My Old Friend from Antioch

#42: “My Old Friend from Antioch” by Brendon Wahlberg
I was reading the book of Acts one day, when I came across someone I really identified with. His name was Nicolas of Antioch, and here is his brief appearance in Acts 6:5. “Now during those days, 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. And the twelve called together the whole community of the disciples and said, ‘It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait at tables. Therefore, friends, select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this task, while we, for our part, will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the word.’ What they said pleased the whole community, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, together with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch.” (Acts 6:1-5)
“Proselyte” is not a word many people would recognize, and perhaps a more modern translation of Acts 6:5 would help; here is one from the “New Living Translation”, one of those English paraphrases of the Bible: “and Nicolas of Antioch (a Gentile convert to the Jewish faith, who had now become a Christian).” I read this, and I thought, wow, this guy did the same thing I did, except he did it almost two thousand years ago. Like Nicolas, I was also a convert to Judaism who was later baptized as a Christian. I wondered if the road of faith Nicolas traveled was anything like mine.
When I was very young, I attended an old fashioned, small-town, New England Congregational Church, or at least I did until my adopted parents, one a lapsed Catholic and the other an Agnostic, told me I didn’t have to go any more. So, not knowing any better, I stopped going. As a result, I didn’t have any religious identity until I went to college and fell in love with a young Jewish woman. With an empty place in my life waiting to be filled with faith in God, I began to study Judaism. Eventually, I worked with the campus Rabbi and formally studied to become a convert. So Nicolas of Antioch and I were both converts, although today they call it becoming a Jew by Choice.
For me, conversion involved (1) demonstrating to a panel of three Rabbis that I had learned the basics of the faith, (2) a full immersion in water (just like long ago with John the Baptist, except in a small ritual pool inside a building, not in the Jordan River), and (3) a symbolic circumcision – symbolic because when I was a newborn in 1966, they routinely circumcised babies in Boston. As a Proselyte, a Gentile converting to Judaism in the first century CE, Nicolas of Antioch would have undergone something similar. Ancient sources tell us that it was required that a proselyte be circumcised, and that he undergo a proselyte baptism, a water ceremony.
After my conversion, I eventually had a proper Jewish wedding, with the canopy and stepping on the glass, and everything. I truly enjoyed being Jewish, and I continued to study and grow deeper in my faith. Nothing shook me from it, not even when my long-lost birth mother entered my life and turned out to be a Pentecostal, Charismatic, speaking-in-tongues, Holy-Ghost-filled, dancing-in-the-spirit, street preacher who was expecting the end of the world in one year’s time and wanted me to be saved in time for the Rapture. I am sorry to say, she did not present an attractive picture of Christianity. She did not shake my faith. It took the end of my marriage after twelve years and two children to do that.
After my divorce, I was broken-hearted and religiously adrift, feeling distant from God and waiting to see where life would take me. Over the next few years, I was blessed to begin a relationship with a wonderful woman named Toni who was a member of Calvin Presbyterian Church. I am convinced that the Holy Spirit really is present at Calvin. I believe this because when I began to attend there with Toni, it felt like the Holy Spirit began to very gently speak to me, to beckon me to come and join in, for healing and belonging and a new, closer relationship with the same God I once knew. At first I resisted, still confused and trying to work out where I belonged in terms of faith, but one day, I looked around at the kind and welcoming people in the Calvin congregation, and I realized I was the only one keeping myself out, like a person standing out in the cold when the door to the party is wide open and right there in front of him.
And so, I began to study with the Pastor, and he taught me that faith was another word for trust. I learned to trust again, and eventually, I was baptized a Christian at Calvin. (Unlike the babies who are baptized, I was not carried around the room by the Pastor.) I have loved being at Calvin ever since. I have always enjoyed religious studies, and one day I realized that if I was going to study and learn anyway, why not share it in the form of a monthly column in the newsletter? My perspective in knowing both the Jewish and Christian sides of things would make me a good person to write about the Old and New Testaments alike. It would be like a mini-ministry in adult education, my way of serving at Calvin. Service to others is central, after all.
Which brings us back to old Nicolas of Antioch. Do we know what happened in Antioch that made him want to convert to Judaism after growing up as a Gentile (perhaps a Greek pagan of some sort)? Most proselytes were people who encountered Judaism in synagogues in the diaspora and were attracted to that ancient faith. Do we know how and why he later became a Christian? Did he hear the preaching of Peter or another Apostle and decide that the Jewish Messiah had come? We can never know the answers for sure. But we do know that he was a servant at heart.
The passage from Acts concerns the distribution of food to the poor in Jerusalem. As the passage notes, the new and growing Christian community there was made up of two groups: Hebrews (who were Jewish Christians) and Hellenists (who were Greek Christians). They were all equally “disciples” but some of the Greek widows were not getting their share of food. Nicolas was chosen, along with six others, to distribute food daily to the community of the disciples. The twelve Apostles of Jesus were unable to carry out that kind of duty. Instead, their task as given by Jesus was to pray and preach the gospel. But Nicolas’ job was really no less important. Without him, some widows could starve. Those widows had to be fed and healthy before they could hear the good news from the Apostles.
And the Apostles did seem to respect the service Nicolas performed, even if they felt they were too busy to do it. Notice that the Apostles required “men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom” to carry out the food distribution duty. Acts 6:6 tells us that the Apostles prayed and laid their hands on Nicolas and the other six men. Perhaps they were being placed in positions of authority in the infant Jerusalem church, where these seven men would attend to the needs of both the Greek and Hebrew Christians among them. Nicolas was probably a good person to choose because of his mixed background, making him better able to identify with both types of Christians.
I feel a kinship with Nicolas because I imagine that, like me, he felt it was okay to have a religious identity blending Judaism and Christianity, and that he could see that both faiths, usually thought of as separate by most people, were really two sides of the same coin.
How many ways are there to serve others in a church? There are as many different ways as there are different people in the church. This column is my way; what is yours? Whatever it is, thank you for doing it, and may it “please the whole community” like the service of my old friend from Antioch, Nicolas.