Saturday of the Second week in Eastertide 2024
Today’s Scriptures have a common purpose to teach us about the organization and functioning of a Church that is in love with Jesus the Savior. If you’ve been following the readings in St. Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, you’ve seen the Pentecost eruption of the Church into Jerusalem, some persecution by the ruling council, and, most practically, many or most of the Jerusalem disciples converting their property into liquidity. That has enabled the apostles to feed and house the new and old disciples who had no property or family near the city, and who were not independently flush. Ultimately, this method of organization failed when the money ran out, but they’ve got some more pressing problems. The Greek Jews who had been baptized had a number of poor widows in their number, and they were apparently last on the list to be aided. That was an infamy, because both the Law and Jesus had special concern to take care of widows and orphans in the community.
What the real problem was became clear: the apostles were trying to act as teachers and prayer facilitators, leaders of Liturgy, and in their spare time as supply sergeants. The temporalities function of the church was breaking down. So they looked to both Jewish-origin and Diaspora members of the community to select seven men to do that, and they then ordained the first deacons–as we later called them. Now the most prominent of those, Stephen and Philip, are better known as apologists and evangelists, but we can be certain that they also got their hands dirty taking care of the poor. Then the Apostles could study and teach and lead worship, as our psalm summarizes the duty of the Church: praise, teach the word, share the hope of Christ’s community of faith.
You see, the Church is like a boat. If you’ve seen, or especially been on the Sea of Galilee, which is a really big lake, and especially if you’ve ridden in a boat like that even now used to fish in that body of water, you know the lake is big and the boats are small. So when a storm blows in from the Mediterranean through a gap in the eastern hills, it can really become scary, and fast. Our Gospel tells us what the Church must do, as today, when the culture kicks up a storm and tries to ruin or even destroy our community. We must look for Jesus, trust Him and take Him close to us in the boat, and immediately we will be at our destination–God’s holy will.
