Saturday of the 2nd Week in Easter 2023
There are some things that human beings do without thinking very long or hard before doing them. You can imagine the power and gas going off in a severe winter storm and then burning clothes and furniture in the fireplace to keep warm. Or one might find a cash shortfall and then file a false tax return to increase a refund. You can get short-term relief from a problem by causing long-term misery.
Recall from a few days ago when we were reading in chapter 4 of Acts, that the early Christians responded to Christ’s call to be poor in spirit by possessing everything in common, not calling any goods one’s own. And Joseph Barnabas was then commended for selling some productive real estate, and bringing the proceeds to the apostles’ feet, hopefully after paying his capital gains taxes on it first. We missed the follow-up story about Ananias and Sapphira, who obviously loved the notoriety and also sold some property, but held back part of the sale proceeds, averring that Peter was getting it all. And St. Luke is not reticent about telling his readers that once Peter accused them of the sacrilege and lying, they both dropped dead. That probably made every witness very serious about money and property.
Well, today we heard the beginning of the rest of the story. It appears that the commonly-held money was not limitless. All resources are finite, and so when food and other sustenance was given to the Christian community’s widows, the goods ran out before everyone was served, and it was the Gentile women who were left out. (In fact, the Jerusalem church, which was a church of poor believers, appears to have been chronically in the red, because the apostles were always giving St. Paul, later on, instructions on taking up money for them in the churches of Greece and Asia Minor.)
Moreover, the situation was getting on the nerves of the Twelve apostles, who were spending time finding and serving food instead of preaching the Gospel of Christ. And, of course, they were the ones fielding all the gripes from the Greek Christians. So they built a leadership team to handle the goods and listen to complaints, and even today we call these fellows “deacon.” From them, deacon Stephen decided that he wanted to do more than just wait on tables and run the complaint booth, which sets up the rest of the story, his defense of Christian ways before the Greek-speaking Jews, his martyrdom, and the passing of the torch to Paul. Even bad things happening to the Church, under the power of the Holy Spirit, led to good–in this case the spread of the Gospel all over the Roman world.
I don’t know how Peter and Stephen and Paul felt when these events transpired. In similar circumstances, I’ve been filled with various levels and types of fear. But listen to the words of Jesus from the Gospel of John. These are not uttered after His Resurrections. We find them in that wonderful Eucharistic chapter 6, after one of the multiplications of loaves around Passover time. The apostolic gang is traveling across the lake in Peter’s boat, and that devilish wind that often blows in from the Mediterranean Sea through the mountains to the west had stirred up the waves of the lake so that they were all scared. They see Jesus and get even more terrified. But Jesus says–and we all need to memorize His words because He is constantly saying them to us every day of our lives–ego eimi, me phobeisthe. We usually hear it translated, “It is I,” but that doesn’t carry the weight of the Greek. It’s the same words by which God identifies Himself to Moses on the mountain, out of the fiery bush: “I am.” Jesus is divine, with divine power, and they needn’t fear because He is near. Hear it again: Jesus identifies Himself as the One True God, the Son of the Father, and we must not fear.
