READING:
John 20:19–end
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Church at the Edge:
The Gospel that Crosses Boundaries
People catching our attention
I wonder who the people were that caught your attention in the bible reading from Acts that we’ve just heard? Who for you were the main protagonists that you would talk about if you were retelling the story to someone who was not at worship with you?
In that reading , we meet two people living on the margins in different ways—Tabitha and Simon the tanner. One was a woman; the other, a man. One celebrated for her goodness and charity; the other, quietly hosts an apostle in the place of his unclean trade. Yet both of them signs of something deeper: the Gospel stretching past old boundaries and drawing new circles of inclusion.
Tabitha
Tabitha—also called Dorcas—is the only woman in the New Testament explicitly named a disciple. She wasn’t just kind; she was known for her kindness. She sewed clothes for those who had none. She gave her time and her gifts to serve others, especially the poor. She didn’t ask for recognition—her compassion was her way of life. And she wasn’t just any disciple: matronly figure, a woman of substance, with a house large enough for others to gather. She is not described by her relationship to a man, nor her social status, but by her faith and her deeds. Whether she was a widow or not, she was clearly devoted to those who were—a woman living in service to the vulnerable. When she died, her death was not met with theological debate or passive acceptance, but with deep, communal grief and a plea for resurrection.
And so when she died, the community didn’t just weep. They acted. They washed her body with care and laid her upstairs, not just to rest—but in hope. They sent for Peter, urgently. When he arrived, it was the widows—those on the edges—who surrounded him, weeping and holding out the clothes Tabitha had made. Not wealth, not property, but acts of love, sewn into fabric.
The account goes on to tell us that Tabatha is restored to life—not just for her sake, but to show the community that love like hers does not die easily.
Simon the tanner’s Hospitality
And then the text tells us something easy to miss: Peter stayed in Joppa. Not in a synagogue. Not in a wealthy home. But with Simon the tanner. A man whose profession— handling animal skins—made him ritually unclean. A man whose home would have been on the outskirts, both literally and spiritually.
This brief mention of Simon the tanner and his hosting of Peter is radical. His work made him ritually unclean, and yet Peter—the leader of the apostles—chose to stay in his house. This would have seemed shocking choice to many. Yet In this simple detail we are prepared for the vision Peter will have in this same home which will shatter the long-held divisions between clean and unclean between Jew and Gentile. And the inclusion of a Roman centurion into the Christian family. So even before that vision comes, God was already at work—placing Peter in the home of a man who lived beyond the edge of religious acceptability
Whispering of a powerful truth
Together, these two stories whisper a powerful truth: the Gospel is always moving toward the edges. It raises up the overlooked. It honours women who serve quietly. It includes the impure, the grieving, the poor. It breaks down barriers—not only of death and ritual purity, but of social status, gender, profession, and pain.
In Tabitha, we see a discipleship of compassion. In Simon, a hospitality of courage: offering hospitality that could have been rejected because of his trade. And in Peter, a disciple who is learning, step by step, to let God reshape his understanding of who belongs to the faith community, who is loved and valued by God.
It is easy to assume the Gospel message is transmitted in powerful and visual ways — preaching, signs, proclamations. Yet here, in a quiet room, through the tears of widows and the humble ministry of care, we see something not so obvious . That God is alongside and with people and situations that others forgets. God honours the overlooked.
It’s no accident. As the early church begins to take shape and root in communities outside Israel Peter is already being led out of comfort zones. He is already beginning to unlearn some of the old categories—clean and unclean, insider and outsider. He is learning, step by step, that the Gospel belongs at the edges.
So what do these stories say to us?
So perhaps this reading and these people, Tabatha, Simon the tanner and Peter offer us a vision of the Church as it should be —not as a place of power, prestige, or purity, but as a gathering of the unlikely, the overlooked, the boundary-breakers. A Church where a woman like Tabitha—perhaps a widow, certainly a leader—embodies discipleship not in sermons but in sewing. A Church where widows are not recipients of pity, but bearers of testimony. A Church where tanners make room for apostles.
This is Church at the edge. Where holiness is found in hospitality. Where resurrection is seen in acts of care. Where boundaries are broken not just with bold statements, but through humble proximity. It raises so many questions and challenges for us.
I Wonder…
- I wonder if our churches make room for the Tabithas and Simons of our communities—the practical, the quiet, the untidy, the unclean. • I wonder if we value the ministry of compassion as much as we do public preaching.
- I wonder who we might be excluding without realising it.
- I wonder how God might be asking us to stretch—to open our homes, cross our boundaries, or trust in the power of quiet resurrection.
A Compassionate Challenge
So Church communities are not meant to be a sealed sanctuary for the “clean.”, for the acceptable . Rather places that are wide-open homes in our communities where we pray and come alongside the grieving, where saints stitch hope into cloth, and where resurrection creeps in quietly among the overlooked.
This is the challenge of Tabitha and Simon. And it is our invitation, too: to become the kind of church where the boundary-breaking love of God is not just preached—but lived, shared, and trusted.
