Fourth Sunday of Easter, 12 May 2019
Austwick, Clapham, Keasden
Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.
In your family history, have you got a tanner? With all the cattle and sheep rearing in the Dales, it’s not surprising that the West Riding was a centre of the British tanning industry from at least the 16th century. So there is evidence of old tanneries all around here: at Bolton Priory where the remains of tanning pits are on display, or just south of Malham where there is a Tanpits Bridge over a Tanpits Beck. Old OS maps show a tannery near Mearbeck Farm, Long Preston and tan pits on the eastern edge of Langcliffe village. In Settle a farmhouse was converted into a tannery around 1792 and is still called The Tannery. 19th century Leeds was second only to London as an industrial leather producer. There are still industrial tanners operating in Bradford and Leeds today. [1]
They were very smelly places, tanneries, in the old days. You wouldn’t want to live downwind of one. In ancient history, tanning was considered a noxious or ‘odiferous trade’ and relegated to the outskirts of town, amongst the poor. Skins typically arrived at the tannery dried stiff and dirty with soil and gore. The tanner would first soak the skins in water to clean and soften them, then they would pound and scour them to remove any remaining flesh and fat. Next, to remove the hair from the skin the tanner either soaked the skin in urine, or painted it with an alkaline lime mixture, or let the skin putrefy for several months before dipping it in a salt solution. After scraping the hair off with a knife, the tanner would soften, or ‘bate’ the material by soaking the skin in a solution of animal brains, or by pounding dog or pigeon dung into the skin: sometimes using his bare feet to knead the skins in a vat of dung water, which could take two or three hours. [2]
So, yes - Simon’s tannery would have been a smelly, messy place, and whilst it was generous of Simon to invite Peter to stay there, you might imagine the - by then - infamous evangelist and healer thinking twice before he accepted. You can imagine why tanning was solitary work… and for first Century Jews it was something else as well. According to Jewish law anyone who handled or came in contact with animal carcasses became ritually unclean. Recall how Jesus was often criticised for associating with people considered unclean or defiled: here we find Peter doing just the same. [3]
But let’s not forget that Peter was a fisherman by trade, another pretty smelly job, another routine considered to be ritually unclean. The fisherman unreservedly accepting the tanner’s faithful hospitality: it says something about the origins of Christianity that in the early days it was ordinary working people who embraced the faith and carried the message as they lived it out.
And people also like Tabitha, who like so many of the good Christian women in our communities today, quite simply ‘devoted herself to good works and acts of charity’. For Tabitha, or in Greek, Dorcas, her charitable acts involved making clothes for widows. Like the fisherman apostle and the hospitable tanner, here it is the textile-worker, the garment-maker living out her faith by clothing the poor. No wonder that the community loved this woman for the generous life she lived, so that when she died they cried and wept and prayed, just as we cry and weep and pray when one of our much-loved faithful ones passes.
It’s a very simple point to make, a very simple sermon to preach, the message that Christianity is the practice of ordinary people responding to God by giving of themselves in the ways they know best, to demonstrate love and charity to others.
But I make this simple point because it’s sometimes overlooked. Sometimes we think that the good Christians are the ones who ‘know it all’ about Jesus: that today’s true disciples of Jesus are those who can talk the talk and pray the prayers; who know the difference between a dogma and a catechism and when to stand up and sit down in any particular service. They’re not everyday people like us. But the reality is, being a disciple is not like ‘having a degree in God’. [4] It’s about being ourselves with God. And simply trying to spend our days walking with him, following in his way.
Now if you want to learn more about Jesus and the bible and faith then this summer I’m launching two new monthly events - an informal Sunday evening service where we will explore an aspect of our faith together, and a midweek bible study for anyone who’d like to attend. I long for all disciples to grow in confidence and understanding of our faith. Whether or not this appeals to you, if it’s your intention to try to follow the way of Jesus day by day then be encouraged that it’s not just ‘knowing about your faith: it is also about living it, and in that way sharing it with others.’ [5]
Back to Tabitha, also called Dorcas, the maker of clothes. It's fascinating to discover the history of so-called Dorcas Clubs or Dorcas Societies, which began in the 19th century in the front rooms of middle-class women, meeting to make textiles to distribute to the poor in the parish, the materials paid for with money they'd each raised themselves. Later, Christian missionary women introduced Dorcas groups to the Caribbean, and then as women from the Caribbean moved to the UK in the 1950s and ‘60s, the clubs moved with them, and they continue in various forms today. [6]
I’m thinking of one woman I know who lost her son in a road crash some years back and who now devotes time to knitting shawls to give to other mothers who have been through the same sort of bereavement. Praying blessings as she knits, and offering the shawl as a gift, is her way of reaching out to those in need of comfort and solace, with empathy and in celebration and joy. [7]
I’m also thinking of a childhood friend of mine who recently died. An everyday disciple, an ordinary follower of Jesus. Who as a teenager when our group of friends were out, would always bring her knitting with her; who as an adult, and an aunt and cousin and friend to many children, ceaselessly made clothes for these little ones as a way of showing her love. She never seemed to worry about following fashion, about how she herself looked, for she was entirely comfortable in herself, and was content to spend her time giving, and sharing with others. [8]
It’s not rocket science, being a disciple of Jesus. It’s for everyday people just like us.
Notes
[1] Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, Out of Oblivion: A Landscape Through Time. Leather and Tallow.
[2] Russ Hewett, The Widow & the Tanner. Meeting Place Church blog, April 18, 2016. Thanks to Paul Nuechterlein (Girardian Lectionary, Reflections, Easter 4C) for the link.
[3] Russ Hewett, The Widow & the Tanner. Meeting Place Church blog, April 18, 2016.
[4] The Bishop of Chelmsford, the Rt Revd Stephen Cottrell quoted in Paul Handley, ACC-17: ‘intentional discipleship is about a Jesus-shaped life’. Church Times, 1 May 2019.
[5] The Bishop of Chelmsford, the Rt Revd Stephen Cottrell quoted in Paul Handley, ACC-17: ‘intentional discipleship is about a Jesus-shaped life’. Church Times, 1 May 2019.
[6] Rose Sinclair, New research explores how women used textile clubs as networks for social and economic change. Goldsmiths, University of London, 11 November 2015.
[7] Singing the Faith, Meet Anna Briggs: hymn writer and knitter (Part 2); also the Prayer Shawl Ministry Home Page.
[8] Sue Lees: may she rest in peace and rise in crochet.
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