Glancing Thoughts

Waiting on Tables and on the Lord

The problem reported in the First Reading has to do with food for widows. The Greek Christians thought that widows of the Hebrew Christians were getting the best of things, and they complained. The Apostles said, sensibly enough, that they couldn’t be expected to handle food distribution. And so they picked some people to wait on tables, as it were, for them. Stephen was one of those picked.

The people in Stephen’s group were chosen to do a job that was not nearly as important as the work the Apostles were doing. That’s why the Apostles wanted somebody else to do it. By comparison with important things, like spreading the Gospel, or anything else great and admirable, watching over food distribution is a very small job.

But Stephen didn’t complain that the task was beneath his talents and abilities. He didn’t insist on being given a role in the great work of the Apostles. He took the small job he had been offered, and he served the Lord whole-heartedly in that job.

And look what happened (Acts 6: 9-16, 7: 54-60). His whole-hearted service of the Lord in that job attracted the attention, and the hatred, of those outside the growing Church; and they went after him. In the worst of circumstances, with his life at stake, he gave a powerful witness to the Lord he loved. In his witness and his martyrdom, he was not small. He was glorious. His life and work for the Lord became part of Scripture itself, and for over two thousand years all Christians have honored and admired him.

And so his whole-hearted service of the Lord in a small job, the one that was not worthy of being compared with the work of the Apostles, made Stephen a participant in the great job the Apostles had. In the witness of his death, he became a partner in the Gospel-spreading work of the Apostles and more than worthy of being in their company.
 

Eleonore Stump
 

**From Saint Louis University