Raising the dismissed and discarded

Image credit: Peter Heals the Crippled and Raises Tabitha (Masolino 1425)
Museum Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence

Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year C
11 May 2025

Acts 9:[32-35] 36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30

The Hockey Canada scandal has been receiving new attention as the five hockey players accused of sexual assault stand trial. You probably don’t need reminding, but the scandal was that Hockey Canada treated this and other cases as “boys will be boys,” having created a special fund in order to settle claims, including sexual abuse cases out of court. The fund was supplied with player registration fees from across Canada.
Against my better judgment I have followed the reporting and a few things stand out for me:
These young men, and likely many others, were raised in a culture and system in which performance and success matter, while character does not. Further, the acts committed suggest that absent any moral framework around sexuality, these young men’s understanding of sex was informed solely through their consumption of pornography, something psychologist have been warning of for some time. And lastly, whether they are found guilty or not, their actions (which they do not deny) showed complete disregard for the female complainant, and by extension, I would argue, for women in general, for the complainant was treated as nothing more than an object. Even if someone agreed to being demeaned, ones values, if one has any, should direct a person against demeaning another. And whenever we diminish someone else, we diminish our own humanity, we diminish ourselves.

Our middle child earned a degree in theatre from the SFU School for the Contemporary Arts. The first play he was part of was Marie Clements’ play “The Unnatural and Accidental Women”. Clement is a Métis playwright. The play is about the deaths of Indigenous women from the Downtown Eastside after local barber Gilbert Paul Jordan had plied them with alcohol. Watching the play I realized that that although the methods were different, Robert Pickton was not the first to prey on vulnerable women of the Downtown Eastside but merely followed a pattern.
The problem with cases like these is that the lives of women do not matter as much as the lives of men. That seems the only possible conclusion not only in regards to the perpetrators but also in regards to the response of police and government.
In 1988 Tracy Chapman sung a haunting song about that. Perhaps you remember it. It is about domestic violence.

Last night I heard the screaming
Loud voices behind the wall
Another sleepless night for me
It won’t do no good to call
The police
Always come late, if they come at all

As the story progresses, the first verse is repeated throughout the song.

And when they arrive
They say they can’t interfere
With domestic affairs
Between a man and his wife
And as they walk out the door
The tears well up in her eyes

Last night I heard the screaming
Then a silence that chilled my soul
Prayed that I was dreaming
When I saw the ambulance in the road

Our first reading continues in the Acts of the Apostles, almost where we had left off last week. But the story moves from Paul to Peter. We began our reading a little before the appointed verses because it is here that Luke sets up the story. Characteristic for Luke’s storytelling is his pairing of stories with male characters and stories with female characters. Think of the beginning of his Gospel where an angel appears to Zechariah, and an angel appears to Mary. And so here we have a healing story and a resurrection story, both in the footsteps of Jesus.¹ In verse 33 we read, There [Peter] found a man named Aeneas, who had been bedridden for eight years, for he was paralysed. Aeneas is the male character. And we recall that just like in the Gospels, except that here it is Peter, Peter says, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; get up and make your bed!” And immediately he got up. And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him and turned to the Lord. While the story may strike us as a stereotypical healing story, not unlike the one portrayed on the left side of our bulletin, the scene from Acts three (‘silver and gold we have not, but what we have we give to you’), the healing is important for people with disabilities were marginalized then, and we know they are still marginalized today. But not so with God! And not so with the church. And so Peter pays attention and takes time for a person at the side of the road and at the edge of society.

Then, a little further along the way, a disciple has died. Her Aramaic name is Tabitha. We knew that Jesus had many followers and many of them women. Jesus came into the world through Mary, and it was women who were the first witnesses of the resurrection. Since women did not have legal status to testify in court, the Evangelists may have wanted to change this detail, at least if their primary purpose was to provide proof of the resurrection. But God had entrusted this particular witness to women and thus women were elevated in the church in a way far above their place in society. Luke calls Tabitha a disciple and this too is important.

But Tabitha has died. And those who loved her have begun preparing for her funeral, for they have washed her body, as is custom in middle Eastern cultures, as a last act of love to the one who loved us. Yet for some reason, they send for Peter and ask him to come quickly. To be with them in their distress? We don’t know. When Peter arrives the widows who had been the recipients of Tabitha’s works of love show the garments and tunics Tabitha had made for them. These artifacts are like relics, invoking the love and presence of the one who has died. We all know this. On this Mother’s Day, there may be items our mother’s gave us that we treasure, and even though they are no longer with us, somehow they become present to us even in their absence. I think of the many things my children have given me over the years, most precious perhaps the things they made or drew when they were little, before they could go to the store and buy things. Every once in a while I come upon one of them in a book, used as a bookmark. It is a treasure that brings back those moments.
It is these garments, these relics that introduce Tabitha to us. She was a disciple whose ministry was to care for widows in the community. When Peter raises her, he not only validates Tabitha but the vulnerable women who love her and whom she loves. They are the recipients of her good works and acts of charity.
You may remember that only in Acts six had the fledgling church created the ministry order of Deacons, to provide for the needy and for the equitable distribution of goods. But this was also done so the apostles could do the important work. Yet it turns out that what Tabitha did was the important work. The raising of Tabitha the disciple honours her ministry and it honours the women to whom she ministered.

Maybe we don’t consider this revelatory or particularly radical, but in a world that too often accepts the death of women as normal and negligible, whose deaths don’t require investigations, or searches of landfills, or that discredits victims, or are treated as objects, it matters a great deal that in the raising of Tabitha God recognizes her, her ministry, and women. And while Peter’s prayer seems to facilitate her raising, in a way her raising is humbling to him, for one could say that Tabitha has been doing the real work of ministry all along, and she is still needed. She and those for whom she cares are precious to God.

Peter though, is moving with the Spirit. He is staying with Simon, a tanner. Tanners were considered unclean for their dealing with dead animals. This is indication that the Gospel is not only reaching the ends of the world but stretches us beyond our imagination.

Thanks be to God.