The Story of Gazelle (Acts 9:36 - 43)

Acts was written by the author we know as Luke, and it was written as a sequel or a companion-volume to his Gospel. It relates the early history of the church, and in the first half, centers on Peter, but describes the witness of Phillip and Stephen's martyrdom as well. It's as if to say “look at the faithful witnesses, look at how the gospel spread, by many disciples of our Lord Jesus.” The second half of the book focuses on Paul, beginning with his first missionary journey in Chapter 13. But in our passage, Peter is once again front and center.

Last week, we saw Peter's commission on the beach, by the fire, as Jesus said “feed my sheep,” emphatically, powerfully and without qualification.  We noted that it was a reinstatement of sorts for Peter, after his denial and abandonment of Jesus at the hour of his greatest torment. There in John, Jesus told him to take over doing his work – not exclusively, not as the head of the church, but as a tender, a shepherd, a servant. Peter was to do the work of the Lord, the work of his master, feeding his sheep.

In today's passage, we see Peter going about this business of the Lord, and it's introduced by a passage that's not officially in the lectionary, but provides the context nonetheless. Verse 32 says “Now as Peter went here and there among all the believers, he came down also to the saints living in Lydda.” That's the impression Luke was trying to give -- Peter going here and there, to and fro, back and forth, moving from believer to believer, doing the Lord's work, feeding the Lord's sheep. And in Lydda, Peter heals a paralytic, one Aeneas, who Luke says had been bed-ridden for eight years.

And you might just recognize that name if you've ever read Virgil – it's the name of the central character in his epic poem, the Aeneid. The poem was written in about 20 B.C., and by Peter's time – and Luke's – it was a beloved and widely read classic. And so you've gotta wonder at the name Aeneas for this guy – at the least, he was undoubtedly Gentile. At the most, the name is symbolic, in a literary sense, and it looks forward to Chapter 10, right after our story, when Peter receives a vision and converts Cornelius, the first acknowledged Gentile Christian in Acts.

And so our passage is nestled in this context, a context of Peter's awakening to the fact that the Gospel is for everyone, not just the Jews, and in form it's a straightforward miracle story. It begins by introducing Tabitha, which means “gazelle” in Aramaic. (In Greek, gazelle is Dorcas, and thus the two names.) Tabitha is from Joppa, which is west of Jerusalem near Lydda, where Peter had just finished curing Aeneas. And what's remarkable about it is that she is called a “disciple,” a title always reserved for men. In fact, this is the only place in the whole New Testament that a woman is called “disciple.” We know that women held positions of authority in the early church – Paul had high regard for female leaders like Phoebe, for instance – but only here, in our passage, is a woman called “disciple.” Now, I don't want to make too much of this, but I think it's a remarkable show of openness for the time, and only serves to heighten Luke's reputation for inclusiveness and belief in the universality of the Gospel.  Within our story, it functions to underline her importance and general, all-around goodness – not only was she “devoted to good works and acts of charity,” but she was a disciple to boot!

And so it was a great loss to her circle of friends when she got sick and died, and they washed her and laid her in state in an upstairs room. Now, because Joppa, was near Lydda, the disciples heard that Peter was there, and so they sent two men to him saying “Do not delay in coming to us!” And across the ages we can hear the urgency in those voices as they send for the renowned Simon Peter, miracle worker, healer, one of the original twelve Apostles of Christ. And when he gets there, he goes up into the upper room – and does that sound familiar? – and finds all the widows there, weeping and mourning and, undoubtedly, gnashing their teeth.

And you might well ask – what widows? Luke doesn't say, but uses the term as if his readers would know what he was talking about. Which doesn't help us, two thousand years later, but we do know that there were groups of single women, collectively referred to as “widows,” who formed guilds or associations to do charitable work. They were the forerunners of holy orders – nuns and the like – and Tabitha may have been a leading figure of such a group. So you can get a vivid picture of the scene – the room's darkness pierced  by dusty window-rays of the sun, perhaps falling on the dead woman's face; women weeping, holding out their sister's work, her robes and tunics and head-dresses, holding them out to show Peter, mute reminders of their loss.

And I can picture Peter gently herding them from the room, just as Jesus did when he healed the temple official's daughter, and kneeling there on the dirt floor, beside the dead woman. And what he prayed we do not know, but throughout Acts – begun in Pentecost fire –  the Holy Spirit powers the Apostles' mission, supporting and advocating and driving their ministries. Jesus had said he would send the advocate, the comforter, the empower-er, and at Pentecost it came, dancing and playing around the apostles' heads, and since that time, it had been there for them, helping in their weakness, interceding with sighs too deep for words. And so on that day, in that upper room in Joppa, Peter invoked the Spirit of God, and when he was done, he looked at Gazelle and said just two words: “Tabitha, arise,” or as the NRSV puts it “Tabitha, get up.” And it is of great importance that the Greek word for arise is the same Luke uses for Jesus' resurrection. And so we're meant to associate this action with that done by God for Jesus, only here Peter is invoking God's spirit to do the job.

And see!  Tabitha stirs and moves, there in the hush of the upper room. She twitches and opens her eyes, and there is Peter, standing over her, and she wonders at him, because he was not there when last she closed her eyes, and she wonders at where she is, and she arises, unsteady at first on her feet – for she has been dead for many days – and takes two faltering steps forward, wobbly, like a baby deer, like the gazelle whose namesake she is. Peter takes her hand and helps her up, and then calls out to the saints and the widows and brings her forth, and she is alive! And the sweetest hopes of her loved ones have come true, there in the dusty upper room, and there is rejoicing and weeping with joy, and praising the God of their mothers and of their fathers, and thanking Jesus Christ, their Lord and master, for this, his bounteous gift.

And word spread all over Joppa, and the miracle of Gazelle became known to all, and many came to new life in the Lord Jesus Christ because of it. As for Peter, he went to stay in another part of Joppa, with Simon, who was a tanner, and thus unclean. And it wasn't all that long before Cornelius, the first recorded Gentile convert, came to believe as well.

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Like many of the stories in Acts, ours shows the early church in action, doing the work of God, and it's of use, I think, to take a look at the dynamics of this ministry. The story is impossible to date with any accuracy, but it probably is set sometime in the first fifteen or twenty years after the crucifixion. Even if it reflects the time it was written – some 25 years later than that – it's a remarkable look at Christianity in the first century. It shows a faith that's already spread well beyond Jerusalem's walls. Joppa is almost 40 miles away, on the Mediterranean coast, and there's a well-developed community. In addition to the guild of widows already mentioned, there's probably at least one house church, for there's a group of disciples who can reach a consensus to send for Peter to help.

And look at Peter – last week, we saw his personal side, as he impulsively plunged into the Sea of Galilee and swam to shore to greet Jesus; as he was hurt when Jesus asked not once not twice but three times if he loved him, as if his master didn't believe him when he said yes the first two times. And now we have a Peter who seems all grown up, all business, a mature faith leader, who has taken Jesus' commission seriously.  It's less a personal Peter than an icon, an archetypical apostle, going to and fro doing God's work, seemingly without angst or emotion.

And this fits Luke's purpose in this book – his idea was to recount the story of the early church, but from a theological point of view, more than historical. So each story is placed just so, and is told in just the right way, to make theological hay.

This story of Gazelle is told in a way that's highly suggestive of several others in the bible. Scholars have pointed out the similarities with Elijah raising the widow's son in first Kings, and Elisha's raising of the Shunammite woman's son in Second Kings, and that this casts Peter in a prophetic role. But what it reminds me of the most is a miracle of Jesus, when he raised the temple official's daughter from the dead. Remember? Jesus was summoned to the house, but it was too late – the daughter had died. Sending the family out of the room, Jesus brings her back to life, commanding her to get up. And so to my mind, this is an example of Peter acting in Jesus' stead, carrying on Jesus' work. Luke is saying “See?  Peter obeyed God. He did the work of Christ.” And it's as if Jesus had never left – and in fact, Christ was still working on earth, Peter was just a vessel.

At the same time, we're just as clearly meant to associate Tabitha's resurrection with that of Jesus – at the Pentecost festival in Acts 2, it is Peter himself who declares to the crowd that “This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.” And now, Luke describes Tabitha's resurrection using the same words, but with one important difference. In Jesus' resurrection, it is God who is the sole actor, God who is the one who raised up his son, but in Gazelle's case, Paul invokes the Holy Spirit, which in turn does the raising. It is clearly a resurrection in the light of and as a consequence of Jesus' resurrection. This miracle, this resurrection, this raising of Tabitha from the dead stands as a marker, a witness to the power of the resurrection of Jesus in all our lives.

Paul said that Christ is the first fruits of those who have died, and that the resurrection of the dead—whatever that means—is through him.  And these images are the key to understanding Peter's miracle, for it reminds us that all of the new creation, all of the new life comes by way of Christ. Because Christ was first raised from the dead, so was Tabitha.  Because Christ was first raised from the dead, so the people of Joppa came to believe, came to new life in the Lord. And because Christ was raised from the dead, so will we all be made alive in Christ.  Amen.