NOTES for Act 6:1-7

We are used to the fact that in the Church, as in voluntary organizations, everyone who is ready to take responsibility ends up responsible for everything at once. People run to priests with every kind of question. Most Christian leaders deal with all the problems that arise in communities. The responsible person is responsible for everything.

But the apostles frame the question in a completely different way. They know what the Lord has called them to do: to preach the Word of God. They understand that it is unrealistic for them to combine the ministry of the word with "administrative matters." Therefore they make a choice, and they choose what the Lord has called them to. At the same time, they do not ignore the problem. They simply say that people are needed to deal with this specific issue. The apostles pray for those whom the Church has chosen.

It is probably important for each of us to understand that there are tasks to which the Lord calls us and which we must do, and there are other tasks, also important and necessary, for which the Lord will choose someone else. The hardest thing is probably balance. Let us pray that the Lord gives us the wisdom not to do what He has not called us to do, and to do what He calls us to do, and of course not to demand from priests and leaders that they jump higher than their heads.

The community is growing, and everyday concerns are accumulating and becoming increasingly difficult to handle. Much in the journey of the New Testament Church resembles the journey of the Old Testament people: just as Moses, when he could no longer manage the burden, once appointed worthy people as his assistants, so now the apostles appoint ministers to deal with practical matters.

All would be well, except that the reason for introducing new ministries was not so much the organizational and household concerns themselves as the complaints of one group of believers about unfair treatment by another group of believers like them. The breach opened by Sapphira and Ananias widens; human hostility is brought into the community, and the first crack appears in the Church. It has not yet led to a schism: the conflict was resolved in time by a sensible distribution of duties. But the roots of the first conflict lie deeper. They are in our sins, which we not only forget to reject and cease to notice, but all too often and carelessly bring into the Church itself.

Today we read how the Church overcomes another crisis situation. The problem is no small matter: in a community where love for one another should be the principle of relationships, the neglected suddenly appear, and, as usually happens in the world, they turn out to be members of a "socially vulnerable minority": the widows of the "nonlocal" Hellenists, Jews who had come to Jerusalem from the diaspora and believed in Jesus.

So the weakest found themselves not at the center of everyone's attention and love, but the opposite. What matters for us now is not the indication of such a misfortune in the Church (the lack of love and indifference of Christians surprise no one today), but how it is resolved: Stephen appears on the scene, a deacon and martyr, full of the Holy Spirit, wisdom, faith, and power, along with the other six deacons, ready to restore peace and love in the community of the first disciples.

God, one way or another, acts through people who are open to the guidance of His Spirit. And for you and me, what matters most is to be exactly such people, people of the Spirit, wisdom, and faith, so that through us the Lord can lead toward perfection the world He created for His Glory.