Tabitha

Week 3 of “becoming” Series

Psalm 124

Acts 9:36-43

The story of the tortoise and the hare is a story about impressive speed and strength versus not-always-impressive consistency.  It never seems to lose its power to illumine our lives.

We watched a track meet last spring.  The event was the 800-meter run.  That’s two laps around the track.  On the inside track was a squirrely little fellow.  And when the gun sounded he shot off like he was being chased by dogs.  His form wasn’t pretty, but I was in awe of his pace.  I remember thinking to myself, “I may be witnessing a national high school record!”  But that didn’t happen.  After racing ahead of all the other runners through the first turn, he began to flail, clutched his chest, and nearly came to a halt as everyone ran by him.  He came in last.

We might get a chuckle out of his naievete.  How silly of him, of course, to mismanage his pace, to spend all he had on the first turn!  And yet, learning to pace yourself is hard in the 800 meter run.  It’s also hard for ordinary people like us trying to pace ourselves across a life.

Our reading from Acts today introduces us to a woman named Tabitha.  She’s in rare company.  Elijah once raised a boy from the dead.  And Jesus raised his friend Lazarus.  But that’s it.  Most of the miracles performed during Jesus’ ministry and then during the early years of the missionary spread of Jesus’ followers were healings of various kinds.  These healings drew attention to God’s new reign of love – love expressed in care for the sick and suffering, welcome for the disabled and disenfranchised.  But Tabitha was dead.  And then Peter raised her up.  And all in the community heard what happened, and many believed the good news about Jesus.

Here’s the funny thing.  Tabitha’s miraculous return to life wasn’t the most interesting thing about her.  More interesting than that is the way her character and heart were expressed in her pace and priorities.  What’s interesting about her is what’s still interesting about people – a rather humdrum, non-dazzling, ordinary, reliable goodness. 

We are introduced to Tabitha with a brief but beautiful line: “she was always doing good and helping the poor.”  That word – “always” - signals consistency and continuity.  It tells you a lot about her character as a person.  It suggests simplicity of habits.  Her life wasn’t herky jerky, episodic bursts of energy now here and now there.  She was “always doing good and helping the poor.”  There was a kind of ceaseless flow of her attention and energy in one direction.  Here was a life that expresses the prayer of Psalm 86:11, “Lord, give me an undivided heart.”

We live in a culture where half of us are over-stressed, over-committed, frazzled, burnt out.  The other half is depressed, lethargic, unmotivated, lacking in confidence and a healthy sense of our own power.  Or maybe these aren’t two different groups of people.  Maybe this is the back and forth see saw between extremes that many of us experience.  And here is Tabitha, whose ambitions are the right size.  Her sense of herself fit well with her capacities.  She found deep joy in her life but avoided being selfishly preoccupied. 

So many of us live unbalanced lives.  We get pulled out into the extremes – either selfishly preoccupied with our own projects or utterly exhausted and overwhelmed trying to meet the needs of others.  How might we learn a way of life that is more healthy, balanced, and life-giving? 

Tabitha is referred to as a “disciple,” as part of a community of other “disciples” and “believers.”  Some of them were “widows,” and she was apparently herself a widow, with a close network of other widows as friends.

I don’t know if she had husband or children. What she did have was a reputation.  She made herself available to the needs of others, especially those in Joppa who were poor.  “She was always doing good and helping the poor.”  I don’t know if she was happy.  Or well-adjusted.  Or had high self-esteem.  I don’t know if she owned much or had a savings or retirement account.  I don’t know if she was an important person in Joppa. 

When she died, her body was washed with care and respect.  And she was laid out in an upstairs room while her burial was prepared.  Notice how quickly the story moves through these details.  The disciples there in Joppa had heard that Peter was in the nearby town of Lydda.  So they sent word asking him to come quickly.  What did they want or expect him to do?  Were they simply hoping he would encourage the small community of disciples with the loss of someone so beloved and dear to them?  Or were they hoping for more?

The focus of the story rests on the scene when Peter arrives and shares the upstairs room with Tabitha’s body, and some widow women who were there.  They gathered there with Peter to cry and share stories and be together.  They wanted Peter to see some of the robes and clothing that Tabitha had made.  Was this how she supported herself?  Was she a small-scale seamstress?  Or did she run a clothing business that provided her with funds to help others?  We don’t know.

The description we get of Tabitha’s life is brief, but all the more powerful because of its brevity.  She was “always doing good and helping the poor.”  That way of summing up her life bears a striking resemblance to the way Jesus is described in Acts, as one who went about doing good and healing the sick.  It’s true that we aren’t given many details about Tabitha’s life.  But I still think it’s worth pausing here a little bit.  We’re talking this Fall about the different ways that people are gifted by God’s Spirit to serve and bless others.  We’re talking about identifying our strengths and taking responsibility for the range of skills and capacities in our lives.  And I think Tabitha’s priorities and patterns are worthy of imitation.  So from the meager summary we have – “she was always doing good and helping the poor” – let me make a few guesses about the way she lived.

She was active.  She was energized and engaged in her community.  We know nothing, and we really need to know nothing, about what she believed.  We don’t need to know about her political leanings, her education, or her status.  None of that gets us to the center of her life.   Her love for Jesus and his people called her into an active life of friendship and good work.  If she lived in our culture, she would avoid squandering her life in front of a television.  She would avoid entertaining, distracting, and numbing herself with the gossip and scare tactics of what passes for news.  She would have no time to complain about being bored or lonely, because she took the initiative in shaping a life full of connections and care.

She was compassionate.  I do not know what she did to help the poor.  I don’t know if she made clothes for them or employed them in her business.  I don’t know if she cooked for them or watched their children or handed them money when they needed it.  Maybe it’s not all that important how she helped the poor.  What’s most important to me is that she shaped a life with room for poor people.  She had time and space for those who don’t have much.  This is no small thing.  She wasn’t worried about drawing attention to herself.  She didn’t waste time trying to hang out with allegedly important people.  She spent most of her time with the other widows, and with those who were poor.

She was creative.  We might have assumed that “always doing good and helping the poor” meant that she was a martyr, depriving herself of enjoyment and leisure, never resting, never investing in projects that gave her joy.  We might be tempted to picture her as a sad sack who wore only threadbare, uninteresting clothing, giving every penny she had to the poor.  But now we see that this isn’t true.  Her life habits involved a commitment to good deeds and helping the poor.  But in her life there was also time for creative pursuits, for making beautiful robes and clothing.  Maybe the widow women were wearing the garments they showed to Peter in the upstairs room.

She was consistent.   She was the person who paced herself so she could run the whole race.  She was the turtle, who kept doing the same, deliberate, reliable thing, day after day.  She was a person whose discipleship to Jesus Christ expressed itself in simple, ordinary, unremarkable obedience.

Now I find it jarring how brief and succinct is the report of her death: “About that time she became sick and died.”  There is no attempt to dwell on the specifics. To be blunt, what happened to Tabitha will happen to us.  We will get sick and die.  I find it refreshing to be caught short and surprised by Scriptures’ invitation to consider the brevity of my life.  One day, sooner or later, I too will get sick and die.

Tabitha’s story prompts us to take stock and perhaps make some real changes.  How has God’s Spirit gifted us?  Where are our strengths?  And are we using them?  Are we investing the talents on loan to us to make the world – or, forget the world! – to make our neighborhood or home or congregation or workplace – a better place? 

Tabitha reminds me that we overestimate flash, and underestimate ordinary goodness.  She reminds me that there are no shortcuts to making a compelling case to our friends and neighbors that Jesus Christ is good news.  God entices others to the good news through our ordinary, reliable compassion.  So what’s keeping you from the kind of life that’s “always doing good and helping the poor”?

Will you have to undergo the painful repentance of recognizing your dependence on being entertained?  Will you have to awaken from the passivity that has settled on you like a fog as you stare at screens large and small?  Will you have to prioritize being productive – both in terms of creating something, and in terms of cultivating relationships?  Or maybe these things go together.  Maybe you can find friends with whom to engage in a life-giving and joy-inducing creative project.

Will you have to acknowledge and sacrifice your secret desire to be widely known and admired?  Will you have to resist the temptation to call attention to yourself – whether in conversation or on social media?  Will you be ok if your life is an exercise in consistent goodness and compassion, largely unacknowledged by others?

Will you have to treasure ever more tightly the blessings and responsibilities of congregational life?  Will a renewed commitment to fellowship and friendship with other “disciples” and “believers” be what sustains you along the way? 

Will you have to reexamine your fear of getting older, your fear of retirement, and your fear of death?  Will you have to surrender and give up the ways you’ve identified yourself with family and child-raising, or with work and productivity, so that you can be free for joy and friendship as you age?  If you have emotionally checked out, or yielded to sadness, might you need to check back in, and re-engage?

And finally, will you perhaps have to quit your cynicism?  Will you have to open yourself to the reality of goodness all around you?  Will you have to open your eyes to see ordinary people living a Tabitha kind of life, and to see that as a possibility for you as well?

And let me finish by directly addressing our young people.  Well, forget that, let me address all of you who aren’t yet retired.  In this congregation, you are surrounded by goodness.  You are surrounded by quiet, reliable, ordinary, every day compassion.  There are Tabithas among us.  And they can inspire you and me.  The simple faith of our older friends can give us hope for ourselves.  So take note of their habits of life.  Watch their dedication to the life and worship of this place.  By God’s grace you and I can grow up to be like them.  And like Tabitha, “always doing good and helping the poor.”  Amen.