Acts 6:1-7 ‘They chose seven men full of the Holy Spirit.’
1 Peter 2:4-9 ‘But
you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood.’
John 14:1-12 ‘I
am the way, and the truth, and the life.’
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Popular culture has got very interested, in recent
years, in exploring the ‘origin stories’ of fictional characters, real people,
movements and ideologies.
‘Origin stories’ help us make sense of things.
Our first two readings give, what you could call, ‘Christian
origin stories’.
These accounts reflect the way in which the first
Christians began to order themselves, under the promptings of the Holy Spirit,
and help us understand why patterns of Christian life developed as they did, so
as to serve the Gospel and the needs of the Church, to this day.
In his first letter, the Apostle St Peter connects
the identity of the church with Christ’s crucifixion.
His death on the cross was then, and is now, a
stumbling block to many when it comes to faith in Jesus Christ as Son of God
and Saviour of the world.
But that stone, that many trip over, is for those of
faith, in fact, a foundation stone, on which God builds the spiritual house
that is his Church.
The foundational identity of the Church, and of the
Christian, is to be found in baptism.
Baptism is the common identifier of the Christian,
but the Christian is never a Christian in isolation, but always in connection
with the whole, that is why the Church is catholic.
That word, which we often translate as meaning
‘universal’ is from the Greek kata-holos: kata, meaning
‘concerning’ or ‘about’, and holos, meaning the whole, think of the
word holistic.
The Church is concerned with the whole: the whole
picture of the salvation of God and our identity as Christians.
As part of the whole, we are not Christians in
isolation: my salvation is not a private matter between me and God; I am part
of a Body not the sum of it.
As St Peter puts it:
you are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession (1 Peter
2.9a)
And that is not just so we can feel good about
ourselves – “we’re on God’s side” or “God’s on my side” - but we are baptised
into this, ‘chosen race, royal priesthood, and holy nation’ for a purpose.
And the purpose is clear:
that you may proclaim
the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous
light. (1 Peter 2.9b)
That contrasts with those who stumble and disobey
and fall into darkness.
So there is the call to make your life built on the
foundation of Jesus Christ.
And what we also find going on here is that the
general task of proclaiming the greatness of God, which is the task of every
single one of us, is worked out in particular ways.
In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles we see
that an ordering of ministries flows from the task of mission and proclamation.
It is recognised that the Apostles need to be
released to focus on apostolic tasks and not to be distracted by tasks that
others can do equally well as them, if not better.
The twelve Apostles gathered the whole body of
believers together to say, ‘It is not right that we should give up preaching
the word of God to serve tables’. (Acts 6.2).
That is not because serving tables is beneath them,
but so that the Apostles can devote themselves to what is proper to them, which
is ‘to prayer and to the ministry of the word.’ (Acts 6.4).
It is like me, as a priest, spending all my time
doing things I am not very good at: managing projects; scrutinising budgets;
repairing church plumbing.
My call is not to that but to celebrating the
sacraments, preaching the Word and leading the Church here: thanks be to God
others bring their skills and calling to the Church to manage projects, deal
with numbers and practical tasks.
What we see in the Acts of the Apostles is a sacred
order developing, under the guidance of the Spirit, not just a pragmatic
allocation of jobs.
These seven men named in the passage are to serve
after the example of Christ who ‘came to serve and not to be served’. (Matthew
20:28)
These seven are the first deacons, in Greek διάκονος
(diakonos), which primarily means ‘servant,’ ‘waiter,’ or
‘minister.’
And theirs is an ordered ministry because before
they took up their task to serve at table the Apostles prayed and laid their
hands on them.
To this day this is the pattern of ordination of
deacons, priests and bishops, and the same action used at confirmation too.
Overarching this ordering of the Church - with the
Apostles and deacons serving the baptised in priestly and practical service -
the purpose of Jesus Christ’s mission in the first place is to lead us home to
our heavenly Father, to the dwelling place of God, where we find our true home.
Here’s not just the ‘origin story’ but the ‘destination
story’ too!
This is what Jesus is pointing us to when he says to
Philip, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father
except through me.’
He is saying quite plainly that God is unknowable
without Him, and that to see Jesus is to see God: as St Paul puts it elsewhere,
‘Christ is the image of the invisible God’ (Colossians 3.12).
See him and you see the Father; and when you to walk
in his way, rejoice in his truth, and share his risen life then you are walking
in the ways intended by God for human beings.
This is our ‘destination story’ as a Christian
people on the path, the road, the route, the way with Jesus Christ and in Jesus
Christ.
If we are not on the path that is Christ, then we
are not on the way to the Father’s house, our heavenly dwelling, and worse we
trip up over the foundation stone rather than build our lives on it.
Last week the Church celebrated the great saint of
the 14th century, Catherine of Siena.
Catherine has many wise and ‘tough love’ sayings and
here’s one beautiful one, that reminds us that our ‘destination story’ is also
to be lived out today:
All the way to heaven is heaven, because
Jesus said, "I am the way”.
Our true ‘origin story’ and ‘destination story’ is when
Jesus says, ‘I am the Way, and I am the Truth and I am the Life’.
The Church, the company of the baptised, served by
its bishops, priests and deacons, exists to walk that way, invite others to
walk that way and at the last to come by that way to the Father, to whom we
pray in the words of Psalm 143:
Let me hear of your loving-kindness in the morning,
for in you
I put my trust;
show me the way I should walk in,
for I lift
up my soul to you. (Psalm 143.8)
