Not a Needy Person Among Them

AN UNUSUAL TITLE recently caught my eye at the library. The book is called The Moral Molecule: How Trust Works, by Paul J. Zak. An economist with obvious interests in biology, psychology, and religion, Zak’s numerous experiments demonstrate that when someone is shown a sign of trust or when one’s empathy is engaged, a certain molecule called oxytocin surges in the brain and blood.

“When oxytocin surges,” says Zak, “people behave in ways that are kinder, more generous, more cooperative, and more caring.” In other words, they follow the Golden Rule of treating others as you want to be treated. Zak eventually demonstrates how oxytocin can work within economic systems, which reminded me of a children’s song we sang at a church I used to attend in Chicago: “Love is like a magic penny. Hold it tight and you won’t have any. Lend it, spend it, and you’ll have so many they’ll fall all over the floor!”

And that reminded me of research I had done on the early Jerusalem church in the book of Acts. If there ever were oxytocin surges, it must have been at Pentecost and in the days and years of the shared economic community that followed!

Two summary texts describe the common life shared among these earliest believers: Acts 2:44-47 and 4:32-37. The first tells of their daily life together, distributing possessions, worshiping in the temple, and eating a daily communal meal in various households. The second passage describes the renunciation of private ownership. Believers sold their land and homes and gave the money to the community to be distributed “as any had need” (4:35).

Why did they do this? Wasn’t it impractical and more trouble than it was worth? Didn’t they soon have to cope with cheaters like Ananias and Sapphira (5:1-11) or complaints from Hellenist widows (6:1-6)? Didn’t that radical idealism soon peter out and people go back to their former lifestyles?

Interpreting through middle-class mirrors

My research on how these economic texts have been interpreted throughout Christian history was eye-opening. Ever since market capitalism arose in the 14th century, many commentators considered the communalism of the Jerusalem church to be unrealistic. For example, John Calvin, a 16th century community organizer, writes in his Acts commentary that he had to “properly” interpret communal sharing in 2:44 “on account of fanatical spirits who devise a koinonia of goods where all civil order is overturned.” He especially criticizes the Anabaptists of the time, because “they thought there was no church unless all mens’ (sic) goods were heaped up together, and everyone took therefrom as they chose.” Instead, Calvin recommends that “common sharing...must be held in check.”

The rise of historical criticism during the 19th century in the West led to much skepticism about the accuracy of biblical texts. Luke wrote decades later, scholars asserted, idealizing the early church in Acts. The Jerusalem believers were very poor and had to help each other out, so Luke turns this grim picture into a Golden Age of sharing. In his 1854 commentary, Edward Zeller maintained that Acts 1 to 7 was full of legends and fictitious stories that Luke himself created.

The conservative reaction to such skepticism was to affirm the historicity of the early chapters of Acts—but to see this as a socialist experiment that soon failed and was never tried again. Its failure was confirmed by the poverty of the Jerusalem church in Acts 11:27-29, where the disciples at Antioch decided to “send relief to the believers living in Judea.”

No doubt these notions about the community of goods in Acts 2 to 6 prevail in many churches today. But both perspectives get it wrong because scholars and laypersons alike read these texts out of their own economic situation—Western capitalism. For middle and upper-middle classes (from which most biblical scholars emerge), capitalism has worked well. As a political and economic system, it has staunchly opposed Marxist and other ideas of socialist communalism, often perceived as “godless.”

This hostility has made it almost impossible to view the socialism of the early Jerusalem church as a positive development or one that survived more than a few years. For example, G.T. Stokes’ 1903 Acts commentary in the English Expositor’s Bible series declared that the Jerusalem experiment was a socio-economic disaster that should never have happened. One of the evils it produced, according to Stokes, was the conflict between the Hellenist and Hebrew widows in Acts 6:1. Stokes assumes they were destitute widows fighting over poor relief. Reflecting Victorian class distinctions and paternalistic attitudes, he asserts, “No classes are more suspicious and more quarrelsome than those who are in receipt of such assistance ... Managers of almshouses, asylums, and workhouses know this...and ofttimes make bitter acquaintance with that evil spirit which burst forth even in the mother church of Jerusalem.”

Few biblical texts have been more influenced by the social status of their interpreters than those that describe a community of pooled possessions. If we have grown up in comfortable, middle-class capitalism, such an arrangement seems foreign—even a threat to our way of life. But over the past generation or so, New Testament interpreters have been using the social sciences to re-create the subsistence economies of first-century Mediterranean people. And I can assure you, it’s not market capitalism!

First-century economics

For 90 percent of ancient Mediterranean people, survival issues were foremost. Land was the most desired form of wealth in these agrarian societies. But in Palestine as elsewhere in the first century, land was gradually accumulating in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Living with just enough food for a day at a time, people had no cash reserve when drought struck. Forced to borrow at exorbitant rates from wealthy landowners, their only recourse was to hand over the plot of ground that had been in the family for generations. That meant sharecropping on others’ land and keeping only a fraction for one’s family.

With economic survival so precarious, what prevented people from falling into destitution? Though Jewish law encouraged almsgiving, there were no organized social programs for the poor in Palestine. The single safety net was the kinship group formed by the extended family. Sociologists call it “generalized reciprocity.” This meant that you helped out family members who were struggling financially, knowing that eventually you would be repaid. Next year you might break a leg or lose your eyesight, and your kin-group would help you out. The main event binding these extended families together was the daily evening meal. Sharing bread with each other was to recognize your social equality and commit yourselves to each other’s welfare. (But pity the outsider and the stranger!)

Now imagine Jesus, a charismatic prophet who has broken ties with his own kinship group and who wanders around the countryside calling people to prepare for the coming reign of God by following him. Following this prophet is high risk. It divides families and creates individual outcasts (see Matthew 10:34-39 and Luke 12:49-53). How do such followers survive? Jesus’ disciples question him about this in Mark 10:28-30, to which Jesus replies that they will receive “a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields.”

Such an extravagant promise makes little sense until we realize that the alternative for such followers was forming a new kinship group. Anthropologists call this “fictive kinship,” a community of people bound together not necessarily by blood. The bond in this case was a common commitment to Jesus and his vision of the kingdom—or kin-dom—of God. In all four gospels we learn about a community of disciples who share their lives and eat meals together, symbolizing their kinship status and social equality.

This practice of a shared table fellowship with Jesus during his lifetime prepared the way for the church after Pentecost. Underneath Luke’s account of a smooth transition, we must imagine weeks and months of organizing—absorbing those from out of town who stayed on, setting up household groups that put all persons to work bringing in income or performing household tasks and preparing the common meals. Beggars, the disabled, out-of-town folks, and former prostitutes—all these needed to be given roles in the new community. Useful property was kept and shared, while fields such as one owned by Barnabas, which was probably in Cyprus, was sold (Acts 4:36-37).

What about those widows?

As the outlines of this fictive kin-group begin to take shape, we can now make better sense of the dispute among the widows of Acts 6:1-6. “When the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food” (6:1). This verse has been misunderstood in multiple ways: as a fight between Greeks and Jews, as helpless old women in huts waiting for a daily handout, and as proof intentional communalism doesn’t work.

However, both ethnic groups are Jews. Hellenized Jews from the diaspora have either moved back to end their lives in the Holy City or stayed on to join the Jesus-community. They are likely the minority, while native Palestinians receive more honor, especially since some had known the living Jesus.

Second, get rid of the picture of poor, helpless old women sitting in shacks waiting for their daily handouts. Because of short life expectancy, women could be widowed at any age. In addition, the term “widow” referred to any unattached woman in that society. This would include those whose husbands had divorced them, forcing many to beg or support themselves through prostitution. And though unattached women were usually marginalized in these patriarchal societies, Acts 4:34 clarifies that “there was not a needy person among them” because of their communal lifestyle.

Third, there was no “distribution of food.” The Greek word in Acts 6:1 is diakonia, which in the context of meals means “table service.” Hellenist widows were being neglected in the “daily table service.” Since women were in charge of meal preparation and serving, it is much more likely that tensions arose as women from different cultural backgrounds worked together.

Furthermore, these were no ordinary meals but were laced with sacramental overtones (Acts 2:46-47). Even before the Last Supper (Luke 22:14-23), Luke’s gospel centers much of Jesus’ teaching and practice around meals (for example, Luke 5:27-32; 14:1-24; 19:1-10; 24:28-35). When the 12 apostles call the community together to solve the problem in Acts 6:3, they speak of two ministries—the service of the Word and the service of the Table. What an honor for these women to prepare and serve sacramental meals! No wonder the majority Hebrew widows were tempted to pull rank over the Hellenist widows. Seven Hellenist men were then chosen to even out the power imbalance. Though some of them, such as Stephen and Philip, soon shifted into preaching roles, women continued performing the sacrament of the Table.

Common meals and shared possessions did not stop with the Jerusalem community. Fictive kinship arrangements across social class lines had to continue, since they enabled believers to survive when they joined small groups whose highest allegiance was to the Lord Jesus instead of to Lord Caesar and the Roman lifestyle. Letters from Paul and other missionaries are full of admonitions to house-churches to “love (agape) one another,” to “extend hospitality to strangers,” to “work hard” so as to contribute to the common good and not be a burden. This is especially obvious in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34, where a daily “Supper of the Lord” means that everyone eats together and all have enough. But those details are the subject of another article.

Sharing together

A community of goods is not necessarily the right answer for all Christians today. “Socialist” programs keep many Americans from destitution through Social Security and Medicare—though we may envy Canadians their national health insurance. But in countries with weak or corrupt governments, the church sometimes functions as the strongest institution of support for needy people.

In any case, a more accurate picture of life in the early church can give us a valuable lens for examining our own lives in community. Just as the disciples received “a hundredfold” of extended family and property in the early church by sharing together, we need to explore contemporary parallels. How can believers in a church community learn not to pull rank over others? How can we practice giving up certain privileges for the sake of the larger group? How can each person, no matter how needy, learn the joy of giving to a larger goal?

And now we know that our immediate reward is a surge in oxytocin!

Some of this material is drawn from Reta Halteman Finger's book, Of Widows and Meals: Communal Meals in the Book of Acts (Eerdmans 2007).