Fourth Sunday of Easter, Morning Worship, May 11, 2025
Sermon: I Was Naked and You Clothed Me
Accompanying Scripture: Acts 9: 36-43
I Was Naked and You Clothed Me
Imagine a dinner table with a family of four sitting around it. The meal is hot dogs, beans, and a salad. Conversation ensues: How did your day go? Pass the ketchup, please. Do you want ranch or Thousand Island dressing for your salad? Members of the family chat and eat, sometimes talking over each other.
Now, imagine a dinner table in another home. A family of four has a meal of four hot dogs, a cold can of pork and beans, and a bottle of ketchup. The family talks very little. There’s not much food, nothing to pass to each other, and their day wasn’t much to talk about. The same old same old.
What’s the difference? Poverty. In poverty, there is little food and few choices to make. Children don’t learn to use their words because there are so few choices. Life is a daily grind with little to no hope of escaping impoverishment.
In our scripture passage this morning, we meet Tabitha, aka Dorcas. Her name means Gazelle. Tabitha serves the poor widows in her community, both Jews and Gentiles. She has means of her own and stitches clothing for them. Widows in that era lived on the sidelines without family to support them. Gazelle’s works are a vital ministry.
So when she passes away, a crucial ministry and a loving woman are lost. This is important enough that they call for Peter, sending two men to fetch him. They don’t share with him the reason, only the words, “Come at once.” Peter complies.
He sees their love for her and her devotion to her ministry. With God’s help, he resuscitates her.
After he resuscitates her, he takes her hand and helps her up.
When have you received a helping hand? Was it enough for you to proceed, or did you need additional assistance to accomplish your goal?
Take our two families. The children in the first example stand a fair chance of leading a fruitful and successful life. The children in the second example don’t stand as fair a chance. They are not learning to use their words or make choices because fewer choices are available to them. Life is crushing, and they live with that and will probably end up continuing in generational poverty.
They need a hand-up, and they receive one in the form of SNAP (food stamps) and organizations such as Owasso Community Resources. Their teachers work hard with them, helping to educate them so they can leave poverty behind them.
The solution isn’t that simple. Poverty demands a lot of Peter’s and Tabitha’s.
A teenage girl lives on the streets. It’s winter and she’s cold. A saint provides her with money to buy a new winter coat. So, why does she get a tattoo instead? It seems strange and odd and foolish. But, since we don’t live in her world, we can’t understand what she’s going through.
The truth is, she got the tattoo because you can’t steal a tattoo from her.
This is a true story. And it’s happening every day.
God is depending on us to be Peter and Dorcas. These are people who have learned about other cultures. Peter stays with Simon the Tanner, an unclean man of questionable reputation. Dorcas not only has a name, she has two. The Jews use one, and the Gentiles use another. She understands the widows and what they’re going through. There aren’t many people who do.
It’s so easy to see others’ lives through our own lenses. Perhaps we even know people who have lifted themselves out of poverty. The chances are that they lived in situational poverty, a temporary poverty with the mindset and know-how to get themselves out of impoverishment.
I routinely meet people who live on the streets because of circumstances. Sometimes they have a chip on their shoulder as if it’s my fault they’re poor. Sometimes wealth is gained at the expense of others. And we know that copping an attitude won’t fix anything. Learning how to communicate with them is difficult. We resist because they aren’t like us.
I love Peter and Dorcas because they don’t permit rules and cultural differences to get in the way of their ministry. I appreciate organizations like OCR, where we can place our money with other organizations’ money to create a food pantry for thousands.
The Good News is that God provides people of all kinds who give others a helping hand. We resist because those with the most need aren’t easy to work with. We don’t understand how they think.
How do we learn? We listen carefully. Sometimes, that’s all we can do: listen. Other times, we realize that we can do something, such as reading to the children regularly so they learn to use their words.
We can also learn about homelessness and why the solutions aren’t easy. Our youth fed the homeless at Iron Gate recently and learned more about poverty than any book could teach them. They have asked if they can return to serve again.
Peter and Dorcas served because they knew it mattered. It matters today because we have received several hand-ups. Sometimes, we needed Peter and Dorcas, and other times, we were Peter or Dorcas.