Truthfulness Before God
Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women
The Acts of the Apostles 6:1-7; Mark 15:43-47;16:1-8
The first sentence of the passage from The Acts of the Apostles reads:
“there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists, because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution.”
The first community (or perhaps the first communities) of Christ's disciples lived an ideal social life: people shared their material possessions, estates -- they sold their property and put it at the disposal of the apostles of the Church, and they spent the funds on the maintenance and material support of all members of the Church as needed.
The preceding chapter 5 tells us that "a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession," brought the money and laid it "at the apostles’ feet," but kept some of it for himself.
“And Peter said, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit [here understood – to the Church] and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? [See verses 1 to 11.] While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.' Now Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and breathed his last. (For only he and his wife knew what was hidden.) Did Ananias die of fear, or as punishment for attempting to deceive the Church and God?”
Probably the latter is correct, because when the apostle Peter asked Ananias' wife, Sapphira, and she admitted, after her husband's death, that they secretly kept back part of the money for the land, she also suddenly fell down and died. And, as the historian Luke asserts:
“Great fear came upon all the church and upon all who heard these things.” (Acts 5:1-11)
Some time later, even the apostles realized that it was impossible to build the Church on communal communities and, without changing the social order, they founded church communities on the basis of people's acceptance of faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and their acceptance of His teaching, the Gospel.
But in the read excerpt it is demonstrated:
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked”. (Galatians 6:7)
People can deceive people, but they cannot deceive the Holy Spirit, God. No one forced Ananias and Sapphira to join the Church of Christ, no one could force them to give their property for the needs of the Church, but when they voluntarily joined and voluntarily decided to give all their property to the Church and publicly—before the Church—declared that they were giving everything to the Church while in reality they kept part of it hidden, God punished them.
He punished not for the fact that they did not give everything to the Church, but for the fact that they wanted to deceive the Church, in which the Holy Spirit dwells. In the case of Ananias and Sapphira, the punishment came immediately after the crime was exposed, possibly at the prayerful request of the Apostle Peter and other apostles, to establish virtue among the new believers, but God's punishment for injustice and hypocrisy before God can also come later.
(No one forces us to join the Church of Christ, but once we have entered, we cannot be hypocritical.)
And physical death is not always the greatest punishment...
(Life convinces us that life on earth itself can be a punishment when a person suffers in illnesses and weaknesses.)
As mentioned at the beginning, among the members of the first Christian Community there were “Hellenized” ones, that is, Jews who spoke Greek and lived like Greeks. The influence of Greek, at that time the most developed culture, was significant in the countries of Asia Minor, Egypt, and Europe.
When the Romans conquered Greece and the countries where Greek culture prevailed, the influence of Greek culture was so great that many people from the upper classes of the Roman Empire adopted the Greek language and culture. In distinguished schools, the study of the Greek language, poetry, literature in general, philosophy, and various branches of art was very widespread.
The Roman Empire conquered the fragmented small Greek states militarily and politically, while Greece conquered the Roman Empire spiritually and culturally. Romans, especially the educated upper classes of society, also became Hellenized. (Egypt, in the upper classes, in administration, and in government, was Hellenized from the time of its conquest by Alexander the Great (331 BC) and the reign of the Ptolemaic dynasty, founded by Alexander the Great's general.)
Incidentally, something similar happened when Lithuania conquered Belarusian and most Ukrainian lands, and Lithuanian princes adopted the Orthodox faith and the Ukrainian-Belarusian language. But in a different way, Ukrainian culture spread to Russia when most of Ukraine, including Kyiv, was annexed to the Russian Empire. Most of the bishops in Russia were graduates of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. The first grammar of the Russian language was written by Smotrytsky Meletius (Maxim), 1578-1633; “Grammar of Slavonica” was for a long time the only textbook on the language in the Russian Empire, the last edition was in 1721.
But let us return to the “Hellenized” Jews mentioned by the Apostle Luke in The Acts of the Apostles. Because the “Hellenized” Jews complained that their “widows were neglected,” the twelve apostles, after consulting, decided to choose assistant-deacons who would take care of the social and spiritual care of these “Hellenized” widows.
Thus took place the first recorded ordination to the deaconate by the apostles. The names of those seven deacons are mentioned, among them the name of Stephen, who became the first martyr for the Christian faith.
The apostle also states that
“the Word of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith.” (Acts 6:7)
Today's Gospel story mostly concerns the women myrrh-bearers who selflessly served the Lord. Today, as on every second Sunday after Easter, our Church glorifies women who, selflessly and out of love for the Lord, work in the Church of Christ. May the Lord accept as a gift also the work of our women, who labour for the salvation of all people.
Amen.
Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko
Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.
