Dealing With Troublemakers

Acts 6:1-6; 7:55-60

April 20, 2008, Fifth Sunday of Easter

Fred Craddock, the dean of Protestant preachers tells of his first church not too far from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. With the boom in atomic energy, the town and area of Oak Ridge became a bustling area overnight.

People came from everywhere and pitched tents and lived in wagons. Hard hats from everywhere, with their families and children paddling around in the mud in those trailer parks, lived in everything temporarily to work. Our church was not far away. We had a beautiful little church – white frame building, one hundred and twelve years old. The church had an organ in the corner, which one of the young fellows had to pump while Ms. Lois played it. Boy, she could play the songs just as slow as anybody.

. . . After church one Sunday morning I asked the leaders to stay. I said to them, “Now we need to launch a calling campaign and an invitational campaign in all those trailer parks to invite those people to church.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think they’d fit in here,” one of them said. “They’re just here temporarily, just construction people. They’ll be leaving pretty soon.

“Well, we ought to invite them, make them feel at home,” I said. We argued and time ran out, and we said that we’d vote next Sunday. Next Sunday, we all sat down after the service. “I move,” said one of them, “I move that in order to be a member of this church, you must own property in the county.”

Someone else said, “I second that.” It passed. I voted against it, but they reminded me that I was just a kid preacher and I didn’t have a vote.

. . . When we moved back to these parts I took my wife to see that little church, because I told her that painful, painful story . . . Back among the pines was that building shining white. It was different. The parking lot was full – motorcycles and trucks and cars packed in there. And out front, a great big sign: Barbecue, all you can eat. It’s a restaurant, so we went inside. The pews are against a wall . . . and the organ pushed over into the corner . . . all kinds of people sitting there eating barbecued pork and chicken and ribs . . . I said to Nettie, It’s a good thing this is not still a church, otherwise these people couldn’t be in here.

The church board certainly felt they knew how to deal with potential trouble makers – don’t let them in. How we like our own kind, and how that sentiment has torn up the church time and time again. Today we hear that a bunch of potential troublemakers almost derailed the church at the beginning. In our passage from Acts about the infant Church, the Hellenists complained because their widows were being neglected in the Church community’s food distribution in Jerusalem.

We should first ask, who were these Hellenists, and then why did they feel they were being shortchanged by the early church? The Hellenists were Jews who spoke Greek as their primary language. The Hebrews spoke mainly Aramaic, which was the main language of Judea and Galilee. The Hellenists spoke Greek because they had been brought up and lived in other parts of the Greek-speaking world, and now had migrated to Jerusalem so they could live out their lives in the cradle of their ancient faith. Because of their longevity, the women outlived their husbands and ended up widows. We also know that in ancient Israel and in the time of the early church widowed women, as William Loader a religious scholar writes:

. . . were exposed to dangers of exploitation and often lived in poverty dependent upon the mercy of those who obeyed the scriptural exhortation to remember the widows and the fatherless. Divorce thrust women even into greater danger. There was relief, even daily welfare distributions, but it was relief within the framework of an unequal and unjust society. There was little other than this band aid charity.

We have two issues here that make this a very complex situation. You have people who grew up and practiced their Jewish faith in other cities, towns and cultures, and who speak a different language. These were also migrant people who came to enjoy the benefits of land belonging to the people of Judea and Galilee. These are Jews, but they have strange ways, they have strange customs and rituals. Their ways are dangerous. Isn’t that just another way of saying “they have to live in the county to become members of the church?” They could be troublemakers.

What is interesting to note is that the disciples did not just cast off the complaint of the Hellenists, but they took it on. They took the Hellenists seriously and listened to them and talked about it, and did something about it. This is, of course, the first skirmish in the battle to decide who could become a part of the early church, who was accepted. The battle itself comes to a head in Acts 15 when Paul appears before the Christian council in Jerusalem to explain whey he thought the Gospel should be shared with gentiles. This is the same Paul, by the way, who watched over the cloaks of those stoning Stephen

The disciples determined that it was the duty of the church to feed the Hellenist widows. But at the same time they saw their job was to be spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So they laid their hands on and ordained seven men to lead the relief efforts. What is interesting to note is that the seven that were elected were all Hellenists. We know this because their names are Greek names. I also want to point out to you that this is the inauguration of the diakenoi, or deacons of the church.

Who is the church responsible for? Isn’t that the question of today’s passage? Recently our area interfaith group has been regrouping and reflecting on what we want the focus of our group to be. We have been clear that we want to look at the issues facing the people of our communities and how we can be a voice in finding solutions in these issues. You might be interested to know what we see as the issue we are tackling first; that of abuse of immigrants. At our last gathering we heard from two people working in religious and secular offices that support immigrants. Immigrants who are working and paying taxes are being abused by law enforcement, by companies that hire them. We heard about a contractor who had an immigrant working for him. He would pay him much less than the immigrant was owed and promised that he would pay the rest later, but he never did. The immigrant was afraid to report it because his status might be questioned. And we heard that this exploitation is not unusual. We might think that this is not a problem in our community, but even we heard of stories right here in Stirling where immigrants are being exploited through having to pay exorbitant housing rental rates. Recently Barbara and I were in a relatively well to do community not far from here and we ate in a restaurant for lunch and while we ate we saw the wait staff being paid with envelopes of bills rather than paychecks. Were they being exploited or not? I don’t know, but it opened our eyes.

Many in the church and in our country today say that immigrants should go back to where they came from, but at the same time they want their food and their gas to be cheap. We want our cake and we want to be able to eat it too. Not long ago there was an article in the New York Times relating that the largest tomato grower in Pennsylvania probably will not plant his fields this year because with Pennsylvania’s tough new laws on immigrants, he is not sure he will have people to pick the tomatoes.

What is the church to do? Luke, the writer of Acts makes it pretty clear that we are to take care of the needs of those who are powerless in our society. Now you might say that it is different because the Hellenists were at least religious people, but I have to believe that many of these immigrants are religious people too, albeit probably Catholic, because they come from predominantly Catholic countries. We need to stand up for the human rights of all people, whether they grew up here or not.

This past week Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont wrote a blog entitled The Harvest of Shame. In it he talks about the tomato pickers of Immokalee, Florida.

"Is it really going to take an act of Congress to get Florida's tomato pickers a raise?" an editorial in the St. Petersburg Times asked. "The men and women who work the fields in Immokalee earn 45 cents on average for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes harvested. It is a meager wage that has not been raised in more than 20 years. Yet when a couple of fast food giants generously agreed to pay workers an added penny per pound, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange sabotaged the deal and has refused to negotiate even after congressional leaders offered to be intermediaries."

Thankfully, due to the dedication and hard work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the conditions that exist in the Florida tomato fields has begun to come to light. As a direct result of the coalition's efforts, two large fast food companies -- McDonald's and Yum! Brands, whose subsidiaries include Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Long John Silvers and A&W -- have agreed to supplement the pay of these workers at a rate of an additional penny per pound for the tomatoes they buy. McDonald's and Yum! are to be commended for their commitment to help alleviate the despicable situation in the Florida tomato fields. Sadly, some other fast food companies, like Burger King, are resisting making a similar move which for a minimal cost would almost double the income of the Florida tomato workers.

As a faith community we can congratulate those who are trying to make a difference, and challenge those who are continuing to live in their sin.

Stephen answered the call, and he helped those who needed help and also shared the Gospel. Because of this he was hauled before the Sanhedrin – the Jewish Council, and he told them their story, and how they had not listened to their story and were allowing for the abuse and exploitation of the people. They worshipped their rituals and power and not God and the people that God called them to care for. And for this Stephen was hauled out and stoned. He challenged the power structures and he was killed for it. Craddock challenged the power structure of that little church in Tennessee and he was told that he was a kid and didn’t even have a vote. And the church eventually became a restaurant where everyone was welcome, who could pay the price of a meal. In many ways that church was more of a church as a restaurant than it was when it was a church. At least anyone could be fed then. When we are dealing with possible troublemakers, we need to learn how to feed them – and I’m not just talking about with food, but also with justice and respect. And then you generally won’t have a problem.

Amen

© 2008 Rev. Dr. Thomas T. Peters