Acts, Jealousy & Honor (part 2)

Returning to the second chapter, one sees that this type of activity occurred in association with the fact that “Every day they continued to gather together by common consent in the Temple courts, breaking bread from house to house, sharing their food with glad and humble hearts” (Acts 2:46).  The conclusion of this report speaks to the effects of this regular gathering, which allowed the body of Christ to learn about and meet needs as they were “praising God and having the good will of all the people” (2:47a).  This fueled the growth of the church, as “the Lord was adding to their number every day those who were being saved” (2:47b).  Hearing these words, it would only be with some difficulty that one could separate the saving of people with the distribution that sought to meet the needs of all, without discrimination. 

Echoing the ministry of Jesus, chapter three sees the healing of a lame man at the gates of the Temple, with the accompanying “astonishment and amazement” (3:10) of those who witnessed the result of the healing.  This provides yet another opportunity for the public proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah, crucified and resurrected as the harbinger of the general resurrection, the assertion that Jesus was and is the long-awaited prophet like Moses, and a reminder of the all-important Abrahamic covenant by which the people largely defined themselves, along with its fulfillment in Jesus and in the movement that bore His name. 

This leads to the record of the opening of chapter four, by which Luke informs the reader that “While Peter and John were speaking to the people, the priests and the commander of the Temple guard and the Sadducees came up to them, angry because they were teaching the people and announcing in Jesus the resurrection of the dead.  So they seized them and put them in jail until the next day” (4:1-3).  This leads into the first examination of the disciples before the leaders of the people, and the order to discontinue their revolutionary proclamation of Jesus as Lord and His kingdom as present.  Clearly, the issue at hand was power, and those in power were threatened by the upstart from Galilee, though He had been crucified at their instigation, viewed as being accursed because He had been hung on a tree, and had been subject to the scorning and the horror of the greatest shame. 

Lest one believe that power was not the issue, the disciples, via the author providing a sober reminder by relaying the response of the disciples and their understanding of the threat that their growing movement had become, say “Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot foolish things?  The kings of the earth stood together, and the rulers assembled together, against the Lord and against His Christ” (4:25b-26).

With considerations of power come considerations of the all-important issue of honor in the ancient world---a world in which one’s status was delineated by conceptions of honor and shame.  Though honor would not necessarily have power as a compatriot (as the honorable would not necessarily be the powerful), power practically demanded honor.  Power, be it religious or political (remembering that the world of the disciples’ era did not neatly divide into the religious and the political, but operated in a holistic fashion in which all areas of life overlapped and intertwined), was nothing without honor.  Power was not power without honor.  Without public honor to accompany it, power would be empty and pointless. 

Timothy & Countering The Culture (part 15)

Now, when one considers a daily distribution of food to widows, there is probably an idea of people going house to house, delivering meals to those that are shut-in and who are too old and frail to serve themselves.  Though this may have been part of what was occurring, it is best to keep oneself culturally and historically grounded, while also keeping the regular assembly around the meal table front and center. 

One must also bear in mind that, due to much shorter life expectancies, these widows could have been relatively young.  Though this study will later be dealing with this in greater detail, it is possible to get a glimpse of the treatment of widows in the letter to Timothy (thus causing the reference to widows in Acts to have an even greater bearing on a study of Timothy), when Timothy is instructed that “no widow is to be put on the list unless she is at least sixty years old” (1 Timothy 5:9a). 

As it relates to the physical capabilities of widows and to being sure that they are being viewed through an appropriate lens, Paul writes that there is a bit of a problem in widows “going around from house to house” (5:13a).  In response then, Paul’s directive is “I want younger women to marry, raise children, and manage a household, in order to give the adversary no opportunity to vilify us” (5:14).  More on this anon, but in that statement, widows are the “young women” and therefore the subject.  

So again, one must put the idea of the frail, sickly, shut-in widow, who can barely lift her head or feed herself (though there were certainly some of these attached to the church), out of mind and see these widows referenced here and in Acts as capable and perhaps vibrant members of the community, who are able to participate in the regular table gatherings of the church. 

That said, it is probable that it was at the coming together of the church around a common meal that these widows were being neglected in the distribution of food.  If so, this sounds terribly like the situation that Paul addresses in Corinth, where he writes “when you come together as a church I hear there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it…  Now when you come together at the same place, you are not really eating the Lord’s Supper.  For when it is time to eat, everyone proceeds with his own supper.  One is hungry and another becomes drunk.  Do you not have houses so that you can eat and drink?  Or are you trying to show contempt for the church of God by shaming those who have nothing?” (1 Corinthians 11:18,20-22a) 

It becomes clear that the honor-based arrangements around the meal tables to which Jesus was regularly invited, and which He regularly criticized, were alive and well and being used at the meal tables of the church in Jerusalem.  Widows, as would have been quite common owing to a lack of a living husband and therefore a lack of honor or even the ability to accrue honor (a wife’s honor was dependent on that of her husband), were being neglected---relegated to the positions in which they were served last.