In the Book of Acts, nestled among more familiar stories of Pentecost and Paul’s dramatic conversion, we find the First Lesson for this upcoming Sunday [Acts 9:36-43, the Fourth Sunday of Easter, RCL, Year C]. It’s a quietly powerful narrative about a woman named Tabitha. Though her story isn’t well known, and spans just eight verses, it opens windows into the nature of discipleship, community, and resurrection that continue to illuminate our understanding of faith today.
The narrative is straightforward:
In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (in Greek her name is Dorcas); she was always doing good and helping the poor [Acts 9:36].
Luke, with characteristic economy, tells us she became sick and died. Her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room, while disciples, hearing that Peter was nearby in Lydda, sent for him urgently. Upon his arrival, Peter was taken to the upstairs room where widows stood mourning, showing him the garments Tabitha had made. Peter sent everyone out, knelt in prayer, and said, “Tabitha, arise” [9:40]. She opened her eyes, saw Peter, and sat up. He presented her alive to the saints and widows, and “this became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord” [9:42].
The passage contains an important detail—Luke’s deliberate identification of Tabitha as a “disciple.” My commentaries indicate that the Greek word here—μαθήτρια (mathetria)—appears nowhere else in the New Testament. It’s the only time the feminine form of “disciple” is used, quietly affirming what her life already makes clear. Tabitha’s discipleship wasn’t expressed through public teaching or leadership as we commonly define it, but through what the text calls “good works and acts of charity”—specifically, making clothing for widows.
Tabitha’s identity crosses boundaries in multiple ways. Known by both her Aramaic name (Tabitha) and Greek name (Dorcas), both meaning “gazelle,” she moved between cultural worlds. Her ministry likewise crossed social boundaries, creating a community among society’s most vulnerable—widows, who in the ancient world often lived at the margins of economic survival. In a culture where a woman’s worth was often defined by her relationship to men, Tabitha created a different economy of value centered on mutual care and practical compassion.
When the community mourns Tabitha, they don’t recite her beliefs or teachings. Instead, they present the garments she had made. These tunics and cloaks become tangible evidence of a life that mattered—each stitch a sermon without words, each garment a testimony to attention and care. What does it tell us about discipleship that the community’s memory of Tabitha was woven into these practical expressions of love?
In the ancient world, clothing was precious—handmade, labor-intensive, and essential for both protection and social dignity. For widows, who often struggled at the edge of poverty, new garments might have been an unattainable luxury. Tabitha’s work provided not just material covering but restored dignity to those society had marginalized. Her needle and thread created both physical warmth and a warming sense of being seen, valued, and cared for. The widows’ display of these garments becomes a strong, clear testimony to a ministry that understood how bodily needs and spiritual worth are inseparably woven together. Tabitha’s tunics and cloaks were more than coverings; they were sacraments stitched in thread.
Peter’s role in this resurrection story deliberately echoes Jesus’ own healing methods. Like Jesus with Jairus’s daughter [Mark 5:35–43], Peter asks everyone to leave the room. He speaks directly to the dead and extends his hand to help her up. These parallels connect Tabitha’s story to a larger narrative pattern—from Elijah and Elisha in the Hebrew scriptures to Jesus and now Peter—where God’s life-giving power flows through human agents into situations of death and loss. The church, embodied in Peter, continues the ministry of resurrection that defines the Easter faith.
Notice who witnesses this miracle—only the “saints and widows.” Those who didn’t flee from the presence of death, and those who lived daily with vulnerability, became the first witnesses to new life. Like the women at Jesus’ tomb, those marginalized by society become the primary witnesses to resurrection. Their testimony spreads throughout Joppa, leading many to believe.
This resurrection story cannot be separated from its Easter context. As we journey through this season of resurrection, Tabitha’s story reveals dimensions of Easter faith that extend beyond the empty tomb. In her story, we see how resurrection becomes incarnate in community, in practical care for the vulnerable, in crossing boundaries that separate people from one another. Easter isn’t just a historical event but an ongoing reality that takes flesh in disciples who, like Tabitha, embody God’s life-giving presence in tangible ways.
The narrative concludes with a seemingly minor detail that points toward greater significance:
Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a tanner named Simon [9:43].
This brief note about Simon the tanner plants a seed for what follows in Chapter 10, where Peter’s expanding vision of the Church will include Gentiles within God’s redemptive embrace. Tanners worked with dead animal skins, making them ritually unclean by Jewish standards. Peter’s willingness to stay with Simon signals the beginning of boundary-crossing that will soon expand dramatically. Her story prepares the church for a Pentecost of the margins—the Spirit’s push outward, not just upward.
The resurrection of Tabitha thus stands at a pivotal moment in Acts, where the ripples of Easter begin to spread outward. From Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and beyond, the life-giving power witnessed in Jesus’ resurrection continues to transform communities and challenge boundaries. What begins in an upstairs room in Joppa with a widow’s community will expand to include Cornelius’s household and eventually reach “to the ends of the earth” [Acts 1:8]. Tabitha’s story embodies this movement—resurrection that cannot be contained but must continually expand to embrace more people, more communities, more forms of embodied discipleship.
Tabitha’s story invites us to reconsider what discipleship looks like—not always in public proclamation or dramatic gesture, but sometimes in the simple, steady work of attending to human need. Her needle and thread became instruments of dignity, community, and ultimately, testimony to resurrection. Her ministry reminds us that eternal life isn’t just a future hope, but a present reality embodied in acts of mercy that affirm the worth of those society overlooks.
We aren’t told what happened after Tabitha’s resurrection—whether she returned to her work among the widows or how her experience changed her. The narrative leaves her story unfinished, inviting us to continue it through our own embodied discipleship. As we move through this Easter season, Tabitha stands as a witness:
Resurrection isn’t just something we believe in—
it is something we participate in—
through hands that create, communities that refuse to let go of one another, and lives that bear witness to God’s power to bring forth life where death seems to have the final word.
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