May 11, 2025
Acts 9:36-43
John 10:22-30
Simon Peter had been enjoying a time of relative peace for the People of the Way, as Christians were known in those early days of the Church. After Saul’s conversion, which we read last week, efforts to suppress followers of Jesus had subsided quite a bit, so Simon Peter was able to move around and visit some of the communities that had emerged along the coast of the Mediterranean. In Lydda he’d healed a paralyzed man named Aeneas.
In Joppa they heard he was there and asked him to come visit them, because a valued woman in their community named Tabitha, also known as Dorcas, had died.
At Working Preacher, Eric Barreto asks one of my questions: “Peter’s arrival brings hope in its wake. One wonders, however, what Tabitha’s friends expected when they called Peter. Did they want Peter to know about this extraordinary believer? Did they wish for the memory of her dear friend to be shared with this pillar of the burgeoning church? Did they perhaps hope for a miracle beyond miracles? Did they perhaps hope against hope for a reprieve from death?”
Had they asked for what they received?
This story looks a lot like a healing story from the Gospel of Luke (Luke wrote the book of Acts) and the Gospel of Mark (Luke used Mark as a source for his gospel). Raj Nadella writes in Working Preacher, “In both stories, the miracle occurs in a private setting. Just as Jesus sends everyone except Peter, James, and John out of the room prior to the miracle, Peter sends everyone out in this story. In both accounts, the deceased comes back to life after being ordered to get up. It is as if Peter, who was present when Jesus raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead, replicates a similar miracle at Joppa.”
Simon Peter imitated Jesus.
Imitation frequently isn’t welcome in our society. We may exclaim, “How cute! He’s so much like his dad!” when a child is three or four and, let’s face it, might have Dad’s nose but is he working for a bank? No. We dislike imitation in the creative arts, or at least we do most of the time. Someone who makes sculptures meticulously by hand but does so as an exact copy of somebody else’s work doesn’t get a lot of credit. Of course, if they sell the sculpture as if it was produced by the artist they’ve imitated, they’re subject to arrest and prosecution. In the ministry, there’s a long history of preachers reading sermons written by other people. Sometimes they’ve acknowledged this, and sometimes they haven’t.
Heaven help the eight-year-old who copies from the student’s paper next to them while they’re taking a test.
Imitation might be a sincere form of flattery – Oscar Wilde didn’t say that, by the way; it was published at least thirty years before he was born – but our affection for flattery goes only so far.
Simon Peter, though. He imitated Jesus.
So, in different ways, had Tabitha herself. Raj Nadella continues, “Tabitha became a prominent disciple not because of any familial connections, or even because of her apparent wealth, but because of the networks she built with widows, the most marginalized in the community. Her ministry reminds readers of the early Church’s commitment to ensure that no widow was overlooked in their everyday needs (Acts 6:1-6).” When Peter arrived, her friends did the things that people do. They started telling him Tabitha’s life story. This is an outfit she made for me. These are the ways she helped our family to thrive. This is the way she kept us all together in the Way.
So many times when I’ve spoken with people after a loved one has passed, they’ve showed me things they made, told me things that they’d done. That’s what Tabitha’s community did when Peter appeared.
Then Simon Peter imitated Jesus.
As Jesus had done at the bedside of the little girl, he sent everyone out of the room. As Jesus had done at the bedside of the little girl, he prayed. As Jesus had done at the bedside of the little girl, he said, “Tabitha, get up.” Jesus had said, “Talitha cum,” Aramaic for “Little girl, get up.” As Jesus had done at the bedside of the little girl, he saw her eyes open.
Simon Peter imitated Jesus.
Peter. Like Jesus.
There’s a phrase that flies about the Christian world, or at least the American Christian world, that goes, “What would Jesus do?” You’ll sometimes see WWJD on bumper stickers or small signs in a home. Personally, I think that’s an awfully good question most of the time. Looking at the things that Jesus did – or didn’t do – can help us avoid major mistakes and guide us to better actions.
The difficulty is that Jesus didn’t live in the twenty-first century, and we face realities he didn’t. It’s not that he couldn’t have something to say about them, but in the first century he didn’t say anything about them. What would Jesus do about Generative Artificial Intelligence? I don’t know. How would he parse the competing goods between automation that reduces human risk of death and injury and also deprives them of income-producing labor? I don’t know that, either.
I did appreciate David Hayward’s recent cartoon picturing Jesus saying, “You have heard me say: be humble, forgive, love and show mercy. But now I say unto you: ridicule those who disagree with you, despite people of other orientations, denigrate women, and above all be arrogant and rude!”
I hope David Hayward didn’t hurt himself putting his tongue that far into his cheek.
A lot of imitating Jesus can be done through the first part of that message: “Be humble, forgive, love and show mercy.” There is no particular skill level required. I grant you that there are ways to get better at loving, it takes a lot of practice to live humbly, and forgiveness will always challenge us. But a five year old can say, “I’m sorry,” and a five year old can say, “That’s all right.” A five year old can imitate Jesus.
So how about you and me?
Not all of us will imitate Jesus as Simon Peter did. If I have talents for human resurrection, I’m not aware of it and for sure I haven’t demonstrated it. It has to be said, however, that that was a rare manifestation of the Holy Spirit in Peter’s day. It’s more common in ours. People return to living from near death and from death itself more often today than they did two thousand years ago. Someone I know recently had open heart surgery, and you know, the heart stops during open heart surgery and then gets started again. Simon Peter himself would be astonished.
If it takes us more work than it did Simon Peter, is that really less astonishing?
It’s not just resurrection or even healing. It’s solidarity and community. Remember that Tabitha imitated Jesus by caring for the widows around her, some of the people at most risk for neglect and deep need. Tabitha imitated Jesus so well that her friends wept deeply for her loss.
I keep saying that we have a distorted view of greatness. I’m afraid rulers called “the Great” have usually done a lot of harm through wars and conquest. Some years ago I stood on the Nu’uanu Pali with a child of O’ahu who described the terrible battle in which Kamehameha I’s army had driven the soldiers of O’ahu over the cliff. “Some of us,” my friend said, “aren’t of one mind about Kamehameha.” Charles the Great of France, usually known as Charlemagne, applied the death penalty to pagan practices. Genghis Khan brought war and terror to large areas of China and central Asia.
The list goes on.
Every once in a while I meet somebody truly great. I meet somebody in whose simple presence my spirit lifts. I meet somebody whose graciousness just flows. I meet somebody who brightens my day. Every once in a mile I meet somebody great.
Like Tabitha. Like Peter. Like Jesus.
As Jennifer T. Kaalund writes at Working Preacher, “Although [Tabitha] may not have been famous or well-known, she was important to those who did know her. It is clear that she loved and that she was loved. They did not want to lose her. She was a disciple who was giving and faithful—would that we all might be described as such.”
Would that we all be described as such. Like Tabitha. Like Peter. Like Jesus.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric preaches from a prepared text (it’s what we’ve provided above) but he does tend to improvise while he preaches, so what you just read is not exactly what he said.
The image is of a Byzantine mosaic in the Capella Palestina in Palermo, Sicily. Photo by Rmsrga – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31666134.
