Tabitha: "Child, Get Up!"

The Acts of the Apostles, as I have said before, could be more aptly titled, “The Acts of the Holy Spirit.” It’s the story of the Spirit’s action in the community of disciples that started in Jerusalem and advanced all the way to Rome. As the story of the Spirit’s action and as the second part of a two-volume work that begins with the gospel of Luke, Acts contains a number of incidents that parallel Jesus’s works in Luke. The implication is that the same Spirit that empowered Jesus also empowers his disciples.

There is a story in Acts 9 that mirrors an earlier episode in Luke 8, when Jesus raises the daughter of Jairus, a synagogue leader in Capernaum. When he comes to the house where the dead child lies, he makes everyone leave except for his inner circle of disciples (Peter, James, and John) and the child’s parents. He takes her by the hand, and she immediately gets up.

The Acts story takes place in Joppa, where a woman named Tabitha, or Dorcas, has died. She is well-loved by her neighbors and fellow disciples because of her “good works and acts of charity” (v. 36). As Jairus does with Jesus, the disciples in Joppa send for Peter, saying, “Please come to us without delay” (v. 38). He goes with the messengers and finds Tabitha laid out in an upstairs room. As in the case of Jairus’s daughter, a group of women are gathered around, weeping and wailing. They show Peter all the clothing that Tabitha made for her poorer neighbors, indicating her goodness and faithfulness within the community of disciples.

As Jesus did, Peter makes everybody leave the room, and then he kneels and prays. He says, “Tabitha, get up” (v. 40). When she opens her eyes and sees Peter, she sits up, and Peter calls in all the “saints and widows” (v. 41), presenting her to them alive. Everyone rejoices, the news spreads, and “many believed in the Lord” (v. 42).

In raising Tabitha from the dead, Peter does more than simply show off the power of the Spirit working through him. He also restores a person who has clearly been the “glue” of the community—one who takes care of widows and poor people, who has done many good works and acts of charity. She is beloved in her community, and perhaps Peter senses that the nascent church in Joppa might not recover from her death at this critical time in their development.

That’s just speculation, of course, but we can’t help but speculate when we encounter stories of wonders like these in the Scriptures. Why, we would be justified in asking, does Jesus raise this little girl, why does Peter raise this faithful woman, whereas all the other little girls and faithful women die and stay dead? That’s the kind of thorny question that can trip us up and cause us to question the goodness of God. Why do these receive God’s mercy while all the others do not?

I prefer to see these stories as metaphors rather than literal happenings. Through Jesus and the power of the Spirit, even those who are dead can be made alive again. I don’t believe that God resides somewhere outside the world and intervenes from time to time as it suits God’s fancy. Rather, God is present with us every moment, always urging us along to choose the path that will lead to our (and the world’s) greatest flourishing. God works with the material available, always seeking to bring about more life, more love, more goodness, more hope.

Do people ever rise from the dead the way Tabitha does in this story? I don’t know—maybe? But the more fundamental truth is that the Spirit of God is always active in our lives and always has the capacity to raise us from the inner deaths of depression, discouragement, addiction, world-weariness, or failure of imagination. Whatever our particular form of malaise or death, God is always able to take us by the hand and gently say, “Child, get up.”

Grace and peace,
bob