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.
All of that
sounds pretty straightforward. The church is concerned to feed the hungry. The
church tries to feed everyone, but find itself plagued by the same problems of
inclusion that any human institution faces. The church, in this way led by the
Spirit, tries to find a solution; one that involves equipping people to do
ministry. What’s surprising is that never again in Acts do we hear a story
about these seven men feeding anyone. And even that might not be surprising if
we never heard of them again. But we do! We hear about Philip giving instruction
in the faith and baptizing, we hear about Stephen preaching, in the face of
such opposition that he becomes the first Christian martyr. The tradition of
Stephen actually doing the grunt work of feeding the hungry is engrained enough
that it inspired Good King Wenceslaus to go out on Stephen’s feast day (December
26th) and do the same, at least as the Christmas carol has it. I
think we have to assume that these seven, the church’s first deacons, did what
they were told and actually went out and fed widows. But, that led to something
else. Going out and feeding the hungry drew out of them far more than what they’d
officially been commissioned to do. Direct contact with the poor did something
to their faith that fan its flames enough that they couldn’t not talk about who
Christ was and what he was doing in their lives, fanned their faith in a way
that drew teaching and proclamation out of them, even in the face of
opposition, and led Philip at least to a baptismal ministry.
And it didn’t
just happen to these two, or these seven. Matthew’s gospel has a strikingly
simple, but at the same time radically profound, reason for why serving the
poor builds up our faith and equips us for proclamation: in the poor served, we
see the face of Christ. In Matthew, Jesus spells it out for the disciples: “whatsoever
you do for the least of these, you do for me,” he tells them. We see Jesus
hungry, homeless, imprisoned, naked and ill, and in feeding, clothing, caring,
we build up our relationship with him in a way that always bubbles over and
leads us to give witness. God meets us with the poor, and our lives can never
be the same.
Luke doesn’t
put it quite as bluntly as Matthew. When he wrote the Acts of the Apostles,
what Matthew tells, Luke shows. He shows people being sent out to feed the
hungry and then shows Stephen unable to stop preaching and praying, even when
people are throwing stones at him to kill him; shows Philip telling the
Ethiopian Eunuch all about Christ, and then bringing into the bosom of the
Church through baptism someone who, as a eunuch, by all rights of the time ‘should’
have been left thoroughly on the margins (or even put to death). Feeding the
hungry grew their faith, their courage and their compassion. Who could do this
to them but God? God who meets us with the poor.
That’s why
we’re called to do the same. Not because of some kind of trade, that if we fill
enough stomachs, we punch our ticket to heaven. No, acts of mercy aren’t the
entrance fee to the party; they’re the address.
When I was
a deacon, one of my roles in the parish was chaplain to our St. Vincent de Paul
Society. One day, I went out to visit some parishioners who were in an awful
situation, financially and health-wise. I went to visit them and towards the
end of my visit, I started thinking that I’d checked off all the boxes that
might be on an MDiv ‘perfect visit’ form. I’d brought two bags of groceries, I’d
made referrals to other service agencies, we’d talked about the affective and
spiritual dimension of all this, and then we’d started praying together. As we
prayed, hand joined to hand, the Our Father, we got to the line “Give us this day
our daily bread.” And my throat refused to let me keep speaking. How could I
join in this prayer with people who really meant those words? Who didn’t know
where next week’s bread would come from? I wish I could say that every day
hence when I pray that prayer I do it with a new and fuller awareness of the
reality of human need. To be honest, I doubt if I do. But, I do know that at
that moment, that prayer grew teeth. At the Savior’s command, and formed by
divine teaching, we dare to pray it. One vital way God has formed me to be a pray-er
of that prayer is in the house of those people. God meets us with the poor, and
we’ll never be the same again.
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