Call To Worship (after Isaiah 49:15-16)
One: Come now, to be embraced in arms that long to hold you.
All: We come, to let ourselves be enfolded in the love of God for all.
One: Come now, and hear the promise of God
All: that like a mother who does not forget the baby at her breast,
One: like a mother who never fails to have compassion on the children she has borne,
All: God never forgets and never fails to have compassion on us.
One: Our names are engraved on the palms of God’s hands,
All: and our life is ever on God’s heart.
One: Come now; be embraced by One who longs to embrace us.
All: We come, to let ourselves be enfolded in the love of God for all.
Opening Prayer
One: Holy One, whose hands bear the scars of unending love,
All: we are grateful to be your children, members together of your household.
One: You set a table, and tell us it’s time to come in.
All: We hear ourselves called, each one of us by name.
One: We come as we are to the table – enough places for all.
All: You begin to serve, and we are ready to be fed.
Prayer of Confession
One: Holy One, to you who knows us all, and loves every one as, and for who we are,
All: we confess the ways we come to your table:
One: distracted by many things,
All: paying only part-attention to you and what you have for us…
One: quarreling and dividing among ourselves,
All: forgetting to love, to care for, and to be the one family we are of your womb …
One: angry and sullen,
All: hanging on to slights and hurts …
One: aloof and withdrawn,
All: imagining aloneness, apart-ness, and entitlement …
One: impatient and rushed,
All: already thinking about where we want to be, and imagine we have to be, next…
Prayer for Forgiveness
One: Help us, O Holy One
All: to be as present to you, as you are to us.
One: And to be here in the same Spirit
All: of forgiving love.
Assurance of Forgiveness (after Isaiah 49:17-18)
One: We are assured that God’s wish is not to judge and scatter, nor to withhold love,
All: but always and in the end, to call us in from the furthest place,
to
gather us together, children together in one household of love.
Scripture Reading: Acts 9:32-43
As Peter traveled about the country, he went to visit the Lord’s people who lived in Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas, who was paralyzed and had been bedridden for eight years. “Aeneas,” Peter said to him, “Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and roll up your mat.” Immediately Aeneas got up. All those who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw him and turned to the Lord.
In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (in Greek her name is Dorcas); she was always doing good and helping the poor. About that time, she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. Lydda was near Joppa; so, when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, “Please come at once!”
Peter went with them, and when he arrived, he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them.
Peter sent them all out of the room; then he got down on his knees and prayed. Turning toward the dead woman, he said, “Tabitha, get up.” She opened her eyes, and seeing Peter she sat up. He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet.
Then he called for the believers, especially the widows, and presented her to them alive. This became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord. Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a tanner named Simon.
Reflection
Almost as soon as she started at the school, she was called “Fatty Legs” by the other girls because of some terribly unfortunate stockings that the sisters at the school, who were really parentis in loco, made her wear. When she had left home for the school, her mother had given her some good grey stockings to wear in the coldest months, but as soon as she arrived, the sisters took them from her, along with everything else from her home and family.
They gave her some second-hand red stockings instead. The only red stockings in the school, making her stand out. And because they didn’t fit properly, they made her legs look fat. To the other girls, “Fatty Legs” became her name.
The sisters of the school also gave her a name. Olemaun tells the story of how on one of her first days there, one of the sisters said to her – in Olemaun’s language, “And who do you think you are?”
“I am Olemuan Pokiak,” I told her, puffing my chest [as only a proud 8-year-old can do].
She’d been given that name by her grandfather. It was the name of his Yupik mother, her great-grandmother. Olemaun meant the super-hard stone that is used to sharpen an ulu – an all-purpose knife used by Inuit, Yupik, and Aleut women for everything from skinning animals to cutting meat for the children. So an olemaun was an important stone to have – one you’d keep safe in your pack and never want to lose, if you want your knives to be sharp, and the lives of your family long.
Her name said everything she needed to know about herself – where she came from, where she belonged, and the legacy she carried as a child of an indigenous family of hunters on Baillie Island and Banks Island, in the Beaufort Sea north-west of Tuktoyaktuk.
But, as the story of her life at the school goes on: “We use our Christian names here,” the sister said. “And we speak English.” She narrowed her eyes. “You are Margaret,” she said, switching languages [to English].
She could say what she wanted – I knew what my grandfather had named me. But I could not tell her…
Within herself, though – in her mind and her heart, she never stopped being Olemaun. It was hard. And two years later when she was preparing to return to her family for the summer, one of the sisters – Sister MacQuillan, who seemed to understand her more humanely than the others, made a point of seeking her out. She gave Olemaun a very thoughtful gift, and then said,
“You will be very missed, Margaret.” She paused a moment. Then she changed her words. “You will be very missed, Olemaun.”
She had called me by my name – the name I had not heard in two years. Hearing it now brought tears to my eyes.
“Qugyuk,” I said, pointing to her. It was the name I had always associated with her: Swan.
Sister MacQuillan elongated her neck and raised her arms like she would take flight. [Somehow, in the speaking of their true names, both were set free.]
Olemaun didn’t return to the school after that summer. When her father heard what it was like, he made sure she didn’t have to. She remained with her family, even though she found it difficult to reconnect with their life and her culture even after only those two years away. She grew up, though, found work in Tuktoyaktuk, and later moved to Fort St John where she became a cowboy’s wife and raised eight children with him.
And through all this, she eventually found her own voice, trusted it, and began speaking, writing and publishing her own deep stories of resilience and of reclaiming her cultural identity. She became active in passing on traditional Inuvialuit culture to others – becoming, in a way, a mother and grandmother to her people. Today she is a beloved speaker across the country, and a language keeper for her people, helping them to know, love and value themselves for who they are most truly, in and through their own language.
Our Bible reading this morning also features the story of a woman who was a caregiver to many, who was raised to new life by the speaking and the hearing of her name. She lived in the city of Joppa, a major trading centre on the Mediterranean coast about 60 kms northwest of Jerusalem.
She was a disciple of the new-found Way of Jesus. She made clothes, and was always doing good and helping the poor. She was also so unprejudiced and inclusive in her care for others, that she was known and beloved by both the Jewish and the Greek populations in the city. To the Jews she was “Tabitha,” meaning one possessing beauty and grace, like a gazelle or a deer; and to the Greeks she was “Dorcas”, meaning … one possessing beauty and grace, like a gazelle or a deer. Everyone, both Jew and Greek, knew her for who she really was.
When she fell ill and died, many mourned her passing. Hearing that Peter, who’d gained a reputation as a healer, was in the area, someone sent for him. And we know what happens.
Peter arrives. He sends everyone out of the room where her body has been laid. He kneels and prays. Turns towards the woman. And says, “Tabitha, get up.” She opens her eyes, sees Peter, and sits up. He takes her hand, and helps her to her feet.
I wonder. Is Peter’s speaking of her name part of the cure? Is Tabitha’s hearing of her name spoken in her native tongue, part of what helps her rise to new life from out of the darkness and deep fog of death? Is there something that powerful about our name and our truest self?
Throughout the whole story in Acts, people are remembered and honoured by name. Like in the reading today, at the start it’s not just “a man in Lydda healed of paralysis by Peter” but it’s Aeneas, who was paralyzed for eight years. At the end, it's not just “Peter stayed at someone’s house” but it's that Simon the tanner opened his house to him. And in the middle – the story is not just about the healing of a seamstress who did a lot of good for the poor, but it’s about Tabitha, whose name in Greek is Dorcas.
And is the speaking of her name by Peter part of what helps cut through the cords of illness and death that have come to bind her? Is her name like an ulu skillfully wielded in the hands of an Inuvialuit woman? Is that careful attention to the truth of each one, part of what sets Tabitha free, and slices through the layers of grief oppressing and binding everyone in that house? Sets each one free for newness of life and of love?
In the neighbourhood I live in, I’ve noticed that three or four people in particular, every time they greet someone on the street, make a point of addressing the other by name. Rather than just a casual all-purpose “Hello,” or “Good morning” or the more ubiquitous, semi-grunted, “Hi,” what I hear is “Good morning, Brian,” “Lovely day, Brian,” or even “Hi, Brian! How are you?”
And I know they mean it. That they know and care about me for who I am, as a unique and individual person with my own life and my own life-story on the street. And when I hear that, I can’t help but feel called and raised up within myself, to a new level of self-care and of care for others around me. It’s like something heavy, numbin,g and invisible-or-anonymous making that our society seems to specialize in, is stripped away from my soul, and I become more able and encouraged to be a real person – a unique human being, my true self among them and for them.
I wonder about lonely and isolated people all around us. Persons in grief, persons suffering depression, mental illness, emotional distress, addiction, poverty, some personal or family crisis, marginalization or isolation or racialization or powerlessness of any kind.
What difference does it make when someone remembers their name?
Are some of the oppressive and numbing things in their life stripped away and lifted from them – even if just a little bit, when someone sees then for who they are, and honours their true self? Is something valuable and precious brought back to life within them when – like God with each of us – someone knows and addresses their true self?
What does it mean to you, what is stirred and brought back to life in you, when someone knows and speaks to you by the name that is really yours and really you?
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