“Widows In Their Tunics”

Acts 9:36-43

Fourth Sunday of Easter + April 25, 2010

Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

400 Glenwood Drive

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404

Have you ever been involved in handling the things of life when death has come? Have you ever had the solemn duty of going through the clothing left behind by a loved one who died? There is something terribly bitter-sweet about it, isn’t there, even more than going through other personal effects? Following my father’s death, my sister and I sorted through his clothing and personal items. In his closet there were some things which were still quite new. He and I were roughly the same size and I wondered,” Should I keep these few clothing to wear myself? Will I be able to bear wearing them, since they will always provide a reminder of my father every time I see them in my closet, every time I feel the fabric on my skin?” Some of you have gone through the same heavy-hearted decision-making process, I know.

A friend of mine referred to the associations we have with the things left behind in death as reminders of “the presence of an absence.” Anyone who has lost a loved one, from a puppy to a parent, can instinctively fill in the meaning of that phrase: “the presence of an absence.”

A few years ago the Sunday comic strip, For Better or Worse, depicted a visit to a pet dog’s grave by one of the family members, featuring – in the final panel – her reflection that sometimes she was almost certain she could hear the jingle of the dog’s license. In that panel the artist pictured an outline of the family dog prancing along behind her in friendly, but ghostly form. The scene may bring tears to our eyes, but you and I know that in real life, unlike the comics, when we spin around to look, there is no presence, there is no shadow or outline or ghost of our now departed loved one. There is only the presence of an absence.

Like the no-longer needed glasses resting on the never-to-be-finished book by the bedside, or the bathrobe, still hanging by the shower where it will no longer be needed, or a stone once gathered by a mountain stream and saved for a remembrance of a happy day long ago. All these material reminders serve only to strengthen our awareness that the one who was alive is no more, the presence only of an absence.

The widows of Luke’s story from Acts knew all about the presence of an absence. They were, first and most obviously, widows. Having lost husbands, they each had a keen awareness of the finality of death and the shabby little material reminders of lost life that it leaves behind. Their situation was far worse than modern times. In the New Testament, “widow” was almost invariably a shorthand expression for a person who was powerless and defenseless. Now these widows of Joppa had also lost a friend from their inner circle of believers. Tabitha had been a person known for her good works. In fact, her response to her own widowhood had been to excel in works of goodness for others. So compelling was her example that many were attracted to her, and so, perhaps, the first ladies’ church sewing circle was born.

The only specific thing we know about her good works is that she made “tunics and other clothing . . . while she was with them.” Her widowed friends held them up to show Peter when he came to the house where she had died. Like modern mourners who must deal with a closet-full of clothing which is no longer needed, all these women had the bits of clothing she had left behind. They offered them for Peter’s inspection as if to make some sort of visual demonstration that the goodness they claimed for her life could be certified by these evidences of her life’s labor. In life, she had been aware of a special calling from God, a simple calling, but a necessary one. Now, in her absence, her friends made a sort of memorial out of her handiwork.

You and I have heard the rest of the story and we know that Peter prayed over Tabitha, he commanded her to arise and she returned to life. We know that, but we ought not rush too quickly to that happy ending. I think it is important first to dwell for a time in the land of absence, otherwise how will we cope when our loved ones are not brought back to earthly life? We live, you and I, in the in-between time. We live between the time when we have become fully aware that some we have loved have died and we no longer see them. Yes we look forward to the time of seeing them again but we do not see them yet. That in-between time is the place where the other widows were living when Peter came to Tabitha’s house.

This Bible, like the story of the raising of Lazarus, brings out lots of questions, such as, “Why bring her back to life when she will only have to pass through the valley of the shadow on another day further down the road?” That is a question arising from reason. But as one of my friends once said, reason flies away when someone we love closes her eyes and breathes her last, and we want more than anything to pray her back to life.

As it turns out, there has been more than a little interest in the subject of dying in the last couple of years. What are we to make of this upsurge in interest about our human mortality? Is it because we of the Silent Generation and Baby Boomer Generation are aging to the point that we can begin to see the end over the horizon?! Well, maybe, but I don’t think our desire to know more about our lives’ finishing touches is anything entirely new.

All questions surrounding death come down to one question, really. It is as much a question about life as it is about death: What does it all mean? Or, more desperately, does it mean anything at all? Is the sum total of a life to be measured by this handful of tunics that was made for the under-privileged? The witness of scripture is that life has been given a new meaning, not by what we have done or failed to do, but by the death and resurrection of Christ. But how does this play itself out when we have little more than the tunics of those we have loved, the reminders of a presence of an absence?

The Christian faith has so much to do with life’s meaning for believers. What is the goal of our faith? Isn’t it that we become Christ-like? Imagine becoming part of that remarkable piece of humanity in which self-interest is no longer our chief concern. That is the company in which Tabitha placed herself as she sewed tunics in her home.

It has been said that the book of Acts is about the way the church was becoming a new community. In that new community no one seems to stay in the old places that the world had set up for them: common fishermen began preaching to high muckity-mucks in the temple; a paralyzed old man got up and started witnessing; and a woman named Tabitha, upon becoming a widow, did not retreat into her own private world of grief, but started up a welfare program to clothe other widows in Joppa.¹

Lots of people think this Bible passage is about raising people from the dead back to a life they had known. Probably for this reason many shy away from it, since in our times resuscitation of dead people is not a common feature. In our experience the dead stay pretty much dead. But at its heart this isn’t really a story about Tabitha coming back to life. If it were God’s purpose to return dead people to life as we know it, we have to admit God has been pretty darn selective about it. A Lazarus here, a Tabitha there; while millions go to their graves – which, when we think about it, Lazarus and Tabitha had to do again one day as well.

No, this isn’t a story about re-invigorating corpses. It is a story about the lengths to which the God will go in bringing hope to the hopeless. This is another way of discovering the truth which Paul announced, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus . . .”² In this story, we find a gathering of impoverished widows with nothing more to show for their desperate lives than the simple tunics their beloved Tabitha had made for them. But then the Spirit gave them evidence of new life.

William Willimon puts it this way:

“Every community, every family, every congregation exists within certain settled, fixed arrangements of power and weakness, life and death. People are told that there is a divinely established chain of being, a fixed order in which we are to find our place and stay there. Tabitha is to stay home and let the men devise an affordable welfare system. Peter is to stay with his fishing nets and leave theology to the scholars, and Aeneas should obey doctor’s orders and stay in bed. But the Word comes to these people in the presence of those who, like Peter, come out among them and stand beside them. These miraculous events are subversive of the present order, for they announce . . . an age where reality is not based upon . . . cause-effect circumstances, but upon God’s promise.”³

God’s promise. When we stand, like these ancient women in their tunics, with the scraps of our dead loved ones’ clothing in our hands, this story reminds us that the new life of God is coming upon us all, and that when God says, “Rise!” there is no telling what is going to pop up next. God’s life-giving power is in you and in me. God walks with us through the dark valley of death and brings us the bright mountain of hope on the other side. Along the way we keep hearing that wonderful voice: “Don’t be afraid. I am with you always. Always.”

¹ – Acts; Interpretation, by William Willimon, John Knox Press: 1988, p. 84.

² – See Romans 8.

³ – Acts; Interpretation, by William Willimon, John Knox Press: 1988. P.85, - 86.