The issues that the apostles faced as the church grew related in part to providing for those who could not provide for themselves. There is an assumption in the text — that there is a “daily distribution” to primarily the widows in the region.

Widows in this time had no ability to pay or support themselves. Most work was agricultural: as it was until about two generations ago. One of my grandfathers was a farm labourer on dairy farms. He was known for his ability to work hay and make hay stacks and fix farms. All these jobs require physical strength. Even in this time, feeding out is a physically demanding job.

However, many of those jobs have gone.

Physical strength is and will always be incredibly important in farming. You can’t fix the equipment, carry the bags of seed to fill the planter, stack hay bails or get them out of the mow, or a thousand other things without lots of physical strength, or you’d have to have hired hands to do all the grunt work which would eat all your profits.

The efficiency of the newer equipment may actually work the other way — it’s so efficient that one person can run a midsize farming operation practically alone, but only if he’s capable of doing 90% of the possible tasks himself on the spot if need be. My dad farms thousands of acres but he hasn’t had a hiree with significant hours in many years.

In ancient times, the work inside a house was just as physically demanding. Most grain was stored as… grain and there were few millers and fewer bakers: most wives needed helpers to simply prepare the food for the family each day. But this did not provide for the family: that came from the labour of the husband. The Rabbinical tradition by then was that all Jewish men needed a trade — Paul is the most famous example, for he supported himself as a tentmaker.

And Paul advised younger widows to remarry, and all to work, to keep the numbers being fed sustainable.

But the issue of provision remained.

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called), and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen. But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking. Then they secretly instigated men who said, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.” And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council, and they set up false witnesses who said, “This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.” And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel.
(Acts 6 ESV)

In modern terms, the apostles, who were all Hebrew speaking Jews, had a ‘wedge issue’. Most Jews were not in Palestine, or at least a large number spoke Greek, which had been the language of education and trade for at least 200 years. There was a resistance to this for the same period (which is documented in part in the Apocrypha and also in the Talmudic commentaries). The Jews were leery of integrating into the wider, idolatrous, culture, and with good reason. They clearly recalled the teaching of Ezra and Nehemiah about the causes of the destruction of the first temple.

But you now have two cultural groups: and even though most of the apostles were rural Jews from the margins of Palestine (and Galileans were not quite considered proper) they were far more proper than those who had Hebrew as a second language.

And so, in this circumstance, the deacons appointed — all of them — have Greek names. The apostles trusted this group to run the finances and the social provision for all the widows, including the Hebrew ones. One of them (Nicolaus) was a proselyte: he had been born a Gentile.

We no longer live in a world where widows starve in the street: we pay, at least in New Zealand, a fair amount of tax so that we do not have a homeless population and that people have enough to eat and be warm. Most of us also support various churches, who take the need for providing for the week seriously, and I do believe that charitable work should be done via the local church or community of churches, where those who provide can work in peace and those who need can get help with security and even the gospel.

In this time the wedge issue is not which ethnic group or language you speak. Most of us do not really care that much about such. We do care about having our work taken over and funded by the state, who often have an agenda that is not freeing or helping or caring, but meets other goals relating to power and control. There has to be, at a time when the church is being told to be silent by the state on the very issues that lead many to damage if not damn their lives, a question as to if we should trust the state, or accept funding from the state.

On the second issue I think the simplest thing is to leave the secular state alone and keep it well away from our funding and management. On the first issue we need to consider — particularly as abortion and euthanasia have their advocates who say the state will save dollars both now and in the future by allowing these to occur — if we need again to have our own systems of providing for those who cannot work. And, even, work for those who can.

Perhaps we need to look at the older Catholic church, with its monasteries. The abbots and abbesses provided shelter for many. Or to the Anabaptists, particularly the old order groups, who mistrust technology and stay apart from the state.

But we do have a duty to care for our own. Within families, and as a congregation for those who do not have a family living, or the ability to work. for frail they now are.

How this will work out I am not sure of. What I do know is that the state is a jealous creature who sees any parallel system as a form of treason, including particularly those systems, such as the York Asylum, that work far better than any state run service.

So do not trust them. And consider carefully who is paying, for they indeed tell the piper which tune to play.