Easter 4

Easter 4C: Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23;

Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30

The Rev. Stephen Siptroth

May 11, 2025

What’s in a name?  Each of us has one; maybe more than one. Growing up, I was always Stephen, never Steve.  My dad was Steve.  Everyone called me Stephen.  Except for my Dad’s mother, who called me Stevers.  My cousin Jill also calls me this, even to this day.  But just about everyone else called me Stephen all through grade school.

In high school, there was the beginning of the name Steve.  Teachers called me Stephen, family called me Stephen, but friends began calling me Steve.  To this day, the friends I met in high school continue to call me Steve. 

Steve continued through college.  All my college friends called me Steve and, so, I adopted it and began introducing myself as Steve.  After college, I gradually got back to being Stephen. 

You can kind of tell what era of my life I met people in based on what name they use.  And nicknames, too.  Friends from law school continue to call me “Stobris,” not Stephen.  Stobris is a mash up of my first name name and the last name of our property professor, Professor Dobris.  Professor Dobris was probably in his late sixties, maybe early seventies; he was kind, but extremely jaded, and he had an extremely dry sense of humor.  For whatever reason, my friends felt that they were beginning to see these qualities growing in me, and, so, I was nicknamed “Stobris” and it stuck.  For nearly 20 years, and they still call me that.

Naming is also something we do.  We name people and other things.  Eileen and I live in a neighborhood with a lot of animals that run around at night, and we love all of them.  Four or five years ago, there was a home-invasion robbery about four blocks away from us, so we put in a Ring camera.  The truth is, the only thing we really use it for is to watch all the critters come through our yard or up on our porch. 

We’ve named them.  There’s “Hank” and “Wilson,” the two raccoons that roll through and eat whatever cat food is remaining on our porch.  Then there’s “Irwin,” the possum, who does pretty much the same thing.  One day, he pulled a garbage bag out of our bin and enjoyed the remnants of sushi and Japanese food.  “Pumpkin” is the black cat who showed up around Halloween.  She would come by from time to time, hiss at me, and still manage to get food out of us.  A couple of years ago, another tomcat took over and has adopted us – his name is “Hugh.”  There’s also “Pippa.” a young female cat that comes by, too.  She’s “Pippa” because our indoor female cat is the princess – like Princess Kate and her sister… Pippa.

Eileen and I also have names for one another.  Those will not be shared.

There is something special in naming, in being named.  Naming imprints something on a person or animal that speaks to something about the nam-er and the relationship between the name-er and who is being named.  And it may also say something about the wider circles of people who surround us.  It is an intimate and beautiful thing to name and to be named, and to choose a name.  I think my first Sunday with you was the same Sunday that we celebrated Mina Marie chosing her name in an intimate and beautiful ceremony.

Womanist theologian the Rev. Dr. Wilma Gafney writes about how Tabitha was named.  The Aramaic language was the language of the people because empires imposed the language on them.  In this language, the name “Tabitha” means “gazelle,” an animal that was strong and swift.  Gafney explains that the Hebrew word for gazelle, “zivyah,” was also the name of one of Judah’s great queen mothers who ruled for her son when he ascended the throne at the tender age seven upon his father’s death.”  Tabitha’s name, translated into Greek, is “Dorcas.”

Tabitha is the only woman disciple referred to by name in the New Testament – the only one expressly connecting her name with being a disciple.  Some suggest that Tabitha may have been called a disciple because of her faithfulness.  But others suggest that Tabitha met and followed Jesus – that her discipleship was original.  Interestingly, while there are other conversion stories in the Gospels and in Acts, we do not hear of a conversion story for Tabitha.  She is already a faithful disciple of Jesus.  And perhaps this tells us that she was in the first inner circle, among the first friends of Jesus from the beginning.  While the author of Luke and Acts focused in on this resurrection story, likely for its parallels to Jesus raising Jarius’s daughter – a healing and resurrection story liked by physician Luke – it could have been told without naming Tabitha.  And, yet, she is named. 

Not only is she named, but she is named as a person of good works and mercy that she showed to other women in the community – a kind of diaconal ministry to which she had dedicated herself, contributing from her own funds for the good of the people.  And Tabitha didn’t just give.  Tabitha built social networks among the widows she met and the women she met.  She built community among the unnamed widows, in the words of Wilma Gafney, “…some widowed by death, some by abandonment, some who chose celibacy, some old, some young, women who also chose to follow Christ and follow Tabitha as she followed Christ.”   These are the women who would return Tabitha’s good works through their own act of love: washing her body after her death, and keeping vigil. 

Now, Peter may be able to claim a resurrection story in the name of Jesus, but so can Tabitha.  Because she ministered to the widows, to women, to those in her Joppa community that others would overlook.  She saw their dignity and loved them, evident from the story telling us about the love they extended her after her death.  She committed to them, and they committed to her.  And while Luke’s author evidently felt their names weren’t important, we can be sure that they were to Tabitha.  Tabitha knew them and loved each of them by name, reminding them that God does, too.  Each person, loved by the name God gives them, not based on their social location in this world, nor by the name given them and chosen for them by others.  The resurrection of their spirts, of their beings, of the self-view and sense of self worth would all be because of Tabitha – Tabitha, who knew each of them intimately and by name.  And it is by name that Peter calls her – calling Tabitha back, by name.  “Tabitha, arise.”

The story of Tabitha can tell us many things.  Maybe one of the most important lessons that lies in the story of Tabitha is the power of names and naming, and the power of knowing people by name.  Tabitha’s name is known to us because of her prominence as a disciple that came from her faithfulness and the networks that she built ministering to others that she knew by name – others who society would forget, or overlook, or neglect, these are the people that Tabitha knew by name.  May we come to know them too, because if there is any resurrection, it is a resurrection that we share through all the ways we care for one another and come to know one another, intimately, and by name.