Many years ago, in a context I have long forgotten my father-in-law quoted a piece of folklore to me that went something like this:

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost;
For want of a horse, the rider was lost;
For want of a rider, the battle was lost;
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost.

It was the wisdom of our ancestors telling us that "tiny differences of input" (want of a nail) "could quickly become overwhelming differences in output" (loss of a kingdom) (James Gleick, Chaos, 8).

Scientists describe this phenomenon as "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" (ibid). They use that idea to explain why it is hard to predict the weather. If you've ever bought a snow shovel to prepare for a really bad snowstorm and awakened the next day to sunny and cold, you have experienced the difficulties of predicting the weather. And that was a short-term prediction. Predicting the weather, even a week in advance, can be a most uncertain risk.

The unpredictability in weather patterns gave rise to a new science called Chaos Theory. That theory looks for order where the creation seems to act unpredictably. Again, the weather teaches us how challenging it is to find this order. The initial condition that might alter the weather forecast could be very small and very distant. Chaos theorists playfully call this "the butterfly effect," saying that a butterfly in the Amazon River basin, fluttering its wings, may set in motion a chain of events that results in an unexpected thunderstorm in Atlanta two weeks later.

Using the butterfly effect as our model from nature, I propose that we interpret our text in Acts 11 today with the help of what I will call "the hungry widow effect." Once again, we will begin with an initial condition - hungry widows - that set in motion a chain of events that resulted in unexpected and unintended consequences. Acts 11 illustrates beautifully the global consequences of hunger pangs in old ladies.

The Chain of Events
Let's connect the dots in our theory. You remember how it started. The Grecian Jews among them complained against those of the Aramiaic-speaking community because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food (Acts 6:1).

Shmon goes to visit his widowed mother, Sadie, and she says to him, "What's with the food already?"

"What do you mean, momma?"

"What I mean is that I didn't get any today. And just because we weren't born in the Promised Land shouldn't mean we get treated like second-class citizens. If you ask me, it's Peter's fault. He's spending entirely too much time in the Temple, preaching and getting himself arrested. If he'd stay home and take care of his own, we wouldn't have this probelm, and he wouldn't be in hot water all the time, and don't tell me I'm wrong, just get me some food. What kind of son are you anyway?"

Enough conversations like this brought the problem to the attention of the apostles. Whatever Shmon's mother thought, it was not the responsibility of the apostles to deliver the food. It was their responsibilitiy to make sure it got delivered in a timely and equitable fashion. They got the Church to choose seven men, who would look after it.

Among them was a man Stephen. His considerable abilities went well beyond the administration of social security for widows. He was a teacher, and he began teaching and disputing serious spiritual issues. As a result, he found himself before the Sanhedrin defending himself against extremely serious charges.

His long and impassioned speech was also inflammatory enough that the Sanhedrin moved against him with lethal force. Supervising that deadly action was a brillian, young zealot named Saul. They stoned Stephen to death. He became the Church's first martyr.

His death was just the beginning of a great persecution (Acts 8:1). Saul rounded up men and women and put them in jail. He intended to destroy the Church (Acts 8:3). However, what he intended to squash he only succeeded in dispersing. Christians fleeing for safety left Jerusalem and scattered among the hamlets of Judea and even among the despised Samaritans. And everywhere they went, they preached the word of God (Acts 8:4). That was not at all what Saul had in mind.

Some of them went further than that, and that brings us to Acts 11:19. Now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch. Cyprus, of course, is an island in the eastern Mediterranean. Barnabas, my patron saint, if I were to have a patron saint, came from Cyprus. I wonder if, true to his nature, he offered asylum to specially threatened persons until the danger passed. We don't of course know that. I only speculate.

Phoenicia was the land to the north of Israel, modern-day Lebanon more or less, and Antioch was the chief city in the Phoenicia. Did you also notice that as the Christians scattered to these places, they were telling the message of Jesus' resurrection and the kingdom of God. That was not at all what Paul had in mind when he carried out his pogrom against the fledgling Church. It would have truly offended him to read the end of our verse 19 and verse 20.

They were telling the message only to Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks (to Gentiles) also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. And, says verse 21, the unthinkable happened. The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.

In principle it was okay to tell Gentiles about Jesus, because in Acts 10-11 God had clearly guided Peter and the rest of the Church that it was okay to accept Gentiles into the Church without benefit of circumcision and other Jewish rituals that had been observed by Jews for hundreds of years. In principle that was okay, but to see someone other htan an apostle doing it must have caused a lot of people to swallow really hard and wonder if things weren't getting out of hand. The consequences of the hungry wido effect were taking the Church in directions it had not dared to dream.

The Church of Antioch
Verse 22 says simply, News of this reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem. As people responsible for the Church, the apostles had to look into the matter. They could not go themselves, and, says the rest of verse 22, they sent Barnabas to Antioch. We had not heard from him since chapter nine. He is very much in character.

Verses 23-24: When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. Do you remember? His name means Encouragement. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.

In verse 25 another and this time fateful consequence of the hungry widow effect happened. Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. Saul, the persecutor of the Church, had of course, ceased to persecute the Church. On the road to Damascus he had been knocked off his horse and off his high horse. The persecutor had, in fact, become a follower of Jesus and a preacher of the gospel.

When the apostles themselves were reluctant to believe reports that Saul had become a follower of Jesus, it was Barnabas who found him and brought him to the apostles. Now, Barnabas saw the burgeoning number of believers in Antioch and remembered Saul again as someone who could help to pastor and teach them.

So, says verse 26, when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. I wonder if it was Barnabas who fist saw the teaching ability of Saul of Tarsus that would later express itself in the letter to the Romans. In the best sense of the word there was something selfless about Barnabas that enabled him to see good in other people and release their strengths for the benefit of the Church.

Verse 26 ends with a footnote. The disicples were called Christians first at Antioch. In chapter 6:1 followers of Jesus were first called disciples, a name in the Gospels applied primarily to the apostles. It reamins a beautiful and suggestive name for all of us who follow Him.

At Antioch the new name, Christians, may originally have been a title of scorn. It certainly became one. The Roman historian Tacitus described them some years later as "those people, loathed for (their) vices, whom the rabble called Christians" (quoted in ibid, 478). More likely, the new name gave them an idenity distinct from Jews (Fitzmyer, Acts, 477), and with their new, distinct name, the journey to the ends of the earth had taken a decisive turn. It was a further overwhelming consequence of the hungry widow effect, made only more overwhelming by what Luke tells us next in verses 27-30.

During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. This they did, sending their gifts to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.

The church of Antioch, born out of persecution and risk, became the benefactor to the mother church in Jerusalem. It was clearly an act of solidarity and esteem. I wonder, did Luke see God's power to make good come from evil in the fact that the gift for Jerusalem went there by the hand of Sual, whose persecution had been the uninteded cause of the existence of the church in Antioch?

The Rest of the Story
I wonder also, did Luke see that gift as a shift in the center of Christianity from Jerusalem to Antioch? Fifteen of the next seventeen chapters record events that emanated from the church in Antioch. It was from Antioch that Barnabas and Saul were commissioned to go on three missionary journeys that set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire. It was after the first of those journeys that the Jerusalem Council made the momentous decision that Gentiles who believed in Jesus did not have to submit to Torah-sanctioned, time-honored Jewish rituals such as circumcision, Sabbath observance and kosher meals.

We can now see much better how an initial condition - hungry widows - set in motion a chain of events that resulted in unexpected, unintended and overwhelming consequences. I don't know if chaos theorists would admit this kind of thing into their scientific musings, but the idea of a small, inconsequential human event leading to other human events of far-reaching consequences seems unassailable in the story Luke has told of the early Church.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Is BVBC caught up in some such chain of events? We might call it the unseconded-motion effect. In 1974, after meeting for several years in the auditorium of Friends School in Alapocas Woods, the board of deacons of this church had a fateful meeting. At that meeting, after a gloomy assessment of the church's future, one of the deacons made a motion to disband the church. We who were not there can only imagine what such a move would mean to the morale of the people who made up the congregation at the time. We can only imagine the atmosphere around that table that night. The congregation had no pastor. Our deacons waited for a second to the motion.

None came. They agreed to adjourn and pray about the church's future. Looking back, it is easy to say the church hit bottom that night. The lack of a second to the motion to disband seems to have been the decisive turning point in BVBC's early history. Within six months there were reconciliations and the calling of a pastor. Within 20 months this sanctuary stood on this site. Thankful people had a hope and a future. Will the chain of events that brought us to the present moment lead on to overwhelming consequences in the kingdom of God? Don't even try to answer that question. You might as well try to predict the weather for April 8.

What we can more or less know is how we got to this point. We can hope that events of far-reaching consequence lie in this church's future. By faith let us trust in the one great condition that can affect all chains of events, which are caused by human volition and by the spontaneous movements of natural forces.

Psalm 33:10-11 teaches us how to believe.

        The LORD fiols the plans of the nation;
            he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
        But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever;
            the purposes of his heart through all generations.

When I pray, I sometimes feel like I blather. A few years ago, I cam across one of the ancient prayers of the Church. It means the world to me, especially the last petition in the prayer. I say to the Lord at the start of each day, "In all I do direct Carole and me to the fulfilling of your purpose." I can't feel it, but I know that our life stands in sensitive dependence on initial conditions that come to be through the wise and beneficent actions of our gracious God and His Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, just let BVBC be part of the chain.