Help! Fighting at the food bank!

 In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.” This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them. Acts 6:1-7

Does your church run a foodbank? If it does, I hope it is never a place of anger or tension – fighting over the baked beans, bread rolls used as missiles, mayhem among the macaroni.

I shouldn’t joke, because it really isn’t funny – when honest and hard-working people are dependent on “charity” for the basic necessities of life. The fact that such centres are needed at all is a shame on our country.

In the ancient world it was different - no “welfare state” for people to rely on. So in the new-born church, soon after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2), the Jewish custom of making sure that no-one went without was quickly adopted; and that applied especially to widows, the poorest of the poor, who otherwise would have no one to stand up for them.

But very quickly things turned nasty at their equivalent of a food bank.

What went wrong?

In the church in Jerusalem there were two people-groups: “Hebraic” Jews from the nearer locality – Judah and Galilee – who spoke a Semitic language called Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke); and Jews from further afield in the Roman empire – “Hellenists” - whose main language was Greek.

True, all these people were now united by faith in Jesus. But they were distinct groups and (here it comes) “the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution of food”. Oh dear! There was muttering and grumbling: “Our poorest people are being treated as second class! They’re not getting fair shares! It’s not right!”

A sad episode indeed. And it prompts at least two big questions.

First, how could such a thing possibly happen in the new-born church?

Remember, we are still in the immediate aftermath of the resurrection; the staggering, glorious, life-changing, world-changing news of Jesus crucified and risen is only just beginning to spread in the ancient world. And we are still in the supernatural afterglow of Pentecost – the baptism of the Holy Spirit on the believers – fulfilling the words of the prophets.

These are giddy, heady, euphoric days: God is on the move! And the people we are reading about have been right at the heart of it. You might expect them to be almost drunk on joy.

Yet… what do we find? Grumbling; discontent; anger; bad feeling; division. And so we ask: why would people who have been “raised with Christ” and filled with Holy Spirit behave in this way?

The basic answer is simplicity itself: even the finest, most Spirit-filled Christians aren’t quite perfect yet!

When we first come to Christ we bring with us a whole lot of baggage, and the process of having all our bad attitudes, bad behaviour and bad habits purged out of us takes a life-time, and more. So we really shouldn’t be surprised if flash-points like this flair up.

The Book of Acts as a whole is a record of growth and progress as the gospel took root in the Mediterranean world. But it is also a record of big problems, not just in the form of persecution from outside (that’s understandable) but also of serious difficulties from within the church. Putting it very simply: whenever God is on the move, the devil gets busy too. And there is nothing he likes more than to cause division.

It’s not just here, in chapter 6. It also rumbles through the whole book, as the first followers of Jesus wrestle with the question of how to deal with non-Jews (Gentiles) who also become followers. Do they have to observe the Jewish law? Do the men have to be circumcised? The traditional hard-liners insist “Yes!” – in order to become a follower of the Jewish Messiah these people must, in effect, become Jews. But others – above all Barnabas and his friend Paul – say No; just accept them as they are! It took a big conference (the “Council of Jerusalem”, Acts 15) to try and sort that out.

And then, of course, even Paul and Barnabas had a big bust-up and went their separate ways (Acts 15:36-41). And Peter (who really should have known better!) had a stand-up disagreement with Paul in Antioch (Galatians 2:11-14). Again, oh dear!

Church life bristles with potential and actual arguments – it happened then, so why should we be surprised if it happens to us today? What matters is to accept that as a fact of life and to resolve such tensions quickly. Next time we’ll see how the first church managed to do that.

But in the meantime it is worth asking ourselves the puzzling question, Why did the Hebraic Jews discriminate against the Greek-speakers? Surely they wouldn’t do such a thing deliberately! Or was it a case, perhaps, of subconscious bias against people “who aren’t quite like us”?

And if so… could we be guilty of pretty much the same thing? Just asking…

Father, thank you for the privilege of belonging to your world-side church. Help me always to cherish and value it – and to strive always to maintain its unity. Amen.