Rethinking Tabitha and the ministries of the Acts of the Apostles
When I walk into the church for my mother’s visitation preceding her funeral, a woman I’ve known my whole life meets me at the door, one of mom’s weavings draped over her arm. I recognize it straight away – a wide, wool pastor’s stole in purple, woven for the season of Lent some 25 years ago. A thin line of pink runs through the weft with which she wove in tiny crosses.
“Come with me,” she says, ushering me down the hall, “I want you to see what we’ve done.”
There in the sanctuaryA sanctuary is the consecrated area around the altar of a church or temple. It also means a place of safety where one can flee for protection. In the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms, God is referred to as a sanctuary, a refuge from... are the other women and a lone man, who worked with my mother creating liturgical art, season by season, year after year, for our congregation. For decades, they met regularly to read the lectionary, discuss and pray, then create.
- Sometimes they made large, modern banners that hung on the wall behind the choir declaring big messages of God’s love for all to see.
- Sometimes they made smaller ones that hung next to the pulpit, or by the exit, each emblazoned with some firm reminder of our call to follow JesusJesus is the Messiah whose life, death, and resurrection are God's saving act for humanity., to which the pastor could refer, while preaching or when sending the congregation out into the world to be the hands and feet of Christ.
- Sometimes they just talked, and then my mother would come home to weave paraments and stoles, sitting long into the night at her loom, sending the shuttle flying back and forth, back and forth, by lamp light.
- Sometimes they cast paper sculptures with pulp made from piles of worship bulletins, collected and neatly sorted by color into bins – descending doves and PentecostPentecost was originally a Jewish harvest or pilgrimage festival that fell on the fiftieth day after Passover. It was during this festival that the Holy Spirit visited Jesus' followers in tongues of fire and caused them to speak in many languages, as reported in Acts... fire transformed from old scraps into entirely new creations.
- And once when the congregation was in crisis, its members unable to come to terms with one another, they took their creations off the wall and suspended a braided cord in the center of the vaulted space, each strand linked to a person’s name meticulously affixed to the wall. Maybe, if the church could see how we are drawn together, how our lives intertwine, then we could do it in real life.
All those years of artwork sat, stashed away, in closets and hung in storage rooms. But on this day, as people gather to remember and mourn, the women and lone man pulled all the artwork out and hung it. On the walls. Off the balcony. Over the pulpit. Across the altar. Every free space now had a piece of her artwork on it. When I walk in, they are still working. They turn to me, paraments and stoles draped over their arms, and cry.
In the Acts 9:32-42, there is a story about a woman, a discipleA disciple is a person who accepts and follows the pronouncements of a teacher. Jesus chose twelve disciples (also called "apostles" in some of the Gospels) to follow him and bear witness to his message Anyone who (like them) follows Jesus is engaged in Christian... named Tabitha. She did a lotNephew of Abraham and Sarah. of good work and served the poor. But she got sick and died. Her body was washed and laid in an upper room. Word was sent to PeterPeter (also known as Cephas, Simon Peter) was the disciple who denied Jesus during his trial but later became a leader in proclaiming Jesus.: don’t wait, come now. When Peter gets there, he’s greeted by the women who knew her, their arms draped with the clothing she had made. They don’t have words, really. All they can do is show him all her artwork, the tunics and garments she made. It’s her legacy, this, and her good works serving the poor.
I think about my mom every time I read Acts, this chapter in particular. Yes, I think about how she is Tabitha, textile artist, so devoted to doing good and serving the poor. But I also think about my mom when I read that Tabitha was a disciple, and one of great importance, so much so that Peter drops everything and runs to her side when he hears she is ill.
I think about her, too, when I get to the end of the story. Tabitha is raised from the dead, just like Lazarus. And while neither Peter, nor Jesus for that matter, showed up to resurrect my mom, all I have to do is remember her co-creators draped in the paraments and stoles she made to know that my mom lives on. She is resurrected in their continued creativity, commitment to doing good, and serving the poor. This is true for all of us.
The Book of Acts is a continuation of the Gospel according to Luke, and a continuation of the ministry of Jesus, now carried on by those upon whom the Spirit alighted on Pentecost.
Our lives are a continuation of these stories. We, too, use our creativity. We, too, do good and serve the poor. We, too, bear witness to and participate in resurrection. We, too, live on. I hope when we die, we’ll leave people with arms full of our love, and that our legacy of doing good and serving the poor will be draped over everyone we knew.
