2004-05-02 Easter 4C I Shall Not Want Script.lwp - Page 1 of 2
The story of Jesus - his life, death, and resurrection - is the “greatest story ever told:” It is an
impressive story that could have ended with Jesus ascending to his Father and leaving behind a bunch
of disciples who were very impressed, but still scared.
But it didn’t end there. The Holy Spirit came on Pentecost, and the church was born. The story
continues in the lives of all who follow Jesus, the Good Shepherd.
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, as you may already have guessed from the liturgy. We didn’t
read Psalm 23 yet, but we will pray it in a little while.
Joyce Hollyday tells a story of learning about Jesus the Good Shepherd as a child. Like many
children, she immediately loved the image of the good shepherd. But she got confused when she
memorized Psalm 23 because she would run the phrases of the first verse together so they came out as,
“The Lord is my shepherd I shall now want,” and wondered why anyone would not want to follow this
shepherd who was supposed to be so good.
Today’s story is a little vignette from the lives of two disciples who chose to follow Jesus, the
Good Shepherd.
Just to put the story in context, the book of Acts continues Luke’s gospel and traces the spread
of the gospel from “Jerusalem . . . to the end of the earth.” The disciples have received the power of the
Holy Spirit. They are witnesses. They continue the story.
Tabitha is one of these disciples.
Her story comes after Saul’s conversion and the end of persecution of the church. The Christian
movement has spread from Jerusalem and now has reached Samaria and the seacoast. Soon it will go
even further, when Peter begins the ministry to the Gentiles. But for now, the community is at peace and
being built up. Peter, an uneducated fisherman, is a pastor, going “here and there among them.”
Tabitha (Dorcas) must have been a remarkable woman. (Luke calls her a “disciple” and uses
the only occurrence in the New Testament of the feminine form of that word.) She is also the only
person recorded to have been raised from the dead by a disciple of Jesus. It was a miracle. But raising
Tabitha from the dead was only one of many miracles going on every day in God’s new community.
It happened in the port of Joppa, northwest of Jerusalem, a place where there were many
grieving widows whose husbands had been claimed by the sea, women who once watched and hoped
and prayed for their return - but now they had all they could do just to get by.
These women had no one to take care of them or represent them or protect them. Just because
they were widows, they were on the bottom rung of society. They lived without hope. That was the way
it was, the status quo. Maybe they couldn’t even imagine the truth of “I shall not want.”
But - and here is one miracle - Tabitha could imagine something different because she was part
of the new community of the risen Christ, this house of the Lord in which no one stays in his or her
place, this community in which common fishermen preached to the temple authorities and women could
take on leadership roles because there was no Jew nor Greek, no male nor female, no slave nor free
because all are one in Christ.
Tabitha knew the story. She lived the story.
And so, because she was moved to compassion by the plight of the widows of Joppa, because
she was not willing to wait for the elders of the church to develop a welfare system to take care of the
widows, because she had the power of the Holy Spirit, Tabitha did what she had the power to do. She
began a faith-based ministry - sewing clothes - tunics and coats to keep these women warm or even to
sleep on at night. Her home became a center for goodness and mercy and hope. Another miracle.
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