…the Grecian Jews complained against Hebraic Jews … (Acts 6:1).

Everything human has problems.

This does not mean that every single thing humans do is bad.  Just that it is mixed, a mixture of some of our best impulses and some of our worst, of mistaken certainties and honest questions, of motives base and noble, of God’s Spirit and our sinfulness.  This “mixture principle” applies to individuals, families, nations—even churches!

This week, we have a story of moving from “mixed” to “fixed”—but the fixing does not require the obliteration of differences among us.

Our Race, Power and Healing series started in Genesis 4 (“Am I my brother’s keeper?”), moved to Luke 10 (“Which one was a neighbor?”) and now lands in this week’s passage in Acts 6.

The church has been growing rapidly—a positive thing, a sign of God’s blessing.  They were seeking to take care of the vulnerable widows—another very positive sign of community health and witness to Jesus.

And there were ethnic tensions, and problems flowing from them.  At this point in church history, what we now think of as “Christianity” was as a movement within Judaism.  Everyone in this story was Jewish.

But some were “Hebraic” Jews, others “Grecian.”  Some were “natives,” still living in the Holy Land.  Others, for a wide variety of historical reasons, came from elsewhere to settle in Jerusalem: outsiders, immigrants.  And the widows of the “natives” were being better taken care of.

What’s unique is not the problem: everything human is a mixture.  Jesus Christ, the Lord of the church, and of heaven and earth, is not surprised by what happened, but is keenly interested in how his people are going to respond.  Something fundamental, essential, absolutely necessary is at stake: will his church bear faithful witness to their King and the nature of his Kingdom?

Is the Gospel the same Good News for everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, sex, education, politics and every other criterion we humans use to separate ourselves into cliques, power circles, insider/outsider arrangements? Or do you need some additional qualification, other than being a repentant sinner to be invited all the way IN?  When it comes to marginal, vulnerable widows, does God prefer the Hebraic widows to the Grecian?

The church passed the test, naming seven men to see to the proper care of all the church’s widows.

The seven all had Greek names.  Members of the “offended” party not only got to see that “their widows” received proper support; they also had equal responsibility for the widows of the “side” that had just recently been mistreating them.

God has wonderful ways of fixing what we have mixed up!

What kind of attitude and heart adjustments might the original seven “deacons” have had to make?  How about us, as we reflect on our current conflicts around race and power?

As we think about these issues, how might the motives of “our” side (whoever you’d include in “our”) be mixed: a status we’re trying to protect, a message (e.g., “______ can’t be trusted, _____ don’t really belong”) we want reinforced?