Acts 9:36-43
He is risen! Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
It seems odd to me that we should read today the story of the healing
of Tabitha (or Dorcus). The Gospel and the Epistle readings center on Jesus as the Good Shepherd. The Psalm speaks of the Lord as our shepherd who cares for us and protects us. Obviously, the writing of the Psalm predated Jesus, but we today think of Jesus as that shepherd. So why are we reading a passage that speaks about a woman, most certainly a loved member of her community, loved for her charitable work, but a woman who does not have the look of a shepherd? And why Peter, he doesn’t appear to be shepherding people at this time; he doesn’t even mention Jesus. Still, the shepherd image, regardless the content described in this particular passage works; we would not be wrong to look at Peter as a kind of a shepherd, and Dorcus also as a kind of a shepherd (because of what we know of them both outside of this passage).
Personally, I like the image that was shared with me by a fellow clergy member; he limits the shepherd title to Jesus alone, which is in fact good theology; he describes Jesus’ disciples and all the leaders of the Body of Christ who share the love and word of Jesus as sheepdogs, you know those dogs that run around the flocks barking at the sheep and keeping them from straying beyond the area watched over by the shepherd. They were the shepherd’s helpers, who helped care for and protect the members of the Body of Christ. That sheepdog image may also be applied today, to the clergy and other leaders of our congregation and church at large. I like the idea of the sheepdog; I love the image of me running around going from one person to the next, urging each individual back into the fold. I only wish that I had half the energy of one of those sheepdogs; I only wish that I was as effective as one of those sheepdogs; sometimes chasing you all around, helping you with your personal issues and trying to keep you focused on the ministry of the church wears me down. One problem with this image of the sheepdog is that, a few of you, are probably already replacing in your minds my words for barking sounds; with each word of my sermon, you are thinking, “there he goes, barking at us again.” I might remind you that these sheepdogs were known also to bite at the sheep’s heels when they don’t listen to their barking.
Well, not to get too far off topic, both Peter and Tabitha served the Lord Jesus faithfully, Tabitha by clothing the poor and widows, by sharing the good news of Jesus and offering Jesus’ love, and Peter by healing, preaching, teaching and very simply by offering encouragement and love. Peter’s ministry, even including restoring the dead to life. Tabatha’s ministry provided such a positive image of the love of Jesus, that some of the followers of Jesus, from within her community, sent men to a neighboring town to seek out Peter and insist that he come to Tabatha’s home to restore her. One sheepdog called upon to help another sheepdog, in her time of trouble.
For those of us with just the smallest insight into medicine, we know that such a healing cannot be seen as anything other than a miracle; even with the use of the best of our modern medical knowledge and skill, brain damage would likely have occurred; we are taught that just eight minutes without blood flow to the brain will cause great damage; Peter was a lot further away than eight minutes; in fact it likely took the women longer than eight minutes to wash her body and prepare her for burial; Peter’s restoration of Dorcas was a miracle made possible by the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the love of Jesus, the true Good Shepherd. This is not to downplay the importance of the wonderful gifts displayed by both Dorcas and Peter. Dorcas demonstrated her love, much as would a mother for her children, or a shepherd for her sheep, with her generous effort to clothe the widows and the poor of her community. Dorcas is described as a disciple, this suggests that Dorcas did much more than make clothing and give it away; in fact, she seemed to be surrounded by others who were thought of as disciples, so it is most likely that she was a well-respected leader of the local Christian community; she may have hosted the worship community in her own home, as most churches of that time were house churches.
The Lord, Jesus is our shepherd, as he is described in our other readings, but Jesus did not and does not work alone. He sends out his sheepdogs to encourage people, with barks and nips, to trust in the Good Shepherd’s love and direction. I doubt Dorcas included biting as a part of her ministry. It wouldn’t surprise me if Peter bit a few people (at least verbally) in his efforts to lead them to Jesus. The Apostle Paul’s bite was experienced by many of the churches that he wrote to. writing with words harsh and demanding. The same could be said of Martin Luther, though some times his anger went beyond the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The message for us in our reading from Acts is many layered; in it we can see that the servants of the Lord, Jesus’ sheepdogs made a great difference among Jesus’ sheep; they were often loved by the sheep they helped lead; sometimes the sheep would go to great lengths to care for such leaders and here we can see that Peter channeled the power of the Lord to restore Dorcas to life; that does not mean that the lives of Jesus’ sheepdogs were always easy; they often had to struggle and suffer in their ministry. Remember how all but one of Jesus’ disciples and Paul as well, faced execution and we know of the many moments of suffering that Paul endured, mainly because he told us about them. The story of Tabatha is not so much about her suffering, as it is about the love and generosity of Tabatha for the widows and the poor, about their love for her, about Jesus’ love for Tabatha, shown by Peter’s healing of her.
Historically, the church has too often, taken to biting and so hurting people, in the name of Jesus. In confirmation class the kids quickly saw the contradiction of the church’s actions, in the Inquisition, of trying to convert people to Christianity by torture; that was not the way to teach the love of Jesus. Discipleship, ministry, Christian life in general is about caring for those in need and it is about sharing the love of God in Jesus, we may bark a bit, and we may nip at peoples heals, but never to hurt, always to save.