Acts of the foodbank workers

Acts of the foodbank workers

After a recent conference, I woke early next day, with this burning in me. Although not directly addressed at the conference, the thoughts here are a clearer formation of a position gradually developed over time -  somehow catalysed by attending the event. 

Jerusalem.  Church home.

Re church – I think we (western church, myself) are often too passive about outreach. 

Our orientation is too Jerusalem centered.  We’ve pretty much configured church to be a come and sit at the feet of the apostles thing.  It's a mindset that says these leaders probably know more, or were closer to Jesus, or have a bigger headful of knowledge about him, and so can minister and explain to everyone for ever and day, what it's all about.

(And even if every now and then we say the opposite, the church is not the building, it’s the people, and, it's not a Sunday thing, it’s a Monday to Saturday thing, and not just these few ministering, it all of us – in most places these statements are really pretty secondary and  rhetorical. At best it’s a symbolic and indicative pointing to outwardness, that is not usually built upon or modeled, and soon assimilated by the other strand:  “Don’t forsake the assembling”.  “Learn”.  Being in the meeting matters.  “Give”.  “Find a role here” .

And then given the sheer weight of meetings, of church as meetings, led by full time ministers, we often don’t really put enough on the scales for the ‘everyone gets to play, all do outreach, all are priests,’ ideas to outweigh the gravity of the opposite claims, which are often heavily modeled in the structure and language. 

There are numerous qualifications needed to this: small groups change it, some press for deeper shared worship, some do model outreach, etc, but it's the dominant pattern that still holds in spite of these things. For example a few become missionaries and leave the home church and culture. But the home church tends not to see itself as missionaries to its own culture. There are exceptions to this, in my own community as well, but it's the pattern I'm after - the reasons the culture sees church as building, and expects people in rows, with a minister, priest or pastor up front doing the work - usually retelling the story in various ways, peppered with moral instruction.

Just like we know what to expect in most schools, we think we know what to expect in most churches - there is a common grammar of what happens.

And although the 'application' stage of the sermon is a very useful rhetorical space, a world of theoretical colouring in, it's usually the individual left to make the translation - not a lot of concrete models, and usually not in a corporate or teamwork sense.  (Bring others in? Be a hidden Kingdom influence?  Share explicitly?  Take a creation mandate to name the issues, confront idols, etc?)   Again, some do form teams around things, including outreach, which can be very good indeed, and I think is desperately needed (it still might leave the mystery of the workplace alone, for example, but a good theology of work is perhaps another question).

This can be ok, for a season

We don’t get a direct sense from the bible that this is wrong for the Jerusalem church. Indeed in the first flush of wonder at the new state of life, it's beautiful.

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”  (Acts 2:42ff)

 So a season of this might be good.  In each other houses too, if you please, as well as the temple. 

But it was certainly incomplete. Imagine if Acts had stopped with them all sitting in Jerusalem!

Church as pews and padded seats

It’s a church that hasn’t really owned the mission of going out. Hasn’t yet discovered it's for the whole world. 

It's like, using that timeline, that we haven’t yet discovered Paul.   Of course we know his writings. Indeed might meet every week to learn them. But we haven’t’ been shaken up from our ‘come and learn’ mode, to ‘go and tell, and be’ …

So the main format of the church has been, for most of my life anyway, we are gathered in Jerusalem, still trying to learn from those who might be closer to the Jesus story.

That’s changing though -  many changes afoot in how we think of church.

Paul

In a sense, Paul came upon the church twice.  As the sharp edge of hostile persecution, he was part of the scourge that scattered it from Jerusalem.  He upset the plans. And them as an apostle, he kept things moving in that direction, now with growth rather than destruction. 

And in doing so, in both phases, he helped the church discover its missional genius. The timing of the persecution was key. It happened just as they were setting up the home-base, getting systems sorted and stablised.

And they were indeed doing some good things. The radical sharing had generated a food supply for the needy – the widows among them.  And this is interesting – because it's from the group managing this foodbank, that we find the first martyr and the first evangelist. 

Problems sharing the bread

Ironically, given the cultural explosion that was about to take off, it seems there were some cultural boundaries to how this bread was distributed.

It was somehow being preferentially given to the real insiders, the strictly Jewish, Hebrew speaking, believers. Those from slightly more diverse background, the Greek speaking Jews, aren’t getting in, or are getting served leftovers, second place.

the Hellenistic Jews[ among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food  (Acts 6:1)

In any case this food supply is not yet seen as something for the city.  They’re not even eating with Gentiles yet.  No community meals yet. 

The first deacons – not your average 2nd tier

The apostles hear of the tension between the Hebrew and Greek speaking Jews, and agree it needs to be fairer - but think they have bigger fish, more spiritual fish, to fry.

‘It's not right for us to neglect the word of God and wait on tables’, say the apostles  - and so lets delegate to seven good folk (those “filled with Spirit and wisdom” is the actual description).  Good criteria, but a secondary job, it seems.  (Acts 6:2-3)

Now, maybe that delegation, freeing up some to just do the word, is ok. We do get a passing comment that alludes to a season of growth with this model in place -  'number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly'.  But before we build anything on that text, consolidate any theology of delegating tasks to deacons to release the leaders, we better follow what happens next. The next three chapters in fact. 

So they had selected seven workers. Notice the order, Stephen is named first in the list, Philip second. (6:5)  And so it must have seemed that now the apostles could get back to the real deal of 'the ministry of Word', with the foodbank all sorted.  After all, they had known Jesus first and longest - makes sense they teach and impart from that basis.

But that list in chapter 6:5, is really like a headline – watch these names. The  next 3 chapters (6-8) are about them. 

Acts of the foodbank workers.

As first we might call them helpers. They might look like 'Marthas' even, kitchen workers waiting on tables, while the apostles prepare the word (so if these 7 have a ministry, it’s the ministry  of food, to borrow a Jamie Oliver term).

Actually “Ministry” (diakonis) really means service, so "ministry of food" could be a fair term.  …  but seems it's a less spiritual and high powered thing than the “ministry of the word", the Jerusalem apostles plan to dedicate themselves to.

A note on ministry: maybe not what you think

The same author who wrote Acts (Luke) records in his gospel that Martha had previously complained of being left (or choosing) to do this sort of kitchen work while her spiritual sister listened to Jesus.  And the “work” she mentions,  is actually that word we translate as ‘ministry’ (diakonis) in other places.  "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the ministry, while Mary just sits at your feet?"

We don't translate like that, perhaps because 'ministry'  has come to mean, in many places, "what the clergy does".  But we shouldn't be so protective.  The famous phrase that we all  know about Jesus - he "was about 30 when he began his ministry", is actually a translators insertion – the text only says 'Jesus was about 30 when he began.'

That's worth thinking on.  Ponder the original text.  What did He actually begin? Would it be better if we were left to conjecture an answer to that ourselves?  

Try a few options out:  when he began ...  "his public career as a prophet?"  ..  "the work of redemption?"  ....  “the new exodus and re-formation of the people of God” .. “his prophetic embodiment and fulfillment of Israel’s history?"  .. the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise to all nations?"  ... “the strange path to kingship of the Messiah?"  .. "

“Ministry” seems strangely neutral, contentless as a summary, and has helped put us off these trails, I think. Better that we had been left to grapple with his life than have that loose catch all phrase inserted by a translator. 

In any case the biblical usage of “ministry” (diakonis) in the gospels is not a summary of what Jesus did, but includes Martha complaining about the kitchen “work” (and again it's the same author, Luke, writing Acts, whose writing contains all of these usages, hidden and invented, so it's worth noting).  It's rather unhelpful that our translations hide that single usage (diakonis as against listening to Jesus) , and invent that high profile instance  - summarising Jesus' public life  - no wonder we get rather miscued on what "ministry" means!) (As for "ordained ministry", we would need to lean on Exodus, to go back to Aaron's dedication, and ignore Peter's observation that all believers now inherit that role, to make that one work).

(Elsewhere in the NT diakonis means service, perhaps extending once or twice to a special career of service, but it's not primarily reserved as a term for a special vocation, not defined as a few fulltime people particularly dedicated to serving Jesus.  For example Ephesians 4 has all being prepared for "diakonis" / ministry / service, through a five fold model of training. The NIV does not call this work of the whole body 'ministry', but some other translations do.  Maybe NIV translators now balk at that inclusive usage given the way we have (incorrectly) reserved it for what Jesus did and those who are similarly dedicated to "his ministry".

So back to our 7 'ministry of foodbank' workers; they turn out to be a surprise packet in God's recipe. 

Food bank guy number 1 : Stephen

Stephen evidently knows the power of God (performed great wonders and signs among the people)  and is adept with the Word; argues with the religious elite who can’t keep up with 'the wisdom that God gives him'  (6:8-10). What a church they must have had!  Maybe he needed to sit and learn for a season, to get to this state, but it's been effective. 

I wonder if they knew what was in him.  Maybe they did. Even the apostles were considered religiously "unschooled, ordinary men" (4:13) - yet seems they've imparted enough to him, of what they had, that he now shakes the system. 

We see him under pressure – with the longest speech in Acts - before the stones fly at him. 

Then, after a lengthy and detailed review of Israel’s history, he ends with an emphasis on the nation's history of rejection of the unlikely leaders God has often chosen for them (Moses and others), which they are still doing with Jesus, the ultimate prophet and ruler in that line.

  

Paul and religious intolerance

Fleshing out this story of rejection and unlikely leaders, we first see Paul at Stephen's stoning, on the wrong side of the issue.

And soon Paul is “destroying the church”. It seems he leads the persecution; he is the hostile fanatic, convinced this little group inside Judaism is a cult that is poisoning true faith with its scandalous stories of a crucified Messiah.  He’s devoted to rooting them out. Raiding houses, issuing “murderous threats”  (disown this or die, presumably)  - gets them in prison, satisfied to see them stoned to death. A heavy guy.

Food bank guy number 2 : Philip

So we’ve had the first martyr; and the first hint of Paul, endorsing his stoning.

And then – after Stephen’s martyrdom – the narrative jumps back -  we go back to the second name in the foodbank list : Philip.  ( “They chose Stephen … also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor … ). 

They didn’t use bold headings, like this post does, but a highlighter wouldn’t go astray here to see what the author is doing. Chapter 6 and 7 run with Stephen, and then chapter 8 returns to pick up the second guy; Philip.  

So Stephen was great, sure, but maybe that was incidental. Now we’re running through a list of “also” guys . Surely they’re not all of that calibre– this Seven?

So let's have a closer look at Philip.

  

Philip to Samaria

Like Stephen he knows his stuff pretty well. He crosses some huge and primary cultural boundaries. He leads the mission to the next tier of outreach that Jesus had referred to, that they hadn't quite got around to somehow. (Remember “Jerusalem, Samaria, and the ends of the earth”?)

These Samaratians were a mixed group. In a culture that coalesced racial and religious identify, they were like a despised caste.  Jesus had travelled in here – to the woman at the well - and they’d talked about the cultural divide ('you Jews say Jerusalem is the place, but we worship here on the mountain' (John 4). It was not core Israel, and often reckoned beyond the pale.  

Philip evangelizes there – so effectively that demonic powers are dramatically broken, people are healed, signs are wrought.

It reminds me of Paul observing, after he later took the gospel way out into Greek territory, that "the gospel did not come to you in word only, but with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction". (1 Thess 1:5) These power dynamics are operating around Philip, as they had around Peter and John in Jerusalem (3:2, 5:15).   It seems it was the norm for the burgeoning gospel.   

  

What of the apostles?

The apostles do briefly re-appear in ministry in these chapters, following Philip's work (when they “heard Samaria had accepted the word of God”, they go there (8:14)).  No sense of tension there, just teamwork, following an evangelist. One does wonder if they would have seen this in him, the one they also had waiting on tables. Maybe they did. Maybe they all just hadn't yet discovered the dimensions of mission they were made for; were just finding they were all built for this, after a season of learning and growth.

Spirit and Conversion can be distinct events

Somehow, although Philip had baptized the new believers in the name of Jesus, and even after all that power and healing, and "accepting the word", they had not received the Holy Spirit - or there was a dimension of His being "on them" that had not occurred.  That’s a bit of a theological minefield, but it's in the text. Evidently baptism in the name of Jesus and becoming a new believer, even with dramatic testimonies, is not necessarily synonymous with some aspect of receiving the Spirit.  It could all be simultaneous, granted - but not here: 

When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit,  because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.  (8:15-16)

Instating the Clergy?

In the heat of this excitement Peter does need to lay down the law about who is really clergy, and who is allowed to partake in ministry.

He says,  "You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God."   (The term for no share here is kleros, from which we get clergy).  He is not directing that clerical exclusion towards Philip, as if he can sense what elevated papal heights much of the church will later make out of his own legacy, or as though the leading apostle of the twelve wants to lay stake to a more primary role than the foodbank worker turned pioneering evangelist. That might make sense to us in retrospect but it's certainly not what he meant. No, his ban of "not kleros" is directed towards Simon the sorcerer, who is trying to buy his way in to the impartation of the Holy Spirit - that reveals a serious heart problem and misunderstanding of how God works - and indicates Simon has no share.

Similarly in Acts 1:28 we hear that Judas did originally have a share (kleros) in the ministry and blew it. So, evidently "not kleros" means "right out"; it's never directed against fellow believers in good standing.  We might want to think about that - if our use of "clergy", and "ordained ministry" reflect that original use in the church. It took another few hundred years before the church made such terms define and exclude who was really "in ministry", who had a share in the "priesthood" etc, as distinctions inside the believing church. And then we could ask, if in changing those terms, do we possibly work against things like this original teamwork of apostle and emerging evangelist?  Even then it took persecution to uncover and redefine roles, and form teams in the first mission. 

Pioneering evangelist

Then we follow Philip again – and he crosses another cultural boundary, spreading the mission further afield. He gets that role as well, leaving the apostles in the midst of the exciting work he had pioneered in Samaria.

Philip had been led by the Spirit there, to go the desert road. He must have wondered as he followed that instruction from the Spirit, away from the seeming action into the desert, but evidently he knew what it was to be led, to follow the Spirit beyond the established patterns.

He reaches a senior Ethopian official, returning from Jerusalem, providentially reading Isaiah 53 - so already a convert to Judaism, returning from the feast -  as he draws near.   No doubt, if he was there for the feast, a rumour of Jesus might have come to come to him.  Whatever his experience and understanding, Philip reaches him.

Leaving seems even more dramatic than the guidance that got him there, “the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing”.   (The apostles still need this sort of Gentile mission to happen via Peter, in one step - skipping the induction to Judaism -  too, in Acts 10, before they really get on board with this sort of cross cultural mission being in scope of their role, it seems.) 

  

Discipleship 101 : get radically baptized and move on?

The new convert was left.  No ‘come and sit in church with us, to learn what this means and how to live’?  He can hardly have had a home church to go to – and yet some wonder if that’s how Ethopia ended up being reached; if one deep and supernatural conversion would do it.  We know he was a reader -   did he have more than the single scroll of Isaiah?– maybe he read his way into the Gospel implicitly in this, freshly empowered with the Spirit.  Maybe others visited him.

God seems to have taken care of it, to have not wanted Philip to linger:

Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.  (8:40). 

Philip : good mates with Paul

Finally, after all that lead in, we leave Philip. Not permanently though.  He gets one more cameo – Paul stays with him on his final trip to Jerusalem for a “number of days” (Acts 21). It's no quick overnight visit.  This sounds more like recharging on the journey. By this stage Paul is no longer a feared adversary scattering the church outward, but the great apostle to the Gentiles.

I wonder what tales of outreach must have been exchanged, what stories might they have shared, what biblical insights formed in the pressure and reshaping of mission. What principles noted, theology hammered out. Maybe discussed Luke’s notes of a gospel outline, compared notes on gospel encounters.   And four young women, Philip's daughters, listening in, no doubt.

One of the Seven

So by the end of Acts these foodbank guys are like heroes. These are known as “The Seven” (21:8)– a term we haven’t heard enough of.   How did that happen? 

“Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven".  One of the Seven.  It sounds like the fellowship of the ring – one of the nine – or David’s mighty men, his mighty 30, or even his inner circle of three.

And sounds like Philip is raising his children in the same way.

A Final Frontier? 

“He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied” . It seems Philip is crossing another cultural boundary in empowering his daughters to knowing they too could move under the power and dynamic of the Spirit – the anointing that had formerly marked prophets and kings.  Perhaps the evangelist, the one sensitised to transfer the message, is also pioneering a first generation transfer of Spirit empowered life, a Spirit filled parenting, if you like. A new frontier in this innovative life. 

It should of course have been normal - the whole era had opened with a declaration that all could prophesy, men and women, young and old, as evidence of the Spirit among them (2:17). But it's nice to see it being passed on.  Agabus, a prophet, also comes in.  Would the prophetic types have compared notes on how they saw Paul's destiny?  I wonder if, between seasons with hectic dynamics of outreach and persecution, if Philip saw the transfer and gentle cultivation of this dynamic into the next generation as a key frontier, possibly occurring at less dramatic pace, in that open house by the sea. 

We don’t know what the exploits of the other five of “the Seven” were; but we can probably assume they walked in like manner.

Back to Jerusalem?

I’m not against sitting at the apostles feet.  No doubt the seven were so impactful because they had done that, for a time.  But just when that system was perhaps about to get formalized,  to settle down and get really organized into a two tier thing, where some are freed up for the Word and some waiting on tables, God allowed persecution to break it open.  The author (Luke) makes a point of highlighting that list of workers, and following them, even more than the Jerusalem apostles, for a few chapters. We know he has an eye for the poor and the marginal, for the women, from his gospel, and it seems his keen eye notes this unexpected dynamic and reversal as well. They evidently didn't discover that missional genius easily, it took hostile times to break it open, and unexpected players came to the fore. So a season of sitting and learning in fellowship,  and role in waiting on tables is good, as a starter, just not a life time assignment; God might have much more in store as we all find mission.  Changing and misplacing some of our words (ministry, clergy) have probably not helped us see that.

Or outwards?

So that deposit in you, in me, from that teaching, from meeting house to house for years, from being in a generation that aspires to the dynamics of his power – that’s for something.

Caveats

Finally, i don't imagine mission always looks like this.  It can, and it still does, in some places and times. Maybe increasingly so as we return to more oppositional surroundings.

But to reach our culture - any culture -  in our time, different expressions might also be called for.  So Acts is a key chapter in the narrative, rich with insights to glean and experience, but not always a manual for all outreach. I think we do need to let the text echo through us, before any stepping away from it, though.  It's an intense text, and some parts do not seem to relate to much of how we live. But lets not let ourselves off the hook - other parts might well be universal; I suspect some of our outreach and patterns should indeed look like this -  so we might need to let it recalibrate us, before we translate it.

We need, no doubt, to have a whole framework and backdrop of restoring His image in a fallen creation, of re-humanising humanity, in all of its realms and complexities. Looking into the face of Christ and being transformed by His Spirit will be at the heart.  How it's expressed, how the mission is phrased and framed, might look different to some of the Acts dynamics. It should be similar in some times and places as well - maybe in our time and place.   Each person and part of the body can be unique in how we express and translate that Good News.   So there more to be said and done, drawing out other aspects of the whole story  ... but enough for this post.