Leadership is Hard; Community is Hard

Acts 6: 1 – 7:2a, 44 – 60 (CEB)

 

Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed.

 

Happy Easter, friends – we continue celebrating 50 days of Easter - of resurrection joy.

 

And I confess that the scripture we just read might NOT elicit “joy” as a first response. 

 

When I was up against the deadline for the bulletin and such, I was really struggling with this sermon (well, in truth, I am still struggling with this sermon) and I just couldn’t come up with a title – here’s where I’ve landed:

 

Leadership is Hard, Community is Hard, Becoming is Hard…

 

Perhaps listening through that lens helps it all hang together.

 

I also want to take us back to the central words of Resurrection Sunday’s text – remember what he told you. Those dazzling men in the empty tomb spoke these words to the women and then sent them out to tell what they had seen. 

 

The apostles and the disciples as a larger group are now moving forward from the moment of discovering the empty tomb, from the moment of walking on the road to Emmaus and recognizing Jesus in the breaking of the bread, and they are seeing what is happening in front of them through the lens of remembering what Jesus taught them, remembering what Jesus said, remembering what he did, remembering how he spoke into their lives.

 

In our journey through the church year with holy scripture, we have moved through Luke’s gospel and into the book called the Acts of the Apostles, written by the same author.  

 

Acts is the continuation of the story that begins in Luke’s gospel, following the disciples as they share Jesus’ teaching and what they remember to more and more people – at first in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas but eventually out into Asia and the greater Mediterranean.

 

And in today’s text, we haven’t transitioned neatly from the end of Luke’s gospel to the beginning of Acts – we are not reading about the days that immediately followed the resurrection. That would be logical, but it would also have us reading texts that we in the church universal traditionally read at the end of the 50 days of Eastertide. 

So somewhat abruptly, we find ourselves today in a story about a community – or rather a new community emerging amidst other communities, and the resulting tensions and disagreements, and a new leader named Stephen.

 

I want to begin here:

This is not a text about what is wrong with Judaism and what is right about Christianity, which is one way that the church has, at times, read this text.

 

This is a text about the challenges that show up as a movement grows – as people within a movement begin to see things differently, as differences of vision and understanding bubble to the surface.

 

Earlier in the book of Acts, there are stories about how the followers of Jesus formed communities of care – sharing all of their possessions in common and committing to caring for the poor and oppressed around them. These early followers weren’t doing their “Jesus following thing” in the Temple in Jerusalem – they were embodying Jesus’ teaching throughout the area, in local communities.

 

Many of these followers had heard Jesus’ sermon on the plain, they had heard his teachings about the Kingdom of God. They sought to live into that by sharing what they had, taking care of orphans and widows. And they did it among the people, not from a specific central place or edifice.

 

At the point we find ourselves in the story today, these followers of the way of Jesus are Jews who are living into a version of their Jewish tradition that is shaped and frankly revised by Jesus’ teachings.  

 

It is important to remember that at this time (as is true now) Judaism was not a monolith…it was not as if all Jews were living in the same cultural situation. Throughout the region of Judea, there were communities of Jewish people who had been scattered by various seasons of exile and political unrest. These sub-communities were shaped by different political realities, different economies, different languages, different local customs and norms. And some of these scattered communities – these diaspora communities, especially between Galilee and Jerusalem – became aligned with the Jesus movement which was also a little “outside of the norm” for Judaism, if you will.

So imagine the melding of communities and particularly the melding of communities that have all experienced their own struggles. That is the backdrop for how the earliest communities of Jesus-followers were forming, emerging, becoming. That is the backdrop of this story.

Today we enter into a disagreement within the community rising out of the differences between some of these sub-communities within Judaism. Specifically, it seems that the Greek-speaking widows were not being served by the Jesus followers in the same way that the Hebrew-speaking widows were.

 

The response of the leadership was to commission and empower leaders among the Greek-speaking Jesus followers so that they could lead the work to ensure that ALL of the widows get what they need. The apostles were empowering people to take care of their own. To lead within their own subgroups.

I don’t have to squint too hard to understand a community stumbling upon different expectations and concerns and misunderstandings about equity and scarcity as it is growing and doing good work following the Jesus way. Maybe you can see that too.

 

It takes so many hands, and it takes hands that have been given authority to do good work. And here in the earliest church we have an example of a group of leaders who heard the needs of the community, recognized that they could do it all, that they need to focus their work AND that others still need served. Here in the book of Acts, those leaders called forth new leaders to do hands-on work in the community from which they were called. They called forth hometown heroes, if you will. 

 

It’s good stuff. It is how we ought to think about what it means to empower and equip others and share the work of the church.

 

But then we take a deeper turn into inter-community conflict. Because let’s face it, the more people doing ministry, the more hands on work happening, the more ways God is at work. And as more and more people are engaged in the hands on work of ministry, there are just that many more ways of seeing and interpreting what God is doing. 

 

Again, I want to stress that this scripture is not focused on an “interfaith” disagreement between Jews and Christians – this text is focused on a disagreement among faithful Jews about how God’s presence exists and is acted upon in community.

 

Stephen, one of the seven who was commissioned in the first half of the story to serve among the Greek-speaking widows, was full of the Holy Spirit. He was alight with God’s presence with him – he was performing “signs and wonders” – miracles. 

 

If we had read the beginning part of Acts, we would have already read about signs and wonders, echoing the words of the prophet Joel, cited as a way the early followers would witness God at work by the power of the Spirit even when Jesus no longer was walking among the people. 

 

Stephen was called and commissioned, working among the people, with God working through him, and this was evident to those who were paying attention.

 

At the same time, there were some people – belonging to something called the synagogue of freedmen or perhaps the synagogue of former slaves – and they heard something that Stephen has said as an afront to Moses and to God. It made them angry. 

 

Maybe they felt threatened. Maybe they felt like what they had known and what they understood to be real and true was being changed. Perhaps they felt “out of control”. 

 

All of that might have caused them to be reactive, suspicious, insecure. Hearing words that didn’t align with their understanding, they drug Stephen to the council, accusing him of blasphemy against Moses and God. They accused him of dismissing the Temple and the Law. They accused him of claiming Jesus was going to destroy the Temple and alter the Law. 

 

And in fact, in Stephen’s defense, Jesus had said that…so that followers of Jesus were proclaiming that shouldn’t really surprise us. 

 

But it surprised and upset those who were “new to the movement,” those who had not heard Jesus teach for themselves. 

 

In response to the accusations, Stephen shared a powerful teaching that began with Abraham – and we didn’t hear it all this morning, but essentially, Stephen walked through the history of the Jewish people as reflected in the Hebrew scriptures to assert that throughout their history, God had been on the move with the people. 

 

With the Holy Spirit on the move and powerfully felt by Stephen and those around him, he scolded the crowd for seemingly rejecting God’s covenant by resisting Spirit.

 

And the crowd was so incensed that Stephen was stoned.

 

Leadership is hard. Community is hard. Becoming is hard.

 

As he is stoned to death, Stephen called on Jesus, echoing Jesus’ words on the cross – an subtle echo of “into my hands I commend my spirit.” Stephen also asked that the sins of those throwing stones not be held against them – an echo of “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

 

The author calls us to hear. “Remember what he told you.” 

 

I wonder…

Where are you today in this story? 

Are you among those who have been cared for by Stephen?

Are you among those who can’t quite wrap your head around what these Jesus followers have been doing and are asking you to do?

Are you Stephen, accused of wrong-doing even as God is speaking right into your heart? Accused of blasphemy even as you are sharing what God has opened your eyes to see?

Are you a bystander, appalled by what you are seeing but not quite sure what to do?

 

I found myself this week finding myself in different places in this text – and I know in my spirit how hard it is to see and understand when God is doing a new thing. 

 

I was specifically reminded of our shared experience of being sent out of our churches during the COVID pandemic. I remembered divisions in the body about whether the building was a necessary part of the being the church. I remembered concerns about how communion could happen during online worship – was it possible for us to experience union in Christ’s body even when we weren’t under the same roof?

 

Leadership is Hard, Community is Hard, Becoming is Hard…

 

Birthing a new thing is hard.

And my deep prayer is that we might seek to be like Stephen – even when the cost is high. To look to see the Kin-dom of God emerging. To see where Jesus continues to walk and move. To allow ourselves to be filled by the Spirit in the face of hard things.

 

This is a tough text. A tough story to wrap our heads and hearts around.

Leadership is Hard, Community is Hard, Becoming is Hard…

God help us, Spirit guide us, Jesus be with us.

Amen.