The epistle today from the opening verses of the sixth chapter of the Book of Acts was written in the latter half of the first century by St. Luke to his friend Theophilus—and written to all of us as well. We have here in the Book of Acts the story of the first 30 years of the life of the Church in the first century. Whatever your age, the Book of Acts is worth reading at home. There is much more here than simply an honest and truthful story from history. As one Biblical commentator has said, the Book of Acts is “a bridge that ties the Church in its beginning with each succeeding age.” Let’s look more closely at the Church in the first century and try to understand a big problem that it was facing, which is still a problem for us today.

As the early Church began to grow larger and stronger, an argument developed among the Hellenistic Jews—that is, those Jews who spoke Greek and were born outside of Palestine—and the native Hebrews—that is, the Jews in Palestine who largely spoke Aramaic or the Hebrew language. We often forget as one Biblical commentator has phrased it: “At this stage of its development, the Church was entirely Jewish in its composition.” Now Jesus Christ Himself was a Jew and a native Hebrew. However, as the Gospel of St. Matthew reminds us, Jesus Christ told his apostles to go “and make disciples of all the nations.” Therefore, there is a difficult underlying question: How are these Jews from many different countries going to work together and respect each other and build a global Church for everyone from many different countries?

In the reading today from Chapter 6 of the Book of Acts, a big argument develops. The Hellenistic Jews think that their widows “were being overlooked in the daily serving of food.” Why? Because the Hebraic Jews were too busy looking after their own widows. The fact that these two groups spoke quite different languages and came from different countries was also no doubt important.  Children, have you ever got in an argument with one of your friends? What happened in the argument? What were you arguing about? . . . . How did the argument end? . . . Did you forgive each other and become friends again?

Well, this argument here in the Book of Acts might appear to be “a food fight”—an argument about who gets what food to eat. People are not throwing food at each other,  but they are quite annoyed with each. Acts, Chapter 6, Verses 2 to 4 reads: “The twelve summoned the congregation of the disciples and said, ‘It is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables. Therefore, brethren, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the [Holy] Spirit and of wisdom, who we may put in charge of this task. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

The usual interpretation of this passage is that seven deacons were then appointed to sort out the arguments over food, while the twelve apostles concentrated on prayer and the ministry of the Word. In other words, deacons were to deal with material problems, while the apostles sorted out the spiritual issues. However, in a very fine commentary on the Book of Acts, the Orthodox theologian Jaroslav Pelikan has pointed out, this interpretation is quite wrong. Yes, the deacons had Greek names and were Hellenistic Jews from outside of Palestine. However, in no way was St. Stephen “only a deacon” who “waited on tables.” In the very next chapter of the Book of Acts, it is St. Stephen alone who gives what Jaroslav Pelikan calls “one of the most rhetorically powerful [that is, well delivered and persuasive] and scripturally learned exercises of ‘the ministry of the word’ in the whole of Acts, and well beyond.” It is the deacon St. Stephen who gives such a powerful defence of the Christian faith that his face is seen by his listeners who do not believe in Christ as “like the face of an angel;” and St. Stephen is then stoned to death and becomes the first martyr of this new Church that is forming around Christ and his 12 apostles and many disciples.

What is going on? The apostles have been generous in appointing St. Stephen and others to look after the widows of the Hellenistic Jews. However, it looks as if the apostles want to make sure that they—almost entirely Hebraic Jews—are still in charge; and that these Hellenistic Jews do not cause too much trouble in governing the growing Christian community. Yes, this reading from the sixth chapter of the Book of Acts is about the creation of the diaconate. Nevertheless, it is primarily an argument about the confusion of national identity and Church identity. Which group is going to govern the growing Church—the Hebraic Jews or the Hellenistic Jews? 

Today that argument about how to govern the Church continues among many different national and Orthodox Church groups. The term we now use, coined at the Pan-Orthodox Synod in Constantinople in September 1872 is phyletism or ethnophyletism, from the Greek word ethnos meaning “nation” and phyletismos meaning “tribalism.” That Pan-Orthodox Synod was confronted with the Bulgarian community in Istanbul having established a separate diocese with its own bishop that was open only to Bulgarians. The response of the Pan-Orthodox Synod was to condemn, and I quote, “racism, that is, racial discrimination, ethnic feuds, hatreds and dissensions within the Church of Christ [as] contrary to the teaching of the Gospel and the Holy Canons.”

Throughout the world now many different bishops are seeking to serve Christians solely of their own nationality. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has rightly declared that “nationalism remains one of the central problems of the Church.” A good description of this problem that confronts all of us as Orthodox Christians was given in June 2008 by Metropolitan Jonah, who was then the leader of the Orthodox Church in America. Metropolitan Jonah recognised, and I quote that: “almost all national Churches have extended their jurisdictions beyond their geographic and political boundaries to the so-called diaspora.” That is a revealing expression that Metropolitan Jonah is using, “the so-called diaspora,” because the real diaspora, from the Greek words dia meaning “through” and spirein meaning “to scatter,” refers to the scattering of the Jewish people to various countries following their exile to Babylon in the Sixth Century Before Christ, more than 2,500 years ago.

Metropolitan Jonah pointed out, and again I quote, that “Orthodox Christians who are faithful to the Gospel and the Fathers cannot admit of any such thing as diaspora Christians. . . . The essential principle of geographic canonical boundaries of episcopal and synodal jurisdiction has been [violated], and [unfortunately] every patriarchate, every mother Church, now effectively claims universal jurisdiction to serve ‘its’ people in [the so-called] diaspora.”

As Metropolitan Jonah explains, it is easy to understand how he situation arose, because of, and I quote, “the mass emigration of Orthodox [Christians] from their home countries, and is continued as a means of serving the needs of these immigrant communities.” He offers an accurate and quite blunt assessment that the continuation of the present confusion of jurisdictions is now being “perpetuated as a means of maintaining, ethnic, cultural and political identity for those away from their home country; but also as a means of financial support for the mother churches from their children abroad.”

The problem of ethnophyletism within the Orthodox Church—that is modern tribalism based on nationalism—has led, as Metropolitan Jonah has pointed out, to “the confusion of ethnic identity and Orthodox Christian identity, [which] distorts the Apostolic vision and has severely compromised the catholicity of the Orthodox Churches in which all Christians in a given territory are called to submit to a local synod of bishops.”  Therefore, Metropolitan Jonah is searching for what he calls “a common expression of unity that supersedes ethnic, linguistic and cultural divisions. . . . “

This search of Metropolitan Jonah is also our search every time we gather together in one united body of Orthodox Christians from many different nationalities and many different ethnic groups. However, if we wish to face honestly the existing ethnic and linguistic and cultural divisions within the universal Orthodox Church, then we must first seek to understand and respect each of our different ethnic and linguistic and cultural approaches to Christ Our Lord.  God is one; and we are one with Him.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, God is One. Amen.

Father Deacon Emmanuel Kahn