If you are a deacon, then today’s first reading is clearly the one that you have to address: It’s the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, part 2 of Luke’s gospel, and in it the 12 apostles decide that their many duties are leading them to neglect the service of some of the widows and the other needy in the early church. So they asked the community to choose 7 others who would take over some of the apostles’ duties in these works of charity and administration. By long tradition, these 7 – Stephen, Philip and the others – we regard as the first deacons.
So there is your history lesson about deacons and where they came from. If you’re not a deacon, you might decide to take a pass on thinking about this any further. But this little reading about a “reorg” in the early church isn’t really about deacons. It’s about change. Change in the church, and change inside us.
First: look at this church in the Acts of the Apostles. One thing characterizes it: change. Here we have a community in Jerusalem that hasn’t even begun to assimilate non-Jews into it, and already we have two groups of Jews, the ones who speak Greek, and the ones who don’t, and it appears that this growth has already caused a misunderstanding about whether everyone is being helped equally.
A healthy church is growing, and if anything, this church was healthy. Perhaps a little confused, working things out as it went along, but thanks to the Holy Spirit, healthy.
So let’s see how the church decided to deal with this situation. The church was growing and needed more leaders, so: they decided there ought to be a lot more people serving the church, they created a new kind of an office to fill a new need, and they asked the community to choose the people who should fill it. What an original idea. That might catch on someday.
But you know, talk like that is easy. It’s not enough for us to sit back and think that maybe the church should change. It’s our change that Jesus wants, he didn’t come to change the church, he came to change us. And that’s really what this reading is about: Vocation. The vocation of the people who were called in this reading, and the vocation of us who are called by listening to it.
A lot of people think that vocation is a one-shot discovery: Knowing exactly what you’re suited for and going for it, once and for all. That’s a scary prospect, and you know it doesn’t often happen. I know people, and I’m sure you do, too, who knew from day one that they were going to be a priest, or a lawyer, or a musician. We admire them. But that’s not all there is to vocation.
When you go home tonight, take a look at the Acts of the Apostles and find this reading, the appointment of the deacons we’ve been talking about. Just four verses later Stephen (one of these seven table assistants) is next mentioned, not doing his work inside the community with the widows, but (it says) “filled with grace and power, was working great signs and wonders among the people. … [they] could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke.” Later, of course, Stephen is killed with stones by a mob after his preaching incites a crowd that is starting to get a little tired of Christians, but immediately Philip, another of the seven, “went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah to them. With one accord, the crowds paid attention to what was said by Philip when they heard it and saw the signs he was doing.”
Now what does it mean that these seven, appointed to do one thing, immediately went off and did something else? It isn’t that deacons are such wonderful preachers that they can’t help themselves; in fact, I know one or two who should be stoned for their preaching. Perhaps it’s this: All our talk about vocations isn’t worth anything if it means we aren’t open to going in some new direction when the need is so clearly there.
If there’s one thing we can learn about vocation from the early church, it’s this: vocations change, mine changes, yours changes. Fishermen become disciples, people are asked to do things and they say yes. Needs change, the world changes, and in turn that changes us, if we let it. What God and this church you belong to hope you’ll do next isn’t the same thing you decided was your vocation last week, last year, or the last time you thought about it when you were back in school. There is something new happening, and if you let it, it may change you.
The early church was a chaotic place, but it was a place where accommodating all those who came forward to believe in Christ teaching them, serving them, making sure no one was neglected, distributing the community’s goods to everyone who needed them, living the gospel by doing, that was the priority. Getting there doesn’t require us to wait for anything to happen in Rome or Washington or anywhere else. All it takes is a community that takes its own vocation seriously a community that knows when it’s falling short, and a community that has some of that fire they seemed to have in the early church that helped them think that if people step forward in response to a call anything can happen.