Protecting in Diversity
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In Acts chapter 6, the early church faced its first internal crisis. The church was mainly Palestinian, but there was a growing number of Hellenistic Jews joining the community. As Greek-speaking Jews often moved to Jerusalem for their final years of life, they left behind their widows who were relatively unknown in the larger community. As the community was distributing food to the hungry among themselves, these Greek-speaking widows were being overlooked. The apostles listened to the complaint. They recognized the need. They understood how the injustice originated. They resolved to respond. They appointed a task force of 7 to take oversight of the food distribution to resolve the unintentional injustice. We know their names. Each name given is Greek. None are Hebrew or Aramaic names. The Apostles determined that not only were they the ones aware of the problem, they were also the ones for whom fixing the issue was most important. We are being told a segment of our...