Texts: Acts 9:36-4, Ps 23, Rev 7:9-17, John 10:22-30

Clothes Laundered

Our readings this morning take us from simple life situations to the most sublime of heavenly images. Mainly, in these next minutes, I want just to expose the context of these passages. On the simple existential page, there’s a tanner, named Simon, who lends Peter his spare room in Jaffa, present day Tel Aviv. And there’s also in that same port town a seamstress, Tabitha or, in Greek, Dorcas. Both names mean a gazelle, a pretty name for a lady. Chronologically and geographically, we are at an important turning point in the first years of Christianity, Acts ch 9. Saul, the hard line Jewish Pharisee who had been persecuting any of his people who turned to faith in Jesus, has just experienced his own conversion and we know he will come to establish churches and spread the Christian faith all around the Eastern Mediterranean, mostly in fact to non-Jews. As to Peter, this chapter prepares the reader for the next ch where Peter also will experience the Spirit’s direction to open the door of faith in Jesus to all nations. 

Perhaps out of fear of Saul, Peter has left Jerusalem. And as he travels, he witnesses to the power of the risen Jesus Christ in speech and in miraculous acts of healing. He has just cured a paralytic man, named Aeneas.  And now he is beckoned to the bed side of Tabitha who in fact has died. And just as Jesus had raised Lazarus and the daughter of one good man named Jairus from the sleep of the dead, so does Peter bring Tabitha back to life. Of course bringing a person back from death is not a simple occurrence. Although, with modern technology, it does happen. What I want to underline is that Aeneas, Simon, and Tabitha or Dorcas were people, real common people with common names. Aeneas had been paralyzed for a long time. So he had most certainly lost his profession and so likely his place in society. Tabitha on the other hand was well known and well loved as an active seamstress, for she did not only dress fancy ladies but was also generous to the poor. We gather her death had been relatively sudden. As to Simon, the tanner, he gives us a particular glimpse into the kind of people who, hearing about the risen Christ, believed.

Now I like leather shoes and boots and coats. But I’ve never visited a tannery. Apparently such places reek. As I said, in the next chapter, Peter is going to be surprised because the Spirit will call him to visit the home of a non-Jew, and there to eat all kinds of strange non-kosher or forbidden foods. There’s nothing un kosher or verboten about Simon and a tannery, except the stink of the place. This is how my beautiful leather is made: 

Formerly, tanning was considered a noxious or "odoriferous trade" and relegated to the outskirts of town, among the poor. Indeed, tanning by ancient methods is so foul-smelling that tanneries are still isolated from those towns today where the old methods are used. Skins typically arrived at the tannery dried stiff and dirty with soil and gore. First, the ancient tanners would soak the skins in water to clean and soften them. Then they would pound and scour the skin to remove any remaining flesh and fat. Hair was removed by soaking the skin in urine,[2] painting it with an alkaline lime mixture, or simply allowing the skin to putrefy for several months then dipping it in a salt solution. After the hair was loosened, the tanners scraped it off with a knife. Once the hair was removed, the tanners would "bate" (soften) the material by pounding dung into the skin, or soaking the skin in a solution of animal brains. Bating was a fermentative process that relied on enzymes produced by bacteria found in the dung.

We can imagine that if Tabitha lived in the centre of town, Simon lived on the outskirts, likely near the sea. 

Here’s an interesting fact, aside. All the shoes and boots for all the allied armies in the first world war were made in the tannery in Huntsville. I have been told that almost all our trees in this part of Ontario - oaks and hemlock - were cut down for that wartime industry and so there are practically no old-growth trees around. And it has been confirmed to me that even in the 60’s there was a tannery in Orillia, I quote, “and did it stink!”

  Well, today we’re also talking about lambs and sheep and shepherds. That is/was also a dirty business. Anyone who has had to sheer sheep in the rain knows it. And yet shepherds were the first, before sages, to visit the manger of the new born Christ. And, by the way, the fishing profession of the first disciples is not the sweetest of businesses either. 

So the Bible underscores not only the talent of soft, creative hands, like those of many of our mothers, to sew beautiful garments and adornments, but also the nitty grittiness of much of the work of common people, all of whom are called to belong to the highest orders and honours of Christian life.

I really enjoyed last week’s sermon by Gordon Timbers about Emmaus and the journey we make together, about the importance of doing things, eating together in fellowship, and recognizing Christ in those with whom we share the journey. So today, the focus is on these very people, like Cleopas and the other chap and Simon and Aeneas and Tabitha. Tabitha is called a disciple. And if the two in the auberge at Emmaus recognized Jesus at the moment he broke the bread, that means they also must have experienced Jesus breaking bread. So the disciples were many more than just the 12. And we know more about them than we think.

Before getting to the passage in Revelations, we need to look at the gospel text, ch 10 of John. This is the famous good shepherd speech, where Jesus says he is the gate of the sheepfold, the gatekeeper, as well as the shepherd whose voice the sheep recognize, who lays down his life for the sheep. It takes place in Jerusalem and causes some discrepancy amongst those listeners who do not adhere easily to Jesus. So they pull him aside as he strolls in the Portico and ask him to be more forthright with them. “If you are the Christ, tell us plainly”. Jesus answers using the same illustration of sheep to infer that they don’t get his message because they don’t recognize his voice as being the voice of the shepherd. 

In Jewish literature, there is a story about Rabbi Joshua ben Levi who met the prophet Elijah and asked him, "When will the Messiah come?" For the Prophet Elijah is the one who will announce the coming of the Messiah.

Elijah replied, "You should ask that question of the Messiah himself."

Where will I find him? - at the door of the city, Elijah said, with the poor and the sick who are binding their wounds. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi found the Messiah there. "Peace unto you, Master and Teacher," he greeted Him.

"Peace unto you, son of Levi," the Messiah replied.

"When will my Master appear?" Rabbi Joshua inquired.

"Today! Even today..." the Messiah replied.

Full of joy, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi returned to Elijah and told him what the Messiah had said. But Elijah explained: the Messiah meant "today" as it is said in Ps 95: O that today you would listen to his voice!

So listening for the voice of God is one great theme in the Bible. Time and again Jesus refers to it, saying “for those who have ears, let them hear”.

To appreciate that conversation in the portico of the temple, We have also to remember that God the Father was understood in biblical terms as the One good Shepherd of Israel, as we know from the 23rd psalm. So when Jesus extends the metaphor saying that he and the Father are One, that the good shepherd God the Father and Jesus himself are one, the people questioning Jesus turn their ears away and pick up stones to throw at him, charging him with blasphemy, for Jesus is only a man. At that point Jesus pleads that they would understand that even if they do not believe in him, they should see that he is doing the work of God the Father. and that those who see and believe are the same who have ears that recognize and hear the voice of the Good Shepherd.             

I think that this is very important for today’s world. Wherever else can we hear the kind of God our world needs and see what God would do in this mess of a world other than in Jesus and in those who teach, act and heal like He did. 

So we come to our passage in Revelations. Again, I wish to put it into context. You know, the book starts with letters to 7 churches located in Asia minor. That section ends with the beautiful line where, supposedly the Christ, says “Behold, I stand at the door of your hearts and knock, knock, knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and sup with them and they with me”. That was ch 3. Ch 4 begins a series of visions through a door which is open through the vault of Heaven. Our door may be closed, but God’s door is open. Well, John the dreamer is invited through that door to be shown in Heaven, beginning with the glory of the throne of the most high, from which, echoing similar passages inn the Old Testament, come many of our liturgical declarations like “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was, who is and who is to come”, but also John is supposedly shown what will happen on Earth. It’s written in a book 7 times sealed, and John weeps because noone on Earth or in Heaven is capable of breaking the seals. Do not weep, says an angel, for the Lion of Judah can do it. And then mystically the Lion becomes a lamb. 

How does the Lion become the lamb? It can only be in the sense of the change from strength to vulnerability. The church of the 21st c, in a pluralistic society that puts Christianity at odds and even in a minority is coming to understand that vulnerability is a large part of her role.  The vulnerable, sacrificed lamb takes the book and opens the 7 seals, which show, in order, Victory, war, famine, disease, the patience of martyrs, ecological disaster,.. and the 7th, which concerns the culminating verses read today - the rewarding of the saints, those very sheep of Christ’s flock, the Marys, Marthas, Lazaruses, Simons, Peters, Johns, Tabithas, Dorcases, Cleopases, and all the myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands of us others. Their prayers rise up like incense. 

John the revealer is asked, why do you think they are dressed in white? He retorts, “you are an elder, you should know”. 

It would be interesting to do a study of clothes in the Bible. In the similar apocalyptic visions in the book of Zecharaiah 3, the priest who has come through the Exile stands in the court of the Most High in ragged clothes. The angel of the Lord orders “take off his filthy clothes. See, I have taken your guilt away and will clothe you with festal apparel”. Remember also the first thing the father says to the returning prodigal son: fetch the best robe and put it upon him! So here the elder answers the seer, John, “all right, I’ll tell you. These are dressed in fine robes because they have washed them white in the blood of the lamb.” Through their own suffering as witnesses of Christ’s saving grace, they have been made pure and whole and so now they happily serve him day and night, singing joyous songs, dwelling safe in God’s sanctuary, because the Lion of Judah who became the Lamb they now recognize as their shepherd.  

Well that’s a lot of visionary stuff. But it’s great because it raises us out from the nitty gritty of our daily jobs and tasks. Like that old story about the 2 soldiers who are both dying but the one, face down, looks into the mud, and the other, face up, looks at the stars. 

Tabitha is brought back into the sewing circle of her friends; for a moment the tanner can imagine his apron become a robe white and sweet like fresh snow. Our everyday lives are reset on the highest and most worthy level. And the hope of an ultimate glorious reality brings us, along with all the generations before us, through time and changing cultures, through increasing knowledge, with steps forward and steps backward, to that wonderful day when we can say together, in the deepest happiness, “Praise and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and strength to our God for ever and ever. That day is today for those who know his voice. 

Haapiseva Jane