
you know the classic Tina Turner lyric that goes like this:
"What's love got to do, got to do with it?
What's love but a sweet, old-fashioned notion?”
Well,
with all due respect to recording artists who sing of love as a sweet
old-fashioned notion, or as just a sentimental feeling, or as an overwhelming
physical passion, the love of which Jesus speaks here is a different, indeed new-fashioned
kind.
For
the love that Jesus asks of us taps not only our emotions—our heart—but all
other aspects of our self as well—our mind, our will, our strength, our
psyche, our soul.
You
see, the love that Jesus asks of us in this passage is what Professor Beverly
Harrison of Union Theological Seminary has called “the power to
act-each-other-into-well-being.” This
power to act-each-other-into-well-being, Harrison says, constitutes the very
basis for both personhood and community. So,
“What’s love got to do, got to do with it?”
Well, everything, really! And
what good and appropriate news that is for us to hear on Mother’s Day.
Mother’s
Day is a day for honoring all of our “mothers.”
It’s a day for honoring all those women in our extended family of
nurture who have loved us into well-being—whether we call them “mother” or
“grandmother” or “stepmother” or “sister” or “wife” or
“partner” or “daughter” or “cousin” or “aunt” or “nanny.”
And
I believe Mother’s Day is also a day for honoring all those women in our
family of faith who have loved this
community of ours into well-being—whether we call them “minister” or
“elder” or “deacon” or “trustee” or “musician,” or
“educator,” or “program coordinator” or “committee member” or
“wise counselor” or “sister” or “friend.”
Indeed,
I like to think of Mother’s Day as a day for honoring all of the
women in the world who draw on the resources of their mind and heart and
will and strength and psyche and soul to love others into well-being.
There’s
an anonymous verse that goes like this:
“Oh, to live above with the saints we love,
That
would be the highest glory.
But to live here below with the saints we know
Is
quite another story.”
Yes,
it is tough here below to live in love with those we know, with those we know
all-too-well. But our Christian tradition does offer us role models for how
to do it, and today’s Second Lesson from the Book of Acts tells us of the
Christ-like love of a “mother of the church” named Tabitha, a woman who
indeed did, here below, live in love with the saints she know knew.
Tabitha
was a disciple not just in name but in deed.
As our Second Lesson says, Tabitha was a woman "devoted to good
works and acts of charity." In
other words she loved her community into well-being through such deeds as making
tunics and other comfortable clothing for the needy widows of the windy seacoast
city of Joppa. One wonders also
what gentle, encouraging words she spoke as she handed out those handmade
clothes. And, so far as we know,
she cut and sewed them all without ever once attaching a swoosh” or designer
label “that would trumpet her name and her deeds throughout the city!
What
else do we know about Tabitha? Well,
she was, apparently, a bilingual Jewish Christian, able to speak both Aramaic
and Greek—an important skill to have in a port city like Joppa, where a lot of
the seagoing trade for the Roman Empire was handled.
The author of Acts, who also wrote the Gospel of Luke and is known as
Luke, signals to us her linguistic ability by giving her name both in Aramaic—Tabitha—and
in Greek—Dorcas. In both
languages, her name is an uncommon one meaning "gazelle," and it might
have been given to her not at birth but as she grew up, as a nickname, perhaps
because she was lovely and quick and graceful.
Tabitha
is the only woman to whom Luke explicitly attributes the title
"disciple." So she
obviously was a prominent person in the early Christian community, a provider of
clothing and support for many in need, a genuine "mother of the
church."
But,
alas, Luke has chosen to tell us so little about her ministry, indicating only
that as one of Joppa's few relatively well-off widows Tabitha was able to use
her time and resources, like a mother, to love her new family, her family of
faith, into well-being.
So
when Tabitha died, her death left a gaping hole in the fabric of her community,
and a delegation was sent from Joppa to fetch the apostle Peter, in hopes he
could do something to overcome their loss.
Peter
came and prayed alone beside Tabitha's body.
And surprise! Death did not
have the final say. As Luke
recounts it, Tabitha was miraculously raised from the dead, and the widows of
her community were not left without her to perish.
Now
what are modern folk like us to make of this account of Luke’s?
Well, I suggest that by telling this story of the raising of Tabitha what
Luke is really trying to convey to us is symbolic, not literal, and that the
story’s message is this: the work of caring for those in need, the task of
loving communities of people into well-being, is work that death must not be
allowed to stop. It’s a task that
the disciples of Jesus took up from him and that new disciples of Christ must in
turn take up whenever an old disciple dies.
You
see, I believe that at the heart of Easter's message of new life there lies both
a proclamation—that a new age has dawned—and a commandment—that in this
new age we are to carry on the good works, the deeds of charity, the concrete
acts of love, modeled by Jesus and practiced by such early disciples of his as
Tabitha.
Well,
would that there were more of Tabitha's story for us to retell, but, alas, there
isn't. We have just the 148 words in Luke’s Greek version, and
that’s it. So we must settle for
the little we do know about this remarkable woman, this true “mother” of the
early church! And we must keep her
story, however brief, alive both by telling it and by continuing it in our own
lives.
One
person acting with love can change for the better the lives of those around her.
That’s a central message of Luke’s story, and that’s also a central
message our church member Ruben Santiago is conveying in his play Lackawanna
Blues at the Public Theater. There’s
just one more week of performances. So
if you haven’t seen it yet, run—don’t walk—to the box office!
Lackawanna
Blues is mostly about Rachel
Crosby of Lackawanna, NY, the woman whom Ruben came, as a young boy, to call
Nanny. Nanny was sustained by her
faith in Jesus as she took Ruben and many others into her boarding house at 32
Wasson Avenue. Some were would-be
philosophers, some petty hustlers, others lost souls, still others abandoned
lovers—for all of these and for young Ruben Miss Rachel became “a mother.”
Drawing on her mind and heart and will and strength and psyche and soul,
Nanny used all of her power to love this wild and wonderful “family” of hers
into well-being.
In
the playbill, Ruben offers us a photomontage of scenes from the life of Nanny
and of some of her boarders, including his own young self.
And placed amidst those scenes is a photocopy of a poem by James Weldon
Johnson entitled, “The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face,” a poem Ruben
offers as a tribute to Nanny.
“The glory of the day was in her face,
The beauty of the night was in her eyes.
And over all her loveliness, the grace
Of morning blushing in the early skies.
And in her voice, the calling of the dove;
Like music of a sweet, melodious part.
And in her smile, the breaking light of love;
And all the gentle virtues in her heart.
And now the glorious day, the beauteous night,
The birds that signal to their mates at dawn,
To my dull ears, to my tear-blinded sight
Are one with all the dead, since she is gone."
The
grief of profound personal loss. Now
it was precisely to overcome this kind of grief, the kind expressed in that last
stanza by James Weldon Johnson, the kind expressed centuries earlier by the
Christians of Joppa—it was precisely to overcome that grief of profound
personal loss that Luke told this story of his about Tabitha’s being raised to
renewed life.
Tabitha
is not dead to the world, nor is Nanny dead to the world, so long as we tell
their stories and continue their work.
In
societies like ours today—messed up, nasty, and deeply in trouble—nothing
less will do than for us to use our power to love the world into well-being,
nothing less will do than for us to carry on the power of love manifested in the
lives of Tabitha and Nanny.
Tabitha
and Nanny, mothers to their communities, disciples of Christ in love, disciples
of Christ in deed! Long may we tell
their stories. Long may we continue
their work. Long may these women,
these mothers, live!
Let
us pray:
O
God, grant us the resources we need—the resources of mind and heart and will
and strength and psyche and soul—that we all, like good mothers, may love our
families and our communities into well-being.
In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.
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