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Good morning. My name is Debbie. The Old Testament reading is found in Exodus 31, 1 through 5. The Lord spoke to Moses. Look, I have chosen Bezalil, Yuri's son and her grandson from the tribe of Judah. I have filled him with the divine spirit with skill, ability, and knowledge for every kind of work. He will be able to create designs, do metal work in gold, silver, and copper, cut stones for setting, carve wood, and do every kind of work. The word of the Lord.

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The New Testament reading is found in Acts 6, 1 through 4. About that time, while the number of disciples continued to increase, a complaint arose. So the twelve called a meeting of all the disciples and said, It isn't right for us to set aside proclamation of God's word in order to serve tables. Brothers and sisters, choose carefully seven well-respected men from among you. They must be well respected and endowed by the Spirit with exceptional wisdom. We will put them in charge of this concern. And as for us, we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the service of proclaiming the word, the word of the Lord.

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He replied, You give them something to eat. But they said, We have no more than five loaves of bread and two fish unless we go and buy food for all these people. They said this because about 5,000 men were present. Jesus said to his disciples, seat them in groups of about 50. They did so, and everyone was seated. He took the five loaves and the two fish, and he looked up to heaven, and he blessed them and broke them and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. Everyone ate until they were full. And the disciples filled 12 baskets with the leftovers, the gospel of the Lord.

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Please remain standing with me as we pray this morning, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Here we are once again gathered together in your place as your people to hear your word. So by your spirit, would you speak to us? Would you open our ears to hear your voice? Open our minds to understand your ways, open our hearts to have the very core of us, our affections transformed, that we might learn to live in the love of God and love of others. In Jesus' name. And all God's people said, Amen. You may be seated. Good morning, saints. Happy Eastertide. Today is the sixth Sunday in Easter. So we're going to keep the feast for a little bit longer. It is also Mother's Day. So once again, we want to say happy Mother's Day. My mom is probably watching online this morning. So happy Mother's Day, Mom, Sarah, happy Mother's Day to you, and happy Mother's Day to all of you. As a dad, one of the things that I am so grateful for in this community is the number of ways that you, all of the women of our church, display and walk out the way of Jesus. The way that you come alongside one another and the way you come alongside the next generation to serve as spiritual moms, our kids have been the great benefit of that. So I am very, very grateful this morning. As I said earlier, my name is Jason. If you're new or newer, thanks again for being here. And if you're watching online, maybe you're watching online because you uh just welcomed a new baby. Maybe you're watching online because uh that baby is sick, maybe because uh there's just a lot going on with flu and stomach stuff, all of those kind of things. But wherever you are, we love you, we miss you, we hope that you are doing well. And before I begin, I need to issue a public apology uh for my veggie tails mishap last week. I misquoted and said that my illustration in the sermon came from Bob the Tomato, when in fact it came from Archibald the Artichoke. And I heard from several of you um how I had lost credibility just in uh in not knowing my veggie tales. I will say, just in my own defense, uh I didn't grow up with veggie tales. I grew up watching The Simpsons, Renan Stimpy, and Beavis and his friends. Um none of which I quote on Sunday morning uh very often. So you'll just have to forgive me when I mix up my uh vegetables. Um, but if you've got a Bible, would you turn with me to the book of Acts or you can follow along on the screens? We're in this series through this beautiful book uh called Kingdom Movement. Uh, the book of Acts really tracks how the kingdom of God expands through the church from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and then all the way to the ends of the earth. And we're in the part of the book that really is focused on that initial immediate context of Jerusalem. And the first five chapters, the kingdom of God so far has been demonstrated in preaching, in teaching, in the ministries of healing and deliverance, but also in the ordinary life of the church, as the people of God have devoted themselves to their common faith, the apostles' teaching, to their common life and to the common good. And at various points throughout the book of Acts, the author, Luke, tells us that as the people of God are living out the kingdom of God, the people are being added to their number daily. There are moments where several thousand people get added to the church, and then there's other moments where it's just this slow addition of people coming to know and believe that Jesus is the Messiah. And so this movement is continuing to grow and to gain sort of traction or credibility or popularity, whatever words that we want to use, but it's not without resistance or threats. Externally, we find that the church in the first several chapters is continually ending up in conflicts with the authorities in Jerusalem, particularly those that are connected to the temple. Oftentimes the church is being arrested and even beaten. We're gonna see that's gonna continue to escalate throughout the book. But there are also internal threats, things that are happening within the community that have the potential of undermining both their identity as well as their mission. In chapter five, we saw how that risk was posed by the greed and deception of Ananias and Sapphira. And today we're gonna look at chapter six, where a different kind of internal threat emerges. So Acts chapter six, verse one says, and about that time, while the number of disciples continued to increase, a complaint arose. The Greeks, the Greek-speaking disciples accused the Aramaic-speaking disciples because their widows were being overlooked in the daily food service. And really, what we find in this chapter is a challenge that exists on two levels. The first level is an administrative problem or an administrative challenge. As the church grew, so did the needs. As the people increased, the needs increased and they changed. They developed and had to figure out kind of what to do in response to what was happening in the church in each sort of season. One of the things the church had committed themselves to was the Old Testament's emphasis on caring for the poor and the vulnerable, particularly caring for the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant, those who were vulnerable within their society, who lacked any sort of legal protection or economic support within a patriarchal culture, because those were the ones who had lost access to those legal and economic systems by the loss of a connection to a male relative. And so the way that the early church was living out the kingdom of God was by doing those same kinds of things. And here we find particularly a focus on widows, on those who had either lost their husbands at some point along the way, andor also lost children. So they were had no one to care for them. It's possible that these families, uh, rather than having lost spouses or lost children, could have also experienced a rejection of their families, having been disowned for converting to Christianity. Several historians have noted that it's the church's remarkable treatment of women and especially widows, as one of the reasons for their exponential growth in the first few centuries. That the way that the church was dignifying women and caring for those who found themselves vulnerable made the church a really attractive sort of place to say, oh, wait, I can imagine a God who loves me because I see how this group of people loves me and embodies that. And so the church is uh, and or Acts is celebrating that as the church is living out its mission, people are being added to their number, but Axe is also honest about the challenges that that presents. That not only does the growing church need additional resources, but the growing church also needs new leaders and new systems in order to be able to meet that care well. So, on one level, they have an administrative problem, but on the second level, there is also a division problem. The first Christians, we know that this time period are all Jewish, but they're not all the same. They come from different cultural and linguistic groups and backgrounds. There are some who are born in Judea, in other words, in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas, and their primary language is Aramaic, which is a related language to Hebrew. And then there are those who are born outside of that land whose primary language is Greek, and they have made a pilgrimage maybe in to Jerusalem for Pentecost, have now found themselves a part of the church, decided to stay, or they've relocated there. But this is a minority group that speaks this different language. And in that difference of language and culture, one group is being privileged over another group. One group is being seen and cared for at a different way than another group. We're gonna see similar challenges throughout the book of Acts and throughout church history. This is really a precursor to the big challenge coming up later in Acts, which is what happens when Gentiles are added. So the church is no longer just Jewish, but now Jew and Gentile. And other places in Acts in the New Testament, we're gonna see divisions threatening the church around socioeconomic lines, around rich and poor, or slave and free, or around gender lines of male and female. And of course, that kind of temptation toward division is not unique to the early church. It's a struggle that the church has faced throughout time. And we've seen churches struggle with reconciling how do we stay unified as a body of Christ when we come from different nationalities or different races, or we're from different age groups, or we have different marital statuses, or we have some with kids and some who don't have kids. Actually, this is one of the reasons why Mother's Day can be such a difficult day for people in coming to church, is that oftentimes what ends up happening in churches is there's an isolation that sometimes people feel who maybe want to get married and haven't gotten married, or who want to have kids and haven't been able to have kids, or who have gone through a tragedy. And it seems sometimes is like, is there space for me and my different story in the middle of that? And the church is wrestling with okay, we've got all of these different people coming together in the early church, and that's going to continue to expand throughout history. In fact, most scholars would say that the Christian movement, the church, is the most diverse movement in the history of the world. And what the church has tried to say over and over and over again is that our similarities in Jesus are greater than any differences that we have. And our differences are meant to be incredible strengths, not things to be ignored or pretend that they're not there, but instead, uh the beauty of our unity is that our unity is found in diversity, not in similarity. That we are saying, oh yes, it's Jesus that has brought us all together with all of our different backgrounds and all of our different stories. But what we see is that those differences can also be a seedbed of division. That those differences, rather than being a celebrated strength in the church, can end up leading to a fracturing of the church's unity, which at its very core is just a failure to love one another, a failure to see one another and to care for one another well. So the church is facing this really critical juncture. Here they are, they're growing, all of these things are going well, and they have an administrative issue and a division issue that they need to address. They can't ignore this and just sort of hope it goes away. And so we see in Acts chapter six, verse two, the 12 called a meeting, because that's what churches do. We call meetings. Um, and so it goes way back all the way uh to here. So they called a meeting. And all the disciples said, It isn't right for us to set aside the proclamation of God's word in order to serve tables. So, brothers and sisters, carefully choose seven well-respected men from among you. They must be well respected and endowed by the Spirit with exceptional wisdom. We will put them in charge of this concern. And as for us, we'll devote ourselves to prayer and to the service of proclaiming the word. Now, what happens oftentimes when we read this text is that we assume a kind of demeaning or disparaging tone from the apostles. Oh, it isn't right for us to give our precious time to those trivial tasks, to those lower and less important activities. That we can read this and they can hear the apostles saying, Oh, waiting tables is below us. We need to find other people to do that kind of work. That kind of reading actually perpetuates another kind of division in the church, uh, a struggle that the church has had for a long time that places greater value, greater significance, greater worth on high-profile public ministry than on the less-seen ministries of the church. That places greater significance on pastors or on staff or on volunteers than on congregants, greater significance to uh this kind of paid ministry as opposed to other kinds of work in the community, and places greater emphasis maybe on what we call vocational pastoring than on unpaid work like the beauty and grace of parenting. And this can come either from top down, from like the 12 in this passage, also can come from the bottom up. That we are actually all really quite good at disparaging our own selves, our own roles and our own contributions and our own significance in the body of Christ. What we actually see happening for the apostles is that this is a humble acknowledgement, not an arrogant assessment. It was the apostles who we learned earlier are the ones who administer the church's funds. And it's the apostles who are overseeing the church's ministry. And what they're realizing is that this is now happening on their watch. And they're taking responsibility, they're realizing, oh no, we have a problem, and the problem is largely related to them. And they're recognizing that neither the ministry of teaching and preaching or the ministry of caring for the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger, that neither of those ministries should be neglected, that they're both necessary, they're both essential, they're both critical to the life of the church and the church's witness to the world's. This is probably more clearly seen in the original language, where we find that the apostles use the same verb for both activities, that they refer to both as service. Both of them say serving. It's the same root word where we get the word deacon later on. But the apostles serve the church by serving the word. And then these new leaders are going to serve the church by serving the table. But both are acts of service, both are to the benefit of the church, both are a witness to the world, both, as we see in this text, are empowered by the Spirit, both require wisdom, and both are highly respected among the people. We often miss that and begin to sort of place hierarchy and more importance on one thing than the other. But the New Testament says things like this: says there are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but they all come from the same spirit, and there are different ministries, but they are all about the same Lord. And there are different activities that we do on a Sunday and on a Monday and a Tuesday and a Wednesday and a Thursday, but it's the same God that produces all of them in everyone. And a demonstration of the spirit is given to each and every person. Why? For the common good. Which means that the most important things that happen during the week are not isolated to this hour. Thank God. But as you're sent from here to wherever it is that the Lord has placed you. Maybe it's in a season of retirement and you're caring for grandkids and doing a bunch of volunteer things here and there along the way, those can be spirit filled acts of service that. Give to the common good and continue to push forth the kingdom of God. Maybe it's the job that you're going to in the classroom or in an office or in a restaurant or you're driving for Uber or you're whatever it happens to be, you're taking care of plumbing or electrician, you're building houses, you're helping people with their finances, you're working at a bank, you're working in whatever kind of job or ministry it happens to be, you're doing computer tests, you're working in IT, you're coding, all of those things can be spirit-filled acts of worship that can contribute to the common good and the continuation of the kingdom of God. And when we serve in kids' ministry or youth ministry or making coffee or setting up or tearing down or participating in any of our teams, those can be spirit-filled acts of service that contribute to the common good and push forward the kingdom of God. And even on a Sunday morning, maybe some of you, what you carry with you is a sense of hospitality or joy and encouragement. And when you take a moment on a Sunday morning and you say, Hey, I've never met you before. What is your name? And you extend that to somebody else, that can be a demonstration of the spirit for the common good that helps further the kingdom of God in ways that you might not ever realize. Sometimes one of those most powerful moments on a Sunday morning when someone is seen and welcomed by another. And so Acts chapter 6, verse 5, this proposal, this idea of setting aside some people to help lead this ministry pleased the entire community. And they selected Stephen, a man endowed by the Holy Spirit with exceptional faith, Philip, Procorius, Niconor, Timon, and Pumba. Oh, wait, no, that's not that's uh Parminius and Nicholas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. And says the community presented these seven men to the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them. See, as needs arose within the church, the wreck, the church recognized uh the grace that is already evident in people that were coming alongside and serving. And the apostles laid their hand on them and they blessed them and they commissioned them. But what is easily missed within this passage is that all seven of these people have Greek names, not Aramaic names. All seven of them are part of the group whose widows are being neglected. They shared the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of those who weren't being cared for. In other words, they could relate. They were close to the problem, they were close to the people that were affected. They could maybe even relate to the sense of feeling lesser or feeling like an outsider or feeling like a minority. And they cared. And they were capable of helping. And so, in their very selection, yes, the administrative problem was addressed, but also their selection undermined the problem of favoritism that was creeping into the church. It undercut the division and preserved the unity by elevating these folks into that position of leadership. One sidebar related to this is I think that often, as it relates to what we were saying before, is that we believe that our background, that our story, that our family of origin, the things that we've gone through, the things that make us different, exclude us from doing something meaningful in the kingdom. That oftentimes we can look at what other people are doing or their jobs or their ministries or their volunteerism or whatever it happens to be, we can look in and say, well, I'm not that person and I cannot do that thing. And so then we exclude ourselves. We believe that kind of our own sort of makeup might prevent us or disqualify us from participating with what God is doing. And so our tendency is to withdraw or to hide or to shy away from the opportunities that are near us. What we see in this chapter is that those are the very things that qualify these folks to have to step into that role. That it is their unique perspective, their unique proximity, their unique connection that enables them to be able to lead well within the middle of this. I wonder sometimes how many times that we sort of you know, sort of step back or shy away as we are focusing more on what we feel like is what disqualifies us than the grace that we've been given, than the spirit already at work in your life, with the things that you do carry that are for the benefits of the common good. This next verse is perhaps one of my favorite in the book of Acts, and I'll tell you why in just a second. But Acts chapter 6, verse 7 says this and says, God's word continued to grow, and the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased significantly, and even a large group of priests embraced the faith. We read this, we read passages similar to this over and over in Acts, where we hear, like, oh, the number of disciples increased, people that were being added. Typically, what happens is that it's after a sermon or after a miraculous healing. That there's some kind of, you know, major demonstration, if you will, and then people are added to their number here. It's associated with the church's administration and they're careful one another. That somehow the way that they went about solving these issues that were coming up in the church, was coming up with an administrative solution and a unity solution and empowering those who were gifted to do good deeds and to good work, particularly among the vulnerable, then all of a sudden people could behold that and say, Oh, I want to be a part of that as well. Here it's not associated with the apostles, the growth is associated with these new leaders. And here the growth is not associated with preaching and teaching, it's associated with the service of tables. And it says it was that that caused the word to go forth and increase significantly, and even become a testimony to the priests who were previously persecuting the church. Isn't that beautiful? That it is in the ordinary, everyday care and concern for one another that the word goes forth and increases. So as we get ready to come to the table, what I want to encourage us to remember today is that all of our service, all of our work, paid and unpaid and volunteered, all of it according to the scriptures, has been graced by God. All of it can be filled by the Spirit. All of it can contribute to the common good. And maybe most importantly, all of it follows in the way of Jesus. That is we come to the table, we come to the table today to remember the one who came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. And we come to the table of the one who when the disciples were like, we don't really have much to offer. We don't have much to give. We just have these five loaves and these couple fish. And Jesus says, I'll take it. And he does the miraculous with it. I wonder what wonders that we will hear in the new heavens and the new earth about how Jesus took our five loaves and our two fish, our everyday care and concern for one another, our everyday ways that we approach our paid and unpaid work, the ways that we care for spouses and kids, and neighbors and friends, and co-workers and roommates. I wonder that Jesus will say, Do you know what I did with that? And we'll get a chance to see. For glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, as now, and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.