At the Table

[00:00:00] Well, spoiler alert. [00:00:03] Josiah just preached our sermon this morning with his Oreos. [00:00:11] Our scripture passage this morning comes from the book of Acts, chapter six, the first seven verses. [00:00:18] Hear now the Word of the Lord. [00:00:22] During this time, as the disciples were increasing in numbers by leaps and bounds, hard feelings developed among the Greek speaking believers. Those who were called the Hellenists toward the Hebrew speaking or the Aramaic speaking believers because their widows were being discriminated against in the daily food lines. [00:00:45] So the 12 called a meeting of the disciples. They said it wouldn't be right for us to abandon our responsibilities for preaching and teaching the Word of God to help with the care of the poor. [00:00:56] So friends, choose seven among you whom everyone trusts. [00:01:02] People who are full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom. [00:01:06] And we'll assign them this very important task. [00:01:10] Meanwhile, we'll stick to our assigned tasks of prayer and speaking God's word. [00:01:16] The congregation thought that was a really good idea. They went ahead and chose Stephen, a man full of faith in the Holy Spirit. [00:01:26] Philip Prochorus, Nicanor Timon Parmenas. Nicholas, a convert from Antioch. [00:01:35] Then they presented them to the apostles, praying. The apostles laid hands on them and commissioned them for the task. [00:01:43] The Word of God prospered and the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased dramatically. [00:01:52] This is the Word of the Lord. [00:01:56] Well, as we were reminded last week, if you were here for worship in our confirmation commissioning of our four high school students, one of the blessings of being a part of John Knox Church is that we don't do this life journey alone takes a village. [00:02:14] We need each other. [00:02:16] The love, support, encouragement and compassion we experience in this community is the very taproot of our lives. [00:02:26] So today we honor fathers a day set aside to remember. [00:02:30] One of the traditions for some around Father's Day is the gathering at the table for a good meal. Your family may have traditions and you may have particular foods that are part of this tradition. [00:02:44] I grew up in Chicago with a large Catholic family. It was our custom to celebrate every holiday together, especially Father's Day. [00:02:55] My mom and her four brothers, who were my uncles, their spouses, and my 24 first cousins, we would gather for for a big barbecue. [00:03:05] As children, we love this day. We played all day long. [00:03:10] Then as we as the evening dinner approached the cousins, we were all sent up to my uncle's farm just a short walk from where we were celebrating. [00:03:19] There we would pick corn, walk it back, give it to those who were cooking the meal, and within 30 minutes we were eating freshly picked corn with a great meal of hamburgers and hot Dogs, potato salad topped off by cake and ice cream. The focal point of that entire celebration was at the table. [00:03:43] Now the early church, they also knew how to celebrate together after the giving of the Spirit. In Acts chapter two, the story we listened to last week in worship, that chapter ends this way. [00:03:57] They followed a daily discipline of worship in the temple and eating meals in homes. Every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful as they praise God. Other people liked what they saw. [00:04:12] Every day their number grew as God added to those who were part of the community. [00:04:18] Now, who would have guessed that being at the table together was the very first church growth strategy? [00:04:27] Let's pause for a moment and think about who's at that table in Jerusalem. [00:04:33] In the Pentecost story, there are 15 different people groups present in Jerusalem, all of whom receive God's spirit. Everyone. [00:04:42] No distinction between young and old. [00:04:45] No distinction between men and women, boys and girls. [00:04:49] No distinction between Aramaic or Hebrew speaking Jews from Jerusalem and Judea. And all those Greek speaking believers from the rest of the Roman Empire. [00:05:01] Peter tells us that what happened. The sound like a whim, a wind, the tongues like fire. Each people group hearing the good news of Jesus, proclaimed in their own language. All of this fulfills the prophecy of Joel. I'm going to pour out my spirit on all flesh. [00:05:21] Now imagine at the end of Pentecost, it's evening time and they're all going to gather. [00:05:29] Well, who's going to do the cooking? [00:05:33] And who decides what they're going to eat? [00:05:36] And what languages are they going to speak at the table? [00:05:41] We don't know the answers to these questions, but we do know the outcome. Every day their numbers grew. [00:05:50] We are told that There were about 3,000 people there at Pentecost. [00:05:55] And from there the community grew significantly. With the most visible sign of their community being how they ate together at the table. [00:06:06] There's a new kind of community being created here by God's spirit. [00:06:11] It's multi gender, it's multicultural, it's multi class, it's multilinguistic. [00:06:19] The world had never seen anything like this before. [00:06:23] More and more people wanted to get in on the action. [00:06:26] People from all over the Roman Empire. [00:06:30] Now we come to our story for today. Acts chapter 6, verses 1 to 7. [00:06:35] The community keeps growing. [00:06:37] The need to gather more food, prepare it and serve it daily continues to expand. [00:06:43] By this point in the book of Acts, scholars estimate the Christian community may have been 5,000. [00:06:50] That's a lot of people to feed. So let's just try and get a sense of this for A moment. First, let's simulate Pentecost. [00:06:58] This will give us a feel for who is here in worship this morning, what Pentecost may have been like. [00:07:04] So I want you to think for a moment about your ethnic heritage. Identify that. For me, it's Ireland and Sweden, so I would call myself Irish Catholic. And now I want you to shout out loud your ethnic heritage. Ready, Go. One, two, three. [00:07:23] That's what Pentecost sounded like. [00:07:26] That's what the conversation at the table sounded like. [00:07:31] We come from all over the world, don't we? [00:07:35] And that sound that we just heard is a reminder that we are a worldwide community bound together by God's spirit because we are all committed to Jesus. [00:07:47] Now let me ask you a question. Who's going to decide how to feed all of us and what food will we eat and how will the meal be shared? [00:07:56] Once we ask those questions, we get a sense of the challenge that the community is facing here in Acts, chapter six. [00:08:04] And in this story, we don't know what is being served, but we do learn how they are deciding to distribute the food. [00:08:15] The story identifies two different groups of widows. Now, widows have a very prominent place in the Bible. [00:08:23] In the Old Testament, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of references to take care of three specific groups of people. [00:08:31] Orphans, a second group called the gedim, that's the Hebrew word for sojourners, or those who travel through the land. [00:08:41] And the widows. [00:08:43] And then in the New Testament, we hear this clear description of the same responsibility. [00:08:49] Religion that God our Father accepts is to look after orphans and widows in their distress. [00:08:57] James 1:27. [00:09:00] So the Scriptures are clear about this basic responsibility. [00:09:04] But there's a problem. [00:09:06] Every person in this early Christian community has been molded and shaped into accepting as normal as the way things should be or the way things are supposed to be. [00:09:17] Practices that they've learned not from the scriptures, but from their cultures. [00:09:24] So at the table, what is acceptable, what is normal, is to privilege Hebrew speaking believers over Greek speaking believers. That was normal because that's the way the dominant culture had always done it. [00:09:42] So if Hebrew was your native language, you received a double portion of food. And if you were Greek, and if Greek was your first language, you received a half portion. [00:09:54] Your language accent determined how much food you received. [00:10:00] Do you feel the unfairness, the inequity, the injustice? [00:10:08] So let's make this applicable to our situation. How many of you have attended the bluegrass barbecue in early October? Let me see your hands. Okay. Most of the people in this room, it's one of my favorite gatherings at Knox Church. Great music, wonderful food, interesting conversation around the table, and of course, who can forget the best part of the evening, the home baked pies, right? [00:10:33] Now imagine coming to that event next October, getting in line. And as you approach the serving line, says, someone says, were you born in California? [00:10:45] Now if you answer yes, you go to the line on the right and there it is. Barbecue beef and chicken that have been smoking for hours. [00:10:56] Lots of salads, rolls, drinks, and you can take as much as you want. [00:11:02] But if you answer no, you go to the table on the left. [00:11:06] Now there are some cold hamburgers and hot dogs that were cooked on Saturday morning. [00:11:12] There's no buns, there's no condiments. There's some green salad, but it doesn't even have a dressing on it. And you can only take one hamburger or hot dog or one scoop of salad. [00:11:25] Then you sit down and you look at everyone else's plate at the table that you're sitting at and you start to make some observations. [00:11:35] The privileged ones have full plates because of course they were born in California. [00:11:42] You look at those who, like you or me, were not born in California, and then you start to ask yourself some questions. [00:11:52] What difference does it make if I was born in California or not? [00:11:56] What does that have to do with how much food I receive? [00:12:00] And perhaps most importantly, what am I starting to think about those people with full plates of food? [00:12:11] Before the bluegrass band starts to play, people who receive the meager portion start to rumble and grumble. And finally one of them stands up and says, unjust, Unfair. Who decided this is how the food at the barbecue would be served? [00:12:30] And we haven't even gotten to the music or the pies yet. [00:12:35] Pretty disruptive, wouldn't it? [00:12:38] That's the situation we have in the Book of Acts. [00:12:41] The protesters are one specific group of people with two distinct disadvantages. [00:12:48] First, they are widows. They are on the very edge of the spectrum of power. [00:12:54] They don't have any say about who makes the rules, who decides what's right or fair or just. [00:13:01] Second, they are speaking with accents that indicate that they are not from Jerusalem and Judea. They are from some other place. [00:13:11] They may in fact be God worshipers, but they are not like those from the heritage of the ethnic lineage of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. [00:13:21] In Judaism, lineage counts for everything. And the protesting widows don't come from the right lineage that is assumed to be one of privilege and power. [00:13:32] Now even Jesus own disciples are prone to make such assumptions. [00:13:39] At the beginning of the Book of Acts, Luke tells us that after the resurrection, Jesus presented himself alive for 40 days and then, as we heard last week in the Pentecost sermon, sent the Holy Spirit upon them. [00:13:54] But before he did that, he tells them what is going to happen. [00:14:01] And the disciples, in response to the promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit, ask this question, lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? [00:14:13] Acts chapter one and verse six. [00:14:16] I'm going to get technical with you for just a moment here. [00:14:20] The phrase kingdom to Israel has a specifical, specific grammatical construction which means in my own paraphrase, Jesus is now the moment when you restore the King God's kingdom to for the benefit of Israel. [00:14:38] For all you Greek scholars out there, it's called the dative of advantage. [00:14:42] They viewed the restoration of God's kingdom for the advantage of one people, the ethnic descendants of the patriarchs called Israel. [00:14:54] And in our situation today in this country, there is that same bias. At work. [00:15:00] This week, Charlie Kirk, who heads up Turning Point usa, a very influential organization with ties to white Christian nationalism, posted on his social media this country was never meant to be multicultural. The founders intended America to be unicultural, that is the seduction of privilege and power. [00:15:26] Because a certain group of people have always experienced advantage over others. They assume this is normal, the way things are supposed to be. God is for us must mean God is not for them, whoever them happens to be. And in Acts 6 we know who the them is. [00:15:44] It's the Greek speaking widows. [00:15:47] And that assumption plays out in the unequal distribution of food. [00:15:52] And yet these Greek speaking widows, without privilege, without power, without status, without any sense of advantage, they are courageous in their protest. [00:16:03] The widows are the first to recognize that the Kumbaya fellowship of this community is threatened by what people are eating and who they are sitting with at the table. [00:16:14] The widows raised their hands, or perhaps they stood up and they spoke truth to power. [00:16:21] This pointing to the plates on the tables of the Christian community in Jerusalem. This is not just. [00:16:33] This is a denial of Jesus Gospel with the evidence right there for all to see. Double portions and half portions. [00:16:43] The crisis is upon them. [00:16:46] What will the community do? [00:16:48] How will they respond? [00:16:51] Will their beliefs now line up with their behavior? [00:16:55] I heard a pastor say this week, don't tell me what you believe. [00:17:00] I will watch how you behave and then I will tell you what you believe. [00:17:07] Tyler Stanton, in his book Familiar Stranger, writes about the role and the importance of of the Holy Spirit. He says the Holy Spirit is the experiential agent of the Trinitarian God, narrowing the gap between biblical promise on one side and everyday experience leading us to greater spiritual maturity. [00:17:30] The Holy Spirit narrows the gap between what we believe about God and how we live out that faith affirmation. [00:17:39] And so now in the Book of Acts, this is the crisis that's come upon the community. [00:17:45] Guided by the Holy Spirit, the gap between biblical ideals and practical action narrows in what they decide to do. The twelve apostles say we have a specific commission. [00:17:57] We are to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus. That is our task. But we also have this other very important task in our community, taking care of the daily distribution. [00:18:12] So what we need to do is for all of us together, together. How this need of food and meals is attended to. [00:18:28] And we heard in the text that the entire community participated in this decision making process. [00:18:35] And they chose seven people, every one of them with a Greek name. [00:18:42] Privilege and power are distributed. The leadership of this 1st century Christian church becomes multilingual, multicultural and attuned to the needs of different kinds of people. [00:18:56] The widows, the underprivileged. [00:18:59] As the narrative goes forward, we recognize that this short seven verse story is really an inflection point. [00:19:07] In the whole story of the Book of Acts and in the whole story of the Christian church, the Holy Spirit has bridged the gap between belief and behavior. [00:19:17] Now the question is if God's Spirit can guide us to include Greek speaking widows equally, is there anybody else who can be included? [00:19:28] So think of what happens in the next few chapters of the Book of Acts. [00:19:33] What about Samaritans and Ethiopians from Africa? [00:19:37] Well, we get the answer to that question in Acts chapter eight with Philip. He goes to Samaria, proclaims the gospel. He encounters the Ethiopian eunuch on the road in Gaza. [00:19:48] What about Romans? [00:19:51] In Acts chapter 10, Peter's prompted by God's spirit to go to Caesarea and share the good news of Jesus with Cornelius, who's identified as a Roman centurion. [00:20:02] What about a community that's predominantly Gentile, like the community at Antioch, that plays such an important role in the spread of the Gospel throughout the Roman Empire? [00:20:14] Well, Paul and Barnabas spent a year there and at the end of that year they are commissioned. [00:20:21] Here's the names of the commissioners that laid hands on them and sent them out. [00:20:26] Niger, whose name tells us he comes from what we call today Nigeria. [00:20:33] Lucius of Cyrene on the north Libyan coast of Africa. [00:20:37] The same city as Simon of Cyrene, the man who helped carry Jesus cross to Calvary. And a man named Manaen, who formerly was part of the cabinet of Herod, the tetrarch who was out to stop the spread of the Gospel in the entire region. [00:20:55] But now he's been welcomed into the Antioch community. [00:20:59] And in the rest of the Book of Acts, Paul fulfills this ongoing commission going all the way to Rome. [00:21:06] God's love keeps spreading across the entire empire. And the empire could not stop the spread of God's love incarnate in Jesus. [00:21:18] Visible primarily for the way the community gathered at the table. [00:21:25] So as we listen to the rest of the New Testament writings, one of the signs of the Spirit's presence is at the table where believing and behaving become visible. They line up and that integrity becomes a magnet for others to join. [00:21:44] So listen to how our passage today ends. [00:21:49] So the word of God spread, the number of disciples in Jerusalem spread rapidly. [00:21:56] Turns out the table becomes the place where the gospel proclamation is most visible and powerful. Who would have guessed? At the table, Martin Luther King often spoke about doing what he called the small thing, not knowing how or when that small thing might turn into a great thing. [00:22:18] In Acts 6, we see a small thing, one meal and one protest turn into a great thing that has had a trajectory not just to the end of the Book of Acts, but for all of Christian history. [00:22:35] Powerless widows had the courage to stand up for justice at the table. [00:22:43] One of CS Lewis most famous books, Weight of Glory, explores all the ways in which we experience God's presence. [00:22:52] And in one of his most quoted lines from that book, he says, the sun looks down on nothing half as good as a household laughing together over a meal. [00:23:07] Not a great fright, a household laughing together over a meal. [00:23:14] So at the table is where we have the opportunity to develop and deepen our relationship with God and with each other. [00:23:23] Someone seated at every chair, at every table covered with good food, stories told and laughter echoing throughout the room. On Tuesday night, 12 of us from Monte Vista Grove Homes went downtown to participate in the interfaith prayer service. [00:23:41] We prayed with Sikhs, Muslims, Jews and Christians, both Catholic and Protestant. [00:23:48] Mayor of Los Angeles Karen Bass led us in prayer, quoting the Psalms. [00:23:53] But the most moving and gut wrenching part of that event were the testimonies of people whose loved ones have been abducted and disappeared in the past week. [00:24:05] Father kissed his wife and children goodbye as he went off to work, but he didn't return in the evening. [00:24:14] There's an empty chair at that table. [00:24:18] Parent and child abducted and disappeared together. [00:24:23] The rest of the family members are wondering where they are and will they ever see see them again. [00:24:29] Their hearts are racked with grief and worry. [00:24:34] There are empty chairs at that table. [00:24:38] And as Matt has reminded us in the opening of worship today, on Wednesday, believers in Christ, sisters and brothers in Jesus, were abducted from two churches in our county. [00:24:58] There's going to be empty chairs at the table at the next potluck for those two churches. [00:25:08] Sisters and brothers, this is our moment. We live in Los Angeles county and our community has been ravaged by two disasters. [00:25:17] The fires in January, the terror raids in June. [00:25:23] Vulnerable people right now here in our church have experienced how quickly normal life can turn into a nightmare. [00:25:32] This morning there are people terrified to come out of their homes and attend worship in our churches, in our city, in our county, in this valley this morning, afraid to live in lives that will contribute to their human flourishing. [00:25:51] But because of Jesus, everyone belongs at the table. [00:25:56] No one left behind, no one excluded, no one abducted. [00:26:02] So what is this passage in Acts, chapter six calling us to do? [00:26:07] We're not all activists. We're not all going to be out on the streets marching. [00:26:12] But as God's children, as this community of Jesus believers here at Knox Presbyterian Church, we are all called to look for those treated unjustly, just like the widows in the book of Acts. [00:26:27] We are all called to be in solidarity, to see and be aware of the terror, the sadness, the grief that some are carrying in their hearts as a result of the cruel treatment that we all know is happening across this region in our cities. [00:26:45] We are those there who are those who are need us to come alongside and accompany them when they are too afraid and too broken to speak up for themselves. We are all called to do small things, prompted by the still working spirit of grace like the early church. May we all be open to small gestures of mercy, compassion and care that God can use in big waves. [00:27:16] May it be so. Amen.