Chosen to Serve

Acts 6:1-7

Halfway through June already.

I always think of C.S. Lewis’ thought on how “little reconciled to time we all are.” So strange, since we are so surrounded by it – we live in it. It’s as if, he suggests, a fish was constantly surprised by the wetness of water! Still … middle of June! And we have a lot to do this summer in this room during this hour. It’s good to know we are in God’s time, Kairos time, sacred time. So, let’s take pause to pray together ….

Good and gracious God, we come together from our own personal experiences from the past week to listen with open hearts to what is ours to hear this day. Add your blessing to the reading and hearing of our scripture and make acceptable the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts as we proclaim your Word to us today. Amen.

So, in God’s time this summer, we’re going to spend some of our time together engaging some of the things we “care most about”; some of the things that “matter most to us”; some of the “questions and concerns we have about life and the world”, and; some of the ways that God is setting our own souls, like those of the Apostles two millennia ago, on fire. Some of you have taken the time these past few weeks to share your personal responses to those questions we began asking on Pentecost. And we are curious to discover how communal those responses may be.

I suggested on that Sunday three weeks ago, that the answer to questions such as ours for those first apostles and disciples could be summed up in four words: The Kin-dom of God. That’s what they cared most about, what mattered most to them, what their questions and concerns were centered on, and what their heart and souls were burning with. The Kin-dom of God. Not orthodox belief, or adherence to tradition, or even “life after death”, at this point. But life right here, properly lived and offered fully to all.

They were responding to all that was “new” for them because of their lives with Jesus and their experience of Him in the Risen Christ. And they were doing all that within the confines of all that was “old” and comfortable for them – their Jewish faith up to this time. Throughout the Book of Acts, these Apostles came up against the various councils of the Jewish tradition in the first century. The Pharisees and Sadducees on those councils who constantly challenged them were only doing their duty in protecting the faith of the ancestors from “destructive innovation”.  But in an effort to conserve what we hold as “true”, we often miss “the truth” of what is happening right before our eyes.

Such was the case as the church was coming into being. This new Spirit-led community that is shaping up in the late first and early second centuries is ready and willing to move quickly in order to follow the Holy Spirit they have received. That’s never simple or easy. But it is faithful. In our reading this morning, a new challenge has arisen because “the disciples were increasing in number”. Listen for the Word of God …

Read Acts 6:1-7. The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

This new Jesus-centered, Spirit-led community is on the move. That's an intimidating thing for the conservatives and traditionalists of their time, but no less so to the conservatives and traditionalists of our own time. Our own small community right here is a fascinating blend of progressive theology (if you’re listening to you Pastors’ sermons at all!) and traditional liturgy; liberal “God-talk” in a pretty conservative worship style.  That’s deliberate, it seems to me.  We are trying to balance the requirement to conserve what is “true” with the absolute need to re-discover that truth in our time in new ways.  This is precisely what is happening in the opening chapters of the book of Acts.

Acts six is the first time in Luke’s writings where we see “shared” ministry, what would later be understood in some pretty basic Protestant tenets like “the priesthood of all believers.”  Leadership in this new community, that would come to be called the church, doesn't “dribble down” from God to Jesus, to the Bishop or the Priest, through a human created hierarchy, to the clergy and at last to the laity.  The process of “ordering our discipleship” moves in the other direction, arising from the needs of God’s people for guidance, service, and care. The Hellenist widows were being neglected, the need was filled. And the word of God continued to spread.

What are the needs of our community today? Who is being neglected? Who needs “filling”? How might we respond?

We, Pastor Ashia and I, are going to make a more direct and in-depth attempt to parse and present the responses that we got back from you to the questions we asked ourselves for this summer. We’ve looked at them broadly this past week, and this morning as we begin, know this: The questions that are burning in our hearts and the responses we are sharing to those questions do not center on how we might get more people in our pews. That’s a bit worrisome to me as a traditionalist. Numbers mean money, and both measure success by worldly standards. But I believe with all my heart that the focus we do have, asking and attempting to respond to questions of how we are to live faithfully in a world that feels increasingly fractured, will lead to deeper and more transformative accomplishments for us and our community.

Our Church Admin, Shelly, typed up the responses you shared from the last three weeks and in those responses, we repeatedly name family, community, compassion, justice, peace, inclusion, care for others and concern for the future as the things we care about and that matter most to us. We are most worried about hatred, political division, greed, violence, and the erosion of human dignity. We are wondering “what we can do” about these things. And “how are we to live into the Kingdom of God” that Jesus told us is here among us … now, within us.

Still … even as we are boldly and courageously asking questions that will send us into confrontation with all that is dividing and diminishing, the descriptions our responses paint of our spiritual lives is fragile. One of us says their faith is “like a campfire, barely burning. Another wonders “how can I catch a spark”, let alone be set on fire? Other concerns are for our aging, our losses, our uncertainty and a search for God’s presence within us and among us.

Full disclosure: Last week Ashia and I (and by “Ashia and I” I mean mostly Ashia because she knows better than this old man how to it) fed the questions and responses we received, along with some of the scripture and sermons we’ve used in these past weeks into ChatGPT and prompted it to assess what it could glean from this early “data”. We have about nineteen pages of “assessment” to look through in the weeks ahead. But on the very first page, it noted that “all that we gave it” tells it something “critical”.

“Your congregation,” it said, “does not primarily need more programs.”

Your congregation,” it suggested, “needs deeper connection, shared purpose, and practices that help people carry one another’s burdens.” (The widows need to be fed, not lectured to.)

Our Child Development Center, Community Meals, Laundry Love outreach, The Parish House coming into its own, our LGBTQ and race advocacy work, intergenerational events, SOICC partnerships, and our desire to offer this church campus as community space, are not primarily worship programs. They are relationship ministries. Numbers will be the result of good ministries, not their goal.

As we begin stepping more fully into our summer and encountering more directly our questions and responses, I think it’s absolutely crucial that we consider this is exactly what was happening over two thousand years ago during the time the church was coming into being. The book of Acts shares with us a description of how the first followers of Jesus received the Holy Spirit after his death and felt empowered by it to “be witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” to the Good News they had received from God through Jesus, their Christ. I think it’s absolutely crucial that we know what that Good News was (and is) and what these first teachers and preachers, priests and prophets were sharing. And I suggest to you that it was not … it was not … salvation in the next life. It was not “eternal life after death is yours if you only believe.” No, the Good News that drove the first communities that gathered in Jesus’ name was that the Kin-dom of God is here and needs us to more fully realize it, to share the Love of God with everyone, to offer full Life to everyone, to get with the Way of Christ so the Kingdom may come on earth … That’s profound “relationship ministry”! So, we seem to be right on target in our little corner of South Oldham County. We’ll discover more in the summer ahead.

As our scripture reading implies, we have all been chosen to serve. And from the very beginning this community that will soon be known as “the church” demonstrated an admirable and profoundly skilled ability to attend to the needs of the gathered and the gathering, following the leading of the Spirit and responding creatively to new challenges all around them.

And the Word of God spread. And the number of disciples increased greatly, with a great many becoming dutiful to this new faith.

We have a lot to do this summer in this room during this hour. It’s good to know we are in God’s time, Kairos time, sacred time. See you next week. Amen.

Reverend Joel Weible, Pastor

Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church / June 14, 2026