Earlier today I read this conversation with David French about how he was made unwelcome at his church because of race and politics. I had read an earlier column by him on the subject, but I was especially attentive to this discussion because I just before I read it I had been walking Angus and listening to Morning Prayer on my phone.
I can’t remember whether I’ve mentioned this before, but I absolutely love the Church of England’s Daily Prayer app. It takes about 20 minutes to listen to any one of the services, which features a liturgy well said, lectionary passages well read, and the occasional psalm or canticle well sung.
Anyway, one of the Scripture readings for Monday, August 12 is the passage from Acts 6 that describes the founding of the order of deacons. And I was noticing, as I heard that passage read, that the whole impetus for this new order was an injustice in the life of the church: “Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food.” The Hellenists are Greek-speaking Jews, people shaped to a considerable degree by Greek culture; many of them were born and raised outside Israel. The Hebrews were Jews of Israel, speakers of Aramaic and readers of Hebrew, who clearly considered themselves more culturally (and religiously) pure than the Hellenists.
So we see here the very common injustice that arises from people preferring members of their own cultural group to “others,” not realizing, or not accepting, that such distinctions are erased when one enters the Body of Christ. And when I consider what happened to David French in his family, I think: Every church needs deacons to do precisely what the first deacons did — that is, to give comfort and support to the people of God justly, that is, with no regard to differences in culture or race or politics, because, as Peter says a little later in Acts, “God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34).
The diaconal charism is indifference, in an old meaning of the word: “Without difference of inclination; not inclined to prefer one person or thing to another; unbiased, impartial, disinterested, neutral; fair, just, even, even-handed” (OED definition I.1). And divided as we Christians are by so many worldly or diabolical forces, we desperately need that charism.
Stephen is of course the patron saint of deacons, but if they need a priestly and episcopal patron also, I would suggest Basil the Great, for reasons I explain in the opening paragraph of this post. And if you want more along these lines, I wrote in more detail about Basil and his extraordinary family here. They all exhibited, to an extraordinary degree, this diaconal charism that I believe is so woefully lacking in the American church. (And probably in every other church as well.)
