Dorcas

When I was a child, I went with my mother to every church event next door. I had to. My parents couldn’t afford a babysitter, and my sisters were in college by the time I was seven. So I learned a lot about ladies’ clubs and Jell-O salad and other things that have turned out to be useful to a parish priest.

One church group that always mystified me was the Dorcas Society. Their function was clear enough – sewing items of clothing that would be given away. My mother and the other women would haul their sewing machines to the church once a month and sit for several hours turning big pieces of cloth into real clothes. I was fascinated by the magic of it all. Years afterward I was happy to get my mother’s old sewing machine and make everything from curtains to jumpers to kites.

But who or what was Dorcas? That was the mystery. Only much later did I realize that the group was named after someone in the Bible, the subject of this week’s resurrection story. (Or perhaps resuscitation; the text only says that Peter brought her back to life.) Dorcas must have either been pretty or fleet of foot to get her name (which means gazelle, as does Tabitha in Aramaic). Dorcas was also an excellent seamstress, even without a brand new Singer. When she died, her sewing club showed Peter the extensive wardrobe she had made by hand.

The story really is touching. Dorcas had died and was prepared for burial. The word had gotten out that Peter the Wonderworker was in a nearby town, so he was sent for. When he arrived, he was shown to the upper room where the weeping widows were keeping watch over the body. Peter needed some quiet, so he had them leave and then prayed. When he said “Tabitha, get up,” she opened her eyes and saw him. Then he put his rough fisherman’s hand in her soft seamstress’s hand and she got up, just like that.

Jesus had used similar words when he held the hand of a twelve-year-old child: Talitha cum – “Child, arise.” In that case, too, someone who was dead returned to life. One can speculate on natural reasons how it happened; certainly before embalming people were buried alive. But that’s not the point. The point is that one who seemed dead was now alive.

We aren’t told if Dorcas went back to sewing, but I’m sure she did. Like her namesakes centuries later, she probably got together again with her friends and turned shapeless fabric into useful clothing, amid talk of the latest doings and a table of Jell-O salads waiting by the side. That’s really what the church is at its best: people enjoying one another’s company while doing something that takes them beyond themselves. That, and making sure there’s enough food to eat when the work’s finished.

4 Easter: Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30.