There are many place names in the Bible.  If we had been born and raised in that part of the world, these names would be like saying Odessa, Laredo, Amarillo, and Dallas.  Joppa may not ring any bells—the city is also known as Jaffa and is now part of Tel Aviv.  So, we have heard of the place, even in these times.  In those times, Joppa was a major port city.  It was the city to which Jonah fled and took ship, in his bid to run away from the mission God had commissioned Jonah to fulfill.  We know how that worked out.

Peter is called on a mission to Joppa.  At the time, he isn’t told what that mission is, only that he must come, quickly.  He trusts the Spirit that the matter is indeed urgent and that he indeed should go.  Peter has resolved not to run away.  He was through with that!

Port cities are colorful places.  They’re not all along the lines of Mos Eisley of Star Wars infamy, a place than which “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”  A port is a busy place: commerce, produce, people coming and going from all over, some in search of a new life, a different life.  Over the centuries, Joppa had been dominated by the Philistines, the Egyptians, Greeks, then the Romans.  There had been an ongoing Jewish presence as well.  Joppa was the place where the world came to Israel, and where Israel could go out to the world.

There is a church in Joppa.  Consider how quickly the churches start springing up, after Pentecost.  Like spring flowers after a rain.  The churches were mixed, too, just like the port cities: different people from different backgrounds, with different needs and different gifts, called together by the call of the Holy Spirit, through the work of the apostles, the disciples.  People come to church because they know something about church, or they think they do.  An invitation adds encouragement.  What they think they know piques their interest, speaks to something they feel inside, a need, a yearning, a hope.  What people out there hear about a church matters.  What do people hear about Bethel?  Are they hearing anything about us?

Among the saints in the church in Joppa was Tabitha, also known as Dorcas, depending on what group was talking about her.  The one name is Aramaic or Hebrew, the other is Greek: it’s a mixed city, with a mixed population.  To thrive there, it helped immensely to be fluent in different languages, different worldviews.  Dorcas was known for doing good and helping the poor (9:36)—what a reputation!  Beautiful!  Blessed!  A translation closer to the Greek Luke uses (NASB) says that Dorcas was a woman “abounding with deeds of kindness and charity.”  Charity isn’t really about giving alms to the poor.  Charity comes from a Latin word that has to do with love; the Greek word Luke uses to describe her has to do with pity, a word closely related to piety—doing faith.  Faith and love.  Dorcas was one of those people in your church that you love to boast about.  We’ve had plenty of those, and we have some even today.  We will have such saints in the future, too.  Thanks be to God.

As happens in this life, Dorcas fell ill and then died.  The congregation hears that an apostle is nearby: Peter himself.  They send for him: come quickly.  Why?  Because, by the end of this episode she is raised from the dead, we may assume that the congregation sends for Peter to do that.  Maybe, though, they are sending for Peter because they believe he knows what it’s like to feel bereft, deep in grief.  Maybe they send for Peter hoping he will bring some consolation, some comforting word in the midst of their aching loss.

They know, they feel, their situation calls for apostolic power, Jesus power.  It’s Jesus who says he gives peace: peace far truer, richer, deeper than anything the world tries to pass off as peace.  It’s Jesus who encourages and tells us not to be afraid, who tells us he is with us.  It’s Jesus who says he is the resurrection and the life.  Why turn to food in your grief—is chocolate your true comfort?  Why turn to the bottle—is alcohol your salvation?  All the ways we try to get our minds off of things.  Get your hearts into Christ.  Turn to Jesus.  He will comfort.  He will hold you.  He is kind.  He has pity.

Peter arrives, not knowing what to do or say.  They usher him into the room where Dorcas’ washed body is lying, prepared for burial, prepared for the last goodbye.  We hear about the company of widows in that church.  In this world they no longer have husbands, or even children: all they have is each other.  Was Dorcas one of the widows?  They’re all weeping: they loved her so much.  She was just like a dear sister, a beloved daughter, a mother to them.  We’re not told that her illness was lingering; probably she felt ill and within a day or so, or even hours, she died—it was sudden, unexpected, and devastating, not unlike the death of Jesus for Peter.

There is Peter, everyone talking, lamenting, weeping, shoving shirts and coats in his face; he begins to understand that Dorcas made all these.  They’re trying to show Peter that Dorcas was a loving, generous, compassionate woman who took pity on the poor and devoted herself to helping them in the ways God had gifted her.  Touching and holding these items of clothing, the work of Dorcas’ hands and heart, is the closest they can get to holding her, now.  They are heartbroken.  Holding onto these testimonies of her love, they feel as though her love has been taken away from them.  Isn’t that what we miss most about our sisters, our daughters, our mothers: the love that we shared?

Peter wonders what he has been called there to do.  I never have had the impression that Peter was an especially gentle, sympathizing man.  He’s no grief counselor.  He is blunt, outspoken, a man of action.  And he was heartbroken, once, too, that terrible Friday.  No one asks him to bring Dorcas back to life.  I doubt anyone had thought about that.  No one was expecting that.  Jesus could do that, but Jesus was gone, now.  They wanted apostolic power among them, Jesus power, to help them find the light in the darkness, the lightness under the burden of grief—this life that seems to load us with grief upon grief, worry upon worry, grief without relief.

They wanted Jesus power because they knew that the power of Jesus could bring relief, could change their inconsolable grief to hopeful grief, from fearful to faithful.  Now, Peter does not come alone.  Peter comes in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is power, ability.  Peter comes in the name of Jesus, and what he knows because he has seen it, experienced it personally, is that the power of life and death is in the name of Jesus.  The Spirit suggests an idea to Peter.  It’s not Peter’s idea; apart from the Spirit, Peter would never have thought it.

He remembers, by the Spirit, a time when Jesus was called to the home of a man whose daughter had taken sick; she died before Jesus arrived.  Beloved, the death of a child, the thought of that, utterly devastates me; you have no idea, unless you’ve been through it yourself, in which case I have no idea, because that hasn’t happened to me.  It happens to God all the time.  That’s why he sent Jesus, at the right time in the right way, so that His children, though they die, shall live.  What is death?  Death is the ultimate stubbornness of the human will enslaved to sin.

Remembering what Jesus did, and at the direction of the Spirit, Peter sends all those grief-wracked women, those dear saints, out of the room.  There he is, then, alone in the room with the dead body of Dorcas.  I want us to linger there, quietly, invisibly, for a moment.  I want you to see, and hear, and have the sense of that room, that body, and Peter there.

Peter kneels.  He’s going before God.  Peter has seen death.  He has seen the dead alive again.  Peter prays.  We’re not told just what he prayed.  What would you pray?  Here’s what I came up with: “Lord, You are a God of life and love.  Tabitha is Your child, and You filled her with life and love.  Your will is perfect.  Your will is good.  My God, according to Your will, reveal the glory of Your holy name among these people.  Reveal the glory of Your holy name in this place, that Your children may praise You with greater knowledge, greater joy, and greater faith, and so that their testimony may touch hearts and minds in this city.  May this my prayer be in Your Holy Spirit.  I ask this in the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen.”  What Peter prayed was simpler, humbler, more full of love and faith.

Peter then speaks: “Tabitha, get up!”  How close that sounded, in his ears, to what Jesus said to that girl: “Talitha, rise!” (Lk 8:51-55).  And Tabitha, Dorcas, opened her eyes, as Peter had faith she would, because this was the will of God.  She sat up; Peter helped her to stand.  That’s what apostles, what disciples do for those who were dead, dead in their sins: we humble ourselves, we pray, we speak, and we help them to stand: we get in close; we support them as they begin their walk.  Then Peter presents Tabitha alive to the church.  Alive by the Spirit, alive in Christ, alive for God, alive with and for one another.  They rejoice, of course.  They celebrate, of course.  And they tell.  News gets out.  This is the will of God.  This is the Spirit.  “The news about this spread all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord” (9:42).

          There it is: many believed.  This is the call and the commission we see being carried out in the Acts of the Apostles: being called and calling, going, acting, at the direction of the Spirit.  News spreads.  Many believe.  The church grows.  It grows in Joppa.  The Spirit means for the church to grow in that port city, so that, from there, the church, the news, the movement of the Spirit, goes out to the world.

Our Joppa, East Columbia, isn’t much of a port city anymore, but neither is Tel Aviv.  That doesn’t matter.  What matters is that we take the news with us: spread the news.  We, also, have the Spirit, beloved.  We may never raise anyone from the dead, and, by the Spirit, we may bring life to many.  I want to be a life-bringer!  I want each of you to be a life-bringer!  Get praying.  Look around.  Listen for the call.  Go, and act.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.