+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
At the intersection of humor and pop-psychology, much has been made of the phenomenon of “nominative determinism.” This is when a person’s name fits so perfectly with his or her profession or some other biographical detail that one wonders if that person must have been subconsciously led in a particular direction in life. There are some great, funny examples to be found online: the firefighter Les McBurney and the neuroscientist Lord Brain are some of my favorites. You’ll find famous examples, too, like the olympic sprinter Usain Bolt and (this one will only make sense to a few) Nintendo of America’s current CEO Doug Bowser. And those in my profession are well represented: there was a Fr. Chanter in Exeter,a Fr. Paternoster who served in Brechin and retired to a home on Priest Row in Wells, and–best of all–The Venerable Canon Bishop (who was neither a canon nor a bishop, but was an archdeacon in South Africa).
And then we come to Tabitha, whose Greek name was Dorcas, whom St. Peter raised from the dead as it was recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, and I would suggest it is neither coincidence nor subconscious self-determination which led to her being the subject of today’s first lesson, but rather Divine Providence. Here, we see a double nominative determinism. The first of is based entirely on my own speculation(though I’d love to see somebody else saying something similar, perhaps in a monograph which I’ll never write myself). The latter is generally accepted by the church fathers, so I’ll at least end on something not entirely idiosyncratic.
So, first, the words which Peter spoke when he resurrected Tabitha was either “Tabitha anastethi” or “Tabitha, cumi” (the former being Greek and the latter Aramaic). We can’t really know for certain. Joppa was both a center of Judaean civilization (whose everyday, domestic language was Aramaic) and a major port city on the Mediterranean (in which the language spoken in the marketplace and with strangers was Greek), and Luke (the author of Acts in addition to the Gospel which bears his name) invariably translated everything into Greek, even when the other Gospel writers maintained an Aramaic original, since he was writing to a broader, often Gentile audience. When Mark or Matthew or John have Jesus saying something in Aramaic, Luke puts it in Greek, but nobody else recorded this incident, so all we have is the Greek version, which may either be the original conversation or a translation of a conversation in Aramaic. Plus, it’s certain Peter spoke both languages fluently. Thus, we just can’t know for sure.
All that said, if the actual words were originally in Aramaic, as I suspect they may have been, the words Peter spoke would have been “Tabitha, cumi.” This is not just one letter, but one stroke of a letter away from something we know Jesus himself said when he raised the daughter of Jairus, the leader of a Galilean synagogue, from the dead in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In Mark’s account of that story, Jesus’ words are recorded as “Talitha, cumi”–little girl, arise. The difference between the letters lamed and bet, between “Tabitha, cumi” and “Talitha, cumi” are literally one stroke, less than a line, not so much as to require one to lift one’s pen from the page even to add a “dot.” So, I strongly suspect, Peter’s point in performing this miracle is to connect it to Jesus’ own miracle in raising Jairus’ daughter, and to remind those around at the time and all of us that the church has been given the power to continue Christ’s own ministry, even as far as mediating God’s own miraculous power.
Moving from my suppositions to a point recognized by figures as important as St. John Chrysostom and the Venerable Bede, it is almost certain that Luke gives us the translation of Tabitha’s name–the Greek Dorcas–because he believed he was making a point about her character, which at least Chrysostom interprets as an instance not merely of nominative determinism in the pop psychology sense but as the outworking of Providence. The Hebrew/Aramaic Tabitha and the Greek Dorcas both mean “fallow deer” or “gaazelle,” creatures reckoned by the people of the ancient world to be noble for their fiercely energetic but deliberate activity. The preacher had this to say:
It was not without purpose that the writer informed us of the woman’s name, but to show that her character matched her name–she was active and wakeful as a gazelle. For many names are bestowed by providence, as we have often said to you. “She was full,” it says, “of good works.” Not only of alms but also of “good works,” both in general and of this good work in particular, “which Dorcas made while she was with them.” What humility! Unlike us, all of them were together, and she worked and made clothes.
So what does this have to teach us? Is Chrysostom saying (is Luke saying? is God saying?) that Tabitha’s particular profession, that of a seamstress, somehow had more inherent dignity than some other vocation. Well, I don’t think that’s precisely the point–though clothing the naked is a work of corporal mercy and working to that end (or to the producing of food or the construction of shelter or whatever) may be more useful than some other lines of work.
I think the point–and the fact that the widows were holding up what Tabitha had produced in life points to this–is that work done well and with care and love is a good in itself, not only because there is an inherent dignity in honest labor but also that doing a good job glorifies the God who gave us gifts to use in this life. And just as the widows remembered her good works, so, too, is every good thing we accomplish held in the mind of God, even unto eternity, not because they save us (works cannot do that, only Jesus can) but because they are a reflection of the loving creativity of the creator.
I have a dear friend who was and still twenty years later remains the Roman Catholic chaplain where I went to college. He remains my friend, I like to remind him, despite all of his unsuccessful attempts to convert me to his particular flavor of Christianity. Anyway, something he said all those years ago has stuck with me, and continues to affect how I approach life vocationally and avocationally.
We had been discussing Christian rock and pop music, which is sometimes theologically but more often simply aesthetically “not my cup of tea.” That’s a matter of my subjective taste, so I’m not bashing it as an entire genre. If it’s your thing, it’s all good.
That said, we were discussing some of the artistic shortcomings of some examples of the genre; my friend, by the way, had spent his undergraduate years studying Jazz performance at Berklee College of Music, so he was far more qualified than I to pass judgments on these things. His take was that the problem with a great deal of Christian art–whether it’s music or visual art or literature–was that it didn’t matter (at least as far as the market was concerned) if the piece in question had been of the highest quality so long as you, as he put it, “stamped a cross on it at the end.” That is to say, some people in the Christian community, will pay for bad art or literature or music so long as it’s explicitly Christian in nature.
His view, and subsequently mine, is that the primary obligation of the Christian artist, whatever his or her medium, is simply to make good art. It may or may not be explicitly Christian. The Cross of Christ, not feebly “stamped on” to get clout in a particular market may be embedded explicitly in the work or the work may engage more with secular themes. That doesn’t matter so much, so long as the intention is to do the very best one can with the gifts God has given one.
I think the same can be said about any honest occupation, any “honorable industry” as our prayer book puts it in its prayer for the nation, whether or not that work is creative in nature. And this includes not just gainful employment, but all virtuous endeavors on which one might spend one’s time and energy. Certainly this is the case with parenting, which I should highlight, it being Mother’s Day. So too might this apply to our social and leisure activities. Whatever we do, if done well and with love, can and should e done to the glory of God.
I went through a phase in Junior High and High School, based on something I’d read somewhere about Jesuit education, in which at least at a particular point in history students were made to write A.M.D.G. (ad majorem Dei gloriam – to the greater glory of God) at the top of every page of schoolwork, so I started doing that. I was not educated by Jesuits except much later, and then only for one course during seminary through cross-registration at a different institution, so I got all sorts of questions from teachers asking why I’d written A.M.D.G. at the top of my literature essay or history exam or whatever. I had mentioned this several years ago to Sue Ann Sandusky, by the way, and then noticed that when she later became clerk of the vestry, “A.M.D.G.” started showing up at the top of our meeting minutes. I think this gets to something we don’t consider as much as we should. Whether it’s a seventeen-year-old’s paper on social hypocrisy in Madame Bovary or minutes from a business meeting, if we do it with the intention of doing our best with the gifts God has given us and to his glory, that work will be done with more intention and care and sometimes even more love.
You see, not only has God given the church and her ministers the power and authority to continue his mission, as evinced by Peter raising Tabitha from the dead. He has also given each individual member of the body, each and every one of you, the power to glorify God. God is glorified in the simple things each and every one of us does do with his or her best efforts, whether that’s sewing a tunic like Tabitha or teaching a class or cooking a meal or coaching a team or playing on one or filling in a spreadsheet or having a conversation with somebody who just needs some encouragement. These are all opportunities for giving our best, if we would, and God will accept every effort. And what he gave Peter is not just for people like me. For the power of God is not chiefly shown by power, or authority, or even miracle, but by lowly service in his name. This is the heart of Christian service, which we might take on for ourselves, knowing that like the garments lovingly sewn by Tabitha, they will not wear out, but will prove themselves to be the robes of victory in the life of the world to come.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.