#caringforwidows — 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.