Our First Reading today (Acts 6:1‑7) likely describes the Christian community sometime after our readings of this past week. The Church was experiencing significant growth and as the community grew, so did the problems that had to be addressed. And a new language was developed to describe the roles of the Church membership. For the first time, the word ‘disciples’ is used to describe those who had become believers in Christ; up until now, it had only been applied to those people who had been with Jesus during his public ministry.
Also at this stage of its development, the Church was still entirely Jewish in its membership. However, these Jews were divided into two distinct groups: The Hebraic Jews, those who spoke the Aramaic and/or Hebrew languages of Palestine and strictly kept Jewish culture and customs; and the Greek speakers (or Hellenists) who were “overseas Jews”, scattered across the Mediterranean lands. They largely had become culturally and linguistically Greek. We see this phenomenon even today when overseas immigrant communities are quickly assimilated into the US or Western European cultures. The Greek Jews had their own synagogues where Scripture would be read in Greek. It was from these synagogues that Paul set out on his missionary journeys. We can see from today’s reading that the Aramaic/Hebrew Jews looked down on the Greek speaking Jews. Even at this early stage in the life of the Church, we can see the ugly head of ethnic-cultural divisions surfacing.
In today’s reading, the Hellenists complain that the widows of their group are being neglected. Widows were among the most pitiable group in Jewish society at that time. They were not necessarily old, but they had lost their husbands, who were their sole means of support. Remarriage, for nearly all of them, was out of the question. In the absence of any kind of social welfare, their only means of support was the charity of their community.
The apostles (the original eleven/twelve) felt that this kind of material responsibility was not really theirs. In the beginning, the apostles were responsible for church life in general, which included both the ministry of the word (evangelizing) and the care of the needy in the community. As the community grew, taking care of the needy became more and more difficult for such a small group of leaders. It was time for delegation and applying the principle of subsidiarity (look it up)!
The apostles directed the Greek-speaking community to carefully choose people from among themselves to take care of these needs. This met with general approval and seven men were chosen. Not surprisingly all of them have Greek names and all, except for one, Nicholas of Antioch, who was a convert, were born Jews. It is significant that a proselyte was included in the number, and that Luke points out his place of origin as Antioch, the city to which the Gospel was soon to be taken and which was to become the “headquarters” for the forthcoming Gentile missionary effort.
It is also worth noting that it was the community who chose the seven men, but it was the apostles who ‘ordained’ them by prayer and a laying on of hands. These are the first recorded ‘ministers’ appointed in the Christian community and the pattern of their formal initiation will become the norm: the apostles prayed and laid their hands on them, as we see multiple times in Acts and the letters of Paul. This is still done in the conferring of ministries today. At this stage they are not actually called ‘deacons’, but the word diakonia, meaning ‘service’, is used twice in today’s passage. We will be hearing more about one of these ‘deacons’ next week when we hear more about Stephen, and later, about Philip.
In the meantime, the number of Christians continued to increase. Even some of the Jewish priests, probably Sadducees, were being converted to faith in the Risen Jesus. They were prepared to give up the temple sacrifices and rituals around which their lives revolved and replace them with a new liturgical celebration centered on the community Eucharist, celebrated wherever Christians gathered.
Given the limited human and material resources of the early community, it is amazing how ministerial service was wholeheartedly accepted by so many. The finger of God was certainly there.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!