God meets us with the poor – Acts 6:1-7

5th Sunday of Easter, Year A; Holy Infant parish

The most curious thing about the first reading we heard today isn’t anything in the reading, or what precedes or follows the reading, but what doesn’t follow it. Let me back up and talk about how we don’t get to where we might think we might get to. The story is about the earliest days of the church in Jerusalem. This happens after Pentecost, but before Paul becoming Christian, for instance, before the church has started expanding outside Jerusalem. The Hellenists we hear about are Jews who grew up in Greek-speaking communities but have since moved to Jerusalem and have joined this nascent Christian community, all of whose leaders are Aramaic speaking Jews (“the Hebrews”). They’re insiders… to some extent. But, they’re also immigrants. And while there’s no debate about them being welcome, as there’ll be debate later about quite on what terms Gentiles are welcome, being welcome isn’t quite the same as being fully integrated, isn’t the same as being always remembered, even. And the complaint comes that their widows are being ignored in the daily distribution of food. The apostles both realize the problem, and realize that they can’t solve it. So, they recruit seven men from among this Hellenist group and put them in charge of ensuring that Hellenist widows are better included.

God calls us by name – Jn 10:1-10, 1 Pet 2:20b-25

Easter, Week 4, Year A; Holy Infant.

Many of you know that before I entered seminary I worked as a prison teacher.  When I first started working there, a lot of the other helping professionals in the prison recognized that there was something about the culture of that place, the marbled unity of grotesque beauty and darkness in search of light, that I needed to understand to be fruitful there, and the only way they could explain it was through stories.  This story’s from a prison chaplain.  I never knew the inmate the story’s about, but it’s a pithy way of getting across in one short graced conversation what I saw so many times, on a much slower scale.  He was young, but a hulk of a man, apparently, intimidating.  By which, I learnt, the chaplain meant both that he looked intimidating, and that he often went out of his way to intimidate people.  He’d stand at the back of the chapel throughout Mass, defiant.  After several weeks of this, the chaplain approached him and asked: “What’s your name?”  “Striker,” came back the answer.  “That’s not a name, that’s a committal offense, a claim, a front.  What’s your name?”  “González.”  “OK, but I’m not going to call you by your last name. That’s not how you were baptized.  What’s your name?  What does your momma call you?”  The next answer, I won’t repeat in church.  That’s what his mother called him, something I won’t repeat in church.  “She’s mad with you a lot, huh?”  “Yeah.  I’m bad.”  It wasn’t a confession, it wasn’t a boast; it was just a flat statement of fact.  “But, I bet that wasn’t what she called you when you were a baby, huh?  What does your momma call you when she’s not mad with you?”  “OK, my first name is Napoleón.”  “Nice name.  But that’s not what I asked.  What does your momma call you when she’s not mad with you?”  Out of a face, I came to know so well that was about to erupt in something, you just didn’t know what, came: “Well, sometimes… she’d call me Napito.”  “Napito.  Can I call you that?”  I wonder how long since he’d heard that. He didn’t say. He just replied, “Sure, padre.  That would be chido.”