#acts9 — Public Fediverse posts

Threads of Grace

Women of the Early Church, Part 1-Tabitha

Acts 9:36–43

(Note: Sermons can be heard in audio format at https://millersburgmennonite.org/worship/sermon-audio/)

Introduction

When we tell the story of the early church, we often begin with the names of men:

Peter. Paul. James. John. Stephen. Barnabas.

These names are important. Their stories are central to the book of Acts. But they are not the whole story.

The church did not grow through named apostles alone. It grew in homes, around tables, in prayer gatherings, in places of work, and through networks of care. Women were present from the beginning. They prayed with the disciples. They opened their homes. They financed ministry. They taught. They prophesied. They shared the good news. They cared for the poor. They were the cords that held communities together.

This sermon begins a series on the women of the early church. Today we begin with a woman named Tabitha.

Her story is only eight verses long, but those verses reveal a great deal. They show us a woman called a disciple, a community of widows who refuse to let her life be forgotten, and a ministry so deeply woven into the church that her death creates a crisis.

Let us pray:

Que las palabras de mi boca y las meditaciones de nuestros corazones sean aceptables ante tus ojos, oh Dios, nuestra roca y nuestro Redentor. Amén.

Homily

Acts 9:36 begins:

“Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas.”

Both names mean “gazelle.” Tabitha is the Aramaic form; Dorcas is the Greek form. Luke gives us both names, perhaps because she was known in both Jewish and Greek-speaking circles. She lived in Joppa, a coastal city of trade, travel, and cultural exchange.

But the most important word in the verse is not Joppa, Tabitha, or Dorcas.

The most important word is disciple.

“There was a disciple whose name was Tabitha.”

The Greek word Luke uses is the feminine form of disciple. It is the only place in the New Testament where this particular form appears.

Luke does not introduce her merely as a good woman, a charitable woman, or a talented seamstress. He introduces her as a disciple.

She belonged to Jesus. She followed Jesus. Her life was shaped by Jesus, and her work was an expression of discipleship.

That is important because we sometimes imagine the disciples almost entirely as the twelve men who walked with Jesus. But the New Testament picture is larger. Women traveled with Jesus. They supported his ministry. They remained at the cross when others fled. They went to the tomb and became the first witnesses of the resurrection.

Las mujeres fueron fundamentales para el ministerio de Jesús.

And now, after Pentecost, Luke names Tabitha as a disciple.

Her discipleship is expressed through good works, charity, fabric, thread, clothing, and care.

Luke says she was “devoted to good works and acts of charity.”

She was not someone who performed one generous act and then returned to ordinary life. Her generosity was her ordinary life. She organized her life around serving others.

Su fe se hizo visible a través de lo que hizo por los demás.

Her faith became visible through what she did for others.

It appears that Tabitha made clothing for widows. Later in the passage, the widows gather around Peter, weeping and showing him the tunics and garments she had made while she was with them.

We can imagine the scene.

One woman holds up a robe. Another touches the sleeve of a garment. Another says, “She made this for me.” Another remembers the way Tabitha measured the cloth, repaired a seam, or placed the finished garment into her hands.

The garments become testimonies. The fabric bears witness. The stitches tell the story.

These women do not present Peter with a list of Tabitha’s achievements. They show him what her hands had made. They say, in effect, “Look. This is who she was.”

In the ancient world, widowhood often meant vulnerability. A widow could lose income, protection, property, and status. Some had family or resources, but many lived close to poverty.

The early church recognized this danger. Acts 6 tells us that one of the first major conflicts in the Jerusalem church involved the distribution of food to widows. The Greek-speaking widows were being overlooked, and the apostles had to respond.

Care for widows was not a side project. It was a test of the church’s faithfulness.

Would the church simply preach resurrection, or would it become a resurrection community? Would it proclaim good news to the poor, or would it actually care for the poor? Would it speak of a new family in Christ, or would it make sure vulnerable people had food, clothing, dignity, and belonging?

Tabitha answered those questions with her life.

She became the kind of disciple around whom vulnerable people could gather. She made garments, but she also made community. She offered clothing, but she also offered dignity. She gave material help, but she also gave relationship.

The widows are not grieving only because they lost a source of clothing. They lost someone who saw them, knew their names, and allowed love to take practical form.

There is a kind of charity that gives from a distance. It writes a check, drops off a donation, and moves on. There is another kind that enters into relationship.

Tabitha’s ministry appears to have been relational. The women knew her. They loved her. They stood together around her body. They displayed the garments she had made.

Their grief tells us that Tabitha had not treated them as projects. She had treated them as people.

That is one of the first lessons this passage offers the church.

Christian service is not simply about doing things for people. It is about sharing life with people.

La fe cristiana consiste en compartir la vida con las personas.

We can provide food and still keep our distance. We can donate clothing and never learn a name. We can organize a ministry and never form a friendship. We can turn compassion into a program.

Tabitha reminds us that the ministry of Jesus is personal. It looks into faces. It remembers names. It notices what people actually need.

Then Tabitha becomes ill and dies.

Luke tells the story plainly. There is no explanation for her illness and no theological reason given for her death. A good woman, a faithful disciple, and a servant of the poor becomes sick and dies.

This too is part of the story of the church.

Faithfulness does not make us immune to illness. Service does not protect us from loss. Good people still die. Communities still grieve.

The believers wash Tabitha’s body and place her in an upper room. But when they hear that Peter is nearby in Lydda, they send two men to him with an urgent request:

“Please come to us without delay.”

The passage does not tell us exactly what they expected.

Did they expect Peter to raise her? Did they want him to pray? Did they simply refuse to bury Tabitha without doing everything they could?

We do not know.

But we do know that they understood her death as a crisis. Her absence exposed how much she had been holding together.

This happens in churches.

Someone becomes ill, moves away, dies, or can no longer serve, and suddenly everyone realizes how much that person had been doing.

Who prepared the meals? Who called the lonely? Who noticed when someone was missing? Who prayed for the sick, visited the nursing home, wrote the cards, or stayed after everyone else had gone home?

Often these ministries are quiet. They may not appear in annual reports or come with official titles. But remove them, and the whole community feels the loss.

Tabitha’s death reveals the weight of her hidden ministry.

Peter arrives and is taken to the upper room. The widows stand beside him, weeping and showing him the garments.

Notice how much agency these women have in the story. They gather. They mourn. They remember. They display evidence. They interpret Tabitha’s life. Their grief moves the story forward. They are witnesses to her ministry.

The wider church may have called her charitable. The widows knew what her charity felt like. They knew the warmth of the clothing and the dignity of receiving something made with care. They knew what it meant to be remembered.

Peter sends everyone outside. Then he kneels and prays.

This is an important detail.

Peter does not act as though the power belongs to him. He depends on God. The raising of Tabitha is not a display of apostolic magic. It is an act of divine mercy.

Servimos, oramos, permanecemos fieles, dejamos el resultado en manos de Dios.

After praying, Peter turns to the body and says, “Tabitha, get up.”

The words echo the ministry of Jesus. In the Gospels, Jesus enters the room of Jairus’s daughter and says, “Little girl, get up.” Now Peter, following the pattern of his Lord, says, “Tabitha, get up.”

Then Peter gives her his hand and helps her to her feet.

The gesture is tender. He does not command her to rise and then stand at a distance. He reaches out his hand. The woman whose hands had made clothing is lifted by another hand.

Peter then calls in “the saints and widows” and presents her alive.

The women who had stood in grief now stand in wonder. The women who had displayed her garments now see Tabitha alive. The women who feared losing their friend receive her back.

This is resurrection as restoration to community.

Esta es la resurrección como restauración a la comunidad.

Tabitha is not raised merely for herself. She is returned to the people with whom she shared life.

That is how resurrection works throughout the New Testament.

The lost are brought home. The excluded are welcomed. The sick are restored to community. The dead are reunited with those who love them.

Salvation is never merely private. God restores us to one another.

There is also a striking contrast in this story.

Peter performs the dramatic miracle, but Tabitha had already been engaged in the daily work of resurrection.

She had been helping women rise from poverty, isolation, shame, and the social death that could come with widowhood.

Peter raises Tabitha once.

Tabitha had been raising others day after day.

This does not diminish Peter’s miracle. It helps us see Tabitha’s ministry more clearly.

Resurrection is not only an event in which a dead body comes back to life. Resurrection is also present whenever dignity is restored, the excluded are welcomed, the hungry are fed, the naked are clothed, the lonely are received into community, and despair gives way to hope.

Tabitha’s needle and thread were instruments of resurrection. Her good works were signs of the risen Christ. Her garments proclaimed the gospel without words.

This is a needed word for the church.

We sometimes value visible ministry more than quiet ministry.

Acts 9 invites us to see differently.

It asks us to pay attention to the ministries that hold communities together.

It asks us to honor women whose discipleship has often been described as “helping” when it was actually leading.

It asks us to recognize that the work of care is not secondary to the mission of the church.

Care is the mission of the church.

Mercy is the mission of the church.

Clothing the vulnerable and creating community among the overlooked are the mission of the church.

El cuidado y la misericordia son la misión de la Iglesia.

Tabitha is not called an apostle, elder, pastor, or deacon in this passage.

She is called a disciple.

That title is enough.

To be a disciple is to follow Jesus. It is to allow the compassion of Christ to become visible in our lives. It is to place our gifts into the service of others.

Tabitha used what she had.

That raises a question for us:

What do we have at hand?

Tabitha had cloth, thread, skill, and compassion.

Peter had prayer, faith, and an outstretched hand.

The widows had tears, memories, testimony, and one another.

¿Qué tenemos?

What do we have?

A kitchen? A car? A listening ear? A gift for repairing, organizing, teaching, writing notes, sitting with someone who grieves, welcoming strangers, or noticing who has been overlooked?

The church does not need everyone to be Peter.

The church also needs Tabithas.

The church needs people whose love has texture. People whose faith can be worn like a garment of praise. People whose compassion leaves something behind that others can hold up and say, “This helped me live.”

At the end of the story, Luke says that the news became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.

Tabitha’s restoration becomes part of the witness of the church. But perhaps her life had already been a witness.

Before Peter arrived, before the miracle, and before the news spread through the city, Tabitha had been showing people what Jesus was like.

She showed them through generosity, garments, friendship, and a community in which widows were seen and valued.

This is where our series on the women of the early church begins.

It begins not with a throne, a title, or a public speech. It begins in an upper room. It begins with grieving women. It begins with clothing held in trembling hands. It begins with a disciple whose work had become a lifeline.

Tabitha teaches us that the early church was built not only by those who preached in public, but also by those who served in quiet places.

It was built by women who opened homes. Women who prayed. Women who prophesied. Women who taught. Women who carried messages. Women who supported ministry. Women who stood beside the suffering. Women who used their hands to make the love of God visible.

The question is not whether their work mattered. The church could not have existed without them.

The question is whether we have learned to see them—and whether we will follow their example, weaving threads of grace into the lives of those around us.

Let us pray.

Gracious and Loving God,

Give us eyes to see the Tabithas among us.

Give us courage to honor ministries that have too often been hidden.

Help us become disciples whose faith takes practical form.

And may the work of our hands, like the work of Tabitha’s hands, become a testimony to the risen Christ.

Amen.

Struck Blind, Led By Grace

A Sermon of Encounter on the Damascus Road (Acts 9:1–19a)

(Note: Sermons can be heard in audio format at https://millersburgmennonite.org/worship/sermon-audio/)

Introduction

Last Sunday Rachelle talked about the disciples trembling in fear behind locked doors, only to have a surprise encounter with the risen Christ. As you may remember, last week I shared during the children’s story about a fearful encounter with a tornado from my childhood. Since I left you hanging at the end, and since there have been some inquiries about how things turned out, I wanted to finish the story.

I left the story with the windows of the school wide open, the skies dark and roiling with clouds, and we students and teachers sitting with our heads between our knees in the hallway, as I heard a teacher running from the office and the squawking Bearcat weather radio announcing that a tornado was heading right for us.

Well, unless I have somehow been replaced by a clone, you of course know I survived.

I did some research, and it seems the tornado in question was an F4—one step below the worst rating—that occurred on March 29, 1976. It started in central Mississippi and traveled 127 miles to Meridian. I was in third grade. I was scared.

If my memory serves me correctly, the tornado jumped over the school and tore the roof off a car dealership down the road. I learned that the tornado did kill three people. But it could have been much, much worse if the twister had landed on top of a bunch of scared children in Mt. Barton Elementary School that warm afternoon in March.

If we live on this earth very long, most of us will encounter forces greater than ourselves. Moments of terror. Moments of mystery. Moments when we are left trying to understand why we encountered what we encountered, why we lived while others died, why we had to face the experience at all. There are things that overtake us in this life—storms in the sky, storms in history, storms in the soul—and in those moments we feel very small indeed.

That is part of what makes Acts 9 such a powerful text.

Because Acts 9 is not just about a road.
It is about a man under orders.
It is about a collision with a force far greater than himself.

Scripture portrays Saul as overwhelmed by the terrifying nearness of the risen Christ—fallen to the earth, blinded by glory, and reduced from a man of force to one who must be led by the hand.

Let us pray,

 Que las palabras de mi boca y las meditaciones de nuestros corazones sean agradables a tus ojos, oh Dios, roca nuestra y redentor nuestro. Amén.

Homily

Saul begins the story as a man of certainty, a man of momentum, a man of religious fervor. He is not hesitant. He is not conflicted. He is “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” Violence is in his lungs. Zeal is in his bones. He believes he knows exactly what he is doing.

And yet in one terrible and merciful moment, all of that certainty collapses.

Sometimes Christ meets us that way, by interrupting the life we thought we controlled. Sometimes grace arrives as disruption. Sometimes truth comes as collapse. A veces, Cristo resucitado nos encuentra no en nuestra fuerza, sino en nuestra debilidad. Sometimes the risen Christ meets us not in our strength, but in our weakness.

And so as we come to this story, we do not come merely to admire Saul’s conversion from a safe distance. We come as people who know what it is to be brought low, to have our certainties shaken, to ask what on earth just happened, and what do we do now.

Acts 9 is not only the story of Saul’s conversion. It is also the story of how Jesus interrupts violence, how blindness can become the beginning of true sight, and how the church is called to receive even the one it most fears.

“Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest…”

That is how the story opens. Saul is not merely irritated. He is not simply mistaken.  He is a man so certain of his cause, so convinced of his righteousness, that he believes persecution is holy work.

That is one of the most unsettling truths in all of scripture: it is possible to be zealous for God and yet resistant to God. It is possible to be religious and wrong. It is possible to think we are defending truth while we are actually wounding Christ.

Saul is fervent. Focused. Devoted. He has official backing. He has a mission. He is going to Damascus to bind disciples and drag them away.

And then, on the road, everything changes.

A light from heaven flashes around him. He falls to the ground. And he hears a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

That sentence is at the heart of the whole passage.

Jesus does not say, “Why do you persecute my people?”
He says, “Why do you persecute me?”

Christ so identifies with the church, with the suffering, hunted, trembling body of believers, that to strike them is to strike him. To wound them is to wound him. To terrorize them is to terrorize him.

This means the church is never merely a voluntary association or a club of like-minded people. The church is bound to Christ. The body belongs to the head. Jesús resucitado se toma como algo personal lo que se le hace a su pueblo. The risen Jesus takes personally what is done to his people.

And this also means something else. When anyone is trampled, degraded, humiliated, or brutalized, Christ is not distant from that suffering. The crucified and risen Jesus is the one who still says, in every age, “Why are you persecuting me?”

The voice of Christ echoes across history—across jail cells, lynching trees, prison camps, ghettos, slave ships, detention centers, ruined villages, and frightened homes. Christ is not neutral where human beings are crushed.

But notice: Jesus confronts Saul yet does not destroy him.

The first word Saul receives is judgment, yes—but judgment in the form of revelation. Saul is forced to see that the one he opposes is the Lord. The one he thought he was defending God against is, in fact, God’s Anointed One. The risen Christ unmasks Saul’s righteousness as rebellion.

But Jesus does not kill Saul on the road. He stops him.

The grace of God is often like that. It interrupts before it rebuilds. It knocks us down before it raises us up. It unmasks the disease before it heals.

And then comes the strange mercy of blindness.

Saul opens his eyes, but he can see nothing.

The man who thought he could see clearly turns out to be blind. The man who believed he had clarity, certainty, and theological precision is suddenly dependent on others to lead him by the hand.

He came to Damascus to take captives.
Instead, he enters Damascus a prisoner of his blindness.

He came with authority.
He arrives helpless.

He came breathing threats.
He arrives in silence.

For three days he neither eats nor drinks. Three days. A familiar length of time in the Christian story. It sounds like death, burial, waiting, undoing. Saul is in a kind of tomb. The old Saul—the self-assured, violent, self-justifying Saul—is being dismantled in darkness.

Sometimes we speak of conversion too lightly. As if it were merely changing one’s opinion or adjusting one’s beliefs. But in Acts, conversion is more like death and resurrection. It is not a tweak. It is a collapse of the old order. Saul’s world caves in on the Damascus road. As Paul later wrote to the church of Corinth, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: ¡Lo viejo se ha ido, lo nuevo ha llegado! The old has gone, the new is here!”

Some of us know what it is to have a world we trusted come apart. We know what it is to discover that our certainties were too certain, our judgments too sharp, our righteousness too self-protective, our religion too aligned with our fear.

Some of us know what it is to be brought low enough that we must be led by the hand.

But that is not the end of the story. Acts 9 is not only about Saul. It is also about Ananias.

The Lord comes to a disciple in Damascus and says, “Go.”

And Ananias rsponds with the facts: “Lord, I have heard from many about this man…”

In other words:
Lord, do you know who this is?
Lord, do you know what he has done?
Lord, do you know what he came here for?

Ananias is not faithless. He is honest. He knows the danger. He knows the stories. He knows the trauma Saul has caused. He knows that “welcome” is not cheap for people who have been hunted.

Pero el Señor dice: «Ve, porque él es un instrumento que yo he escogido…»

Yet the Lord says, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen…”

This is astonishing. God chooses the persecutor. Not because the persecution did not matter. Not because the harm was unreal. Not because God waves away the suffering Saul caused. No—God chooses Saul because grace is stronger than Saul’s past. La gracia es más fuerte que el pasado.

That does not minimize sin. It magnifies mercy.

Ananias goes.

This may be the hardest part of the text, honestly. Saul’s conversion is dramatic and memorable, but Ananias’s obedience is perhaps even more difficult.

Ananias must walk into the house where his enemy is staying. He must cross the threshold of fear. He must trust that Christ is already at work in someone he would never have trusted on his own.

And when he enters, his first words are breathtaking:

“Brother Saul.”

Brother.

Not “former enemy,”
not “dangerous man,”
not “suspect,”
not “problem,”
not even “convert.”

Brother.

Before the scales fall, Ananias speaks kinship. Before Saul has preached a sermon, planted a church, or written a letter, Ananias names him as family.

That is what the church is called to do—not cheaply, not foolishly, not without truth—but with the deep, trembling courage that believes Christ can make a new creation where we may only see a threat.

Ananias lays hands on Saul. Saul’s sight is restored. He is filled with the Holy Spirit. He rises and is baptized.

Maybe today some of us need the Saul word.
We have been too certain.
Too quick to call our own fear “conviction.”
Too ready to wound in the name of righteousness.
And the risen Christ is merciful enough to stop us.

Some need the Ananias word.
We are being asked to go where we do not want to go.
To cross a threshold we did not choose.
To trust that Christ may already be at work in the person we fear, avoid, or resent.
And obedience feels dangerous.

Some need the church word.
We are not merely individuals with private spiritual lives. We belong to one another in Christ. What is done to one member is done to all of us. The wounds of others are not somebody else’s problem. Christ says, “Why do you persecute me?”

And some need the resurrection word.
Our blindness is not the end.
Our darkness is not the end.
Our undone place is not the end.
God knows how to use even the tomb-like places that fill our souls.

Again and again in Scripture, God meets fearful, overwhelmed, disoriented people and makes a way where there seemed to be none. Paul himself will later admit that he came “in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.” La Biblia no oculta el miedo humano. Revela a un Dios que se encuentra con las personas en medio de él. The Bible does not hide human fear. It reveals a God who keeps meeting people in the middle of it.

We often think faith should remove fear entirely. But scripture is more honest than that. Faith is not always the absence of trembling. Often it is what happens when trembling people keep going because God has met them where they shiver and shake.

This means grace is not merely about making nice people a little nicer. Grace is about new creation. Grace does not simply smooth over rough edges. It raises the dead and rips off the grave clothes. It takes enemies and makes them kin. It takes what is curved inward on itself and bends it toward love.

The church, then, is called to be the place where this strange and difficult miracle keeps happening. Not that we become naive about harm. Not that we forget wounds. Not that accountability disappears. But that we refuse to believe anyone lies outside the reach of the risen Christ. Nos negamos a creer que alguien esté fuera del alcance de Cristo resucitado.

So perhaps part of the sermon today is this: someone else’s healing may depend on your willingness to go.

Your willingness to knock on the door.
Your willingness to enter the room.
Your willingness to pray.
Your willingness to trust that Christ has gone ahead of you.

And perhaps part of the sermon is this too: your own healing may depend on letting someone come to you.

Letting yourself be seen in your blindness.
Letting yourself be led.
Letting yourself receive touch, prayer, kindness, and naming.
Letting the community do for you what you cannot do for yourself.

So this morning, wherever you find yourself in the story, hear the good news.

If you are frightened, Christ speaks peace to frightened people.
If you are blind, Christ can open your eyes.
If you are ashamed of what you have done, Christ can heal you.
If you are reluctant like Ananias, Christ can still send you.
If you are wounded by what others have done, Christ sees that wound as his own.

The voice that spoke on the Damascus road still speaks today.

Still interrupts. Still confronts. Still blinds false vision. Still opens true eyes. Still joins himself to the wounded. Still sends disciples into difficult places. Still makes apostles out of enemies and saints out of the shattered.

So may the Lord who met Saul meet us. May the Lord who sent Ananias send us. May the Lord who restored sight restore our own. And may the scales fall from our eyes—whatever they are, however long they have clung—so that we may finally see Christ, and in seeing Christ, also rise with him in power, witness, and glory.

Amen

Acts 9 - 1/5/11 Wednesday By Pastor Steven Anderson

https://videohaven.com/w/5JB9D2pz5co2SgexCdM25d

Galatians: Paul's Conversion - 8/27/23 Sunday AM By Pastor Steven Anderson

https://videohaven.com/w/v6DUQXSSnD8EcnwD6S1BRf