36 In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas.[a] She was always doing good deeds and acts of charity. 37 At that time she became sick and died. After they had washed her, they laid her in an upstairs room. 38 Since Lydda is near Joppa, when the disciples heard that Peter was there, they sent two men to him, who urged him, “Come to us without delay!”
39 Peter got up and went with them. When he arrived, they led him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing him the robes and clothing that Dorcas made while she was still with them.
40 After Peter sent them all outside, he got down on his knees and prayed. Then he turned toward the body and said, “Tabitha, get up!” She opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter, she sat up. 41 He gave her his hand and helped her stand up. After he called the saints and the widows, he presented her to them alive.
42 This became known all over Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.
We don’t know her name, but she married a prophet. He died and left family in serious debt. A moneylender planned to take her two sons as slaves to pay for it. She turned for help to another prophet, Elisha.
Elisha asked if she had any valuables at all. She had a jar of olive oil. He told her to ask around for empty jars. He said: “Don’t ask for only a few.” She did and he said: “Shut the door behind you and your sons. Then pour oil into all the jars. When each one is full, set it aside.”
The woman and her sons did all this and got busy. The original oil pitcher never ran out no matter how much they poured. They fell into such a rhythm of pouring that the woman kept asking for another jar without noticing they filled them all. Her son snapped her out of it saying: there aren’t any more empty jars. Elisha said she could sell the oil to pay her debt. She even had extra income after repaying the loan.
This can teach us a lot. It shows God doing miracles for practical purposes. He doesn’t just do laser light shows to impress us. He solves everyday problems like repaying a loan. This also shows God’s habit of using earthly items to do his saving work. He didn’t just create oil jars out of thin air. God did this miracle with real people’s dishes that archeologists could find today. He used oil the widow already had. But for us this morning, note the special attention God gave to a fairly unimportant woman in the grand scheme of world history.
Both unbelievers and self-proclaimed Christian complain about parts of Scripture. Some find fault in Old Testament slavery laws, penalties for sexual sins, or God ordering annihilation corrupt ethnic groups. Others find it sexist for God’s Word to restrict women from certain roles of leadership. They’d say biblical writers teach us to suppress or overlook the part of female humans in our world.
Yet, if you read the Bible, cases like the widow’s oil give proof of just the opposite. When he recorded the book of Acts, Luke also showed special attention to people that history books or popular culture would ignore. We heard with today’s lesson from Acts 9, “In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was always doing good deeds and acts of charity.”
In contrast to the widow with oil, Luke goes beyond giving Tabitha’s name. He tells us the Greek version of it. For English-speakers, Luke would’ve had us call her “Gazelle.” Even if her parents named her that only to see her become an awkward or plain-looking adult, “Gazelle” clearly had a graceful beauty of spirit and a smooth swiftness of jumping at chances to offer her service for anyone needing help.
Have you known a Tabitha-figure; a masterpiece of womanhood that God put on earth to brighten and warm your life? Most of us know a name or two of someone who evaporates anger with her smile; someone who beams friendly thoughtfulness that inspires you to try harder, not by pressuring you to gain her approval, but by making you feel like the most important person in the room. Try to pick a woman like that for you; a mom, grandma, non-family member, any Tabitha-type. One for me is my Granny, my mom’s mom. Like the “Gazelle” from Joppa, Granny liked showing love through her seamstress skills and fabric gifts. She made Halloween costumes. She made quilts like this for 22 other grandchildren, many of their spouses, and even one jokester outside the family who pestered her until he got one too. I could go on about God’s gifts to me through Granny; her cooking, her love of fun, her faith. But as the pastor at her funeral reminded us: “You might not have seen much proof of sin in Lois’ life, but don’t let that fool you into thinking she was a saint by nature.”
Even if he had not said that, God still sent a clear message about her sin just by her dying. Death says something. People don’t know how to handle it. They can’t look at a dead body. They get angry or deny their feelings. They downplay death by calling it “natural” or by babbling about a celebration of life. But what itches at the back of our minds and what bothered Tabitha’s friends at Joppa is this: “Lord, it makes sense if violent criminals die. It seems sort of fitting if the elderly pass away after a good long life. But why do the gems of humankind get torn out of our lives? We need those shining lights, those role models of joy. Why rob us of a bubbly child who never gets to reach adulthood? Why take away the ones who always lift our spirits?”
You might assume Tabitha was old, but Luke never really says that. The Joppa believers sent men who made Tabitha’s dying sound pretty extraordinary. Luke wrote: “Since Lydda is near Joppa, when the disciples heard that Peter was there, they sent two men to him, who urged him, ‘Come to us without delay!’” It also does not come across as an average funeral with mourners grieving a friend, but also accepting reality. Just the opposite, “Peter got up and went with them. When he arrived, they led him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing him the robes and clothing that Dorcas made while she was still with them.”
Think of Peter trying to handle that. He’d faced outlandish situations before. He’d seen what looked like a ghost on the water that turned out to be Jesus who then let him walk on water a little. He’d heard Jesus praise Peter for statements of faith, but also call Peter Satan. His adrenaline pushed Peter to start swinging a sword at an armed police force, but that adrenaline also led him to swear he did not know Jesus.
Yet, he always had his Teacher visible to forgive or fix his blunders. Now, everyone looked to Peter as the teacher. It had to feel confusing as he wondered how to handle the women sobbing around him. What could he say? “Thanks for showing me Tabitha’s sewing, ladies, but remember: her good deeds do not make her right with God.” No, as true as it is, Peter didn’t say that. Or: “Okay, since you showed me how important she is, I’ll raise her.” No, Peter doesn’t promise that. Does he say: “God will work this out for good? Try to accept the loss and move on.” Even if there’s truth in it, Peter does not say that either.
Did he learn nothing from Jesus? Jesus always had good responses for any occasion. Couldn’t Peter have picked up such skills? Actually, he did. Peter followed the same procedure he’d seen Christ use in another case of untimely death. A little girl died. At Jairus’ house, Peter saw Jesus simplify an overwhelming situation by dismissing a crowd of people from the room. Peter saw Jesus give a simple command: “Little girl, get up” or (in Aramaic) “Talitha, koum.” Peter had learned how to handle this. He imitated Christ. He dismissed the crowd. He went to the dead person’s bed. He said: “Tabitha, koum” or “Tabitha, get up.”
What about us? What can you learn from Peter raising Tabitha? First, let’s not get carried away with ideas of our performing resurrections. God could certainly do that. But, even with this miracle, everyone seemed to understand the resurrection of Dorcas was a minor point in a bigger picture. Luke wrote: This became known all over Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. Peter did not get flooded with requests for more miracles or other cases of untimely deaths to revive. He preached and made it clear God allowed miracles only for drawing focus to the redeeming blood of Christ. He used Dorcas as an object lesson to show what happened to Jesus’ dead body on Easter morning. Peter taught people to trust that more than quick fixes for each and every tragedy.
But, Dorcas teaches other things too. If Peter felt out of his league as her loved ones surrounded him with tear-soaked faces, you can relate. You may also find yourself overwhelmed by emotionally-charged times when you don’t know what to say. Yet, Christ prepared you by taking you through episodes of his life (like Jairus’ daughter). In fact, you have an advantage over Peter. He only experienced those Bible history lessons once. You get to imprint them deeper on your mind as often as they come up at church. If you keep listening to them, it will only make you better at responding to situations the way Christ would.
Finally, this historic record of Tabitha also proves God made himself the antidote to death. Luke put his career as a doctor in danger by writing this. No different than today, medical professionals in the Roman Empire could’ve produced evidence to disprove what Luke wrote about Dorcas. Yet, something moved Luke to publish this report anyway. What moved him is the fact that it actually happened. The one who empowered Peter to raise a dead body is the same Lord who also claimed victory over death by returning to life himself. So, Christ Jesus began an upheaval of all dying. Because of it, Dorcas came back from the dead. For the same reason, Granny Hartwig and your Tabitha-person and you and I will all come back from the dead too.