|
First
Reading
|
Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| Acts 10:44–48 |
Psalm 98 |
1 John 5:1–6 |
John 15:9–17 |
It seems to me that a true education primarily provides a resource and reference for gaining perspective and evaluating truth. The lessons after Easter are full of historical testimony and witness of early Christians, and I realize that they can be pretty dry, and yet they provide a critical and historical perspective of wisdom and balance for people of faith. Such qualities are sorely needed especially in our world. For example, it is important for us to know that hospitality, openness and inclusiveness of rich and poor, people from other cultures, male and female and young and old, were, from the very beginning, a characteristic of Christian communities. These characteristics are not something culled from current focus groups to gain new members to the church. They have been an integral part of our heritage from the start, and we are continually called to struggle with what they mean for us today. Indeed the church is being faithful to the spirit of the Gospel only when it does struggle with them.
It is so easy for our secular society to point a finger of scorn at the church for some of its particular petty if not sinful manifestations, and of its members ignoring and not paying attention to the Gospel’s larger message. For example, it is regretfully true that centuries ago, certain individuals were burned at the stake. Many of these people were troubled, mentally ill, or just different. It was an affront to the Gospel and completely the opposite of how people of faith should have acted. There are those today who would claim, because these terrible things were done in the name of the church, they will never go near a church and tend to hold active church members with suspicion, if not contempt. Of course, we should regret such actions and do our best to make sure similar things do not happen again. However, at the same time these things were going on with the blessing of the church, under the direction of medical science, if you had a pain in your stomach and went to a doctor, the doctor might drain off two pints of your blood. If you had a high fever, it would be one pint, every 12 hours. If you had the flu, it would be a quart over three days. If you had a good medical plan you might even get a bottle full of leeches to take home with you to help bleed you. If you had a severe headache, or were acting strangely then perhaps the treatment might be to drill several small holes in your skull and drain out some fluid.
The point is I’ve never heard it said, because this is the way doctors and hospitals treated patients two hundred years ago, I will never go to a doctor or hospital. Yes the church did do harm to some people, and unfortunately to an extent that happens today. The same can be said for hospitals. It doesn’t mean, however, that our society would be better off without hospitals and churches. Again, the answer to a pernicious and poisonous faith isn’t “no” faith, it is a healthy and genuine faith.
An education worthy of the name, in any field, gives us the perspective not to throw the clean baby out with the dirty bathwater, or to use one-sided analogies as a rule for life. The Good News is still good news. We have a responsibility to let it out, to keep it free of the flotsam and to challenge the jetsam that may obscure it. It is as unfair to spurn the church today, as it is foolish to spurn medical science. We are the hands, and hearts that communicate and spread the Gospel. We live in our time and culture, but the Gospel is always calling us to examine where our culture obscures the real message.
I’m somewhat amused over the fuss the Da Vinci Code seems to be causing among some people. Go see the movie or read the book, but remember it is fiction and does not deal with the truly deeper things of our life. There is no need for the “Da Vinci” Code to shake our faith. The Gospels give testimony to much greater issues and lifts up our horizons to much broader dimensions. There is no evidence in the Gospels that Jesus was married, nor any evidence that if he were, such a fact would be covered up. After all, the Gospels mention in passing that Peter was married, but no big deal was made of it either way. It was incidental to the Gospel message. Hence Peter’s mother-in-law was briefly mentioned, but never Peter’s wife. The important thing is that Jesus accepted disciples, male and female, married and unmarried. So of course Jesus would meet at the home of Mary and Martha, as well as eat with Zaccheus the tax collector or with Peter’s mother-in-law. To Jesus, discipleship was not contingent on or limited by the world’s barriers and classifications. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark (Matt.13:55, Mk. 6:3) mention Jesus’s brothers, James, Joseph, Simon, and Jude along with Jesus’ sisters. Luke and Matthew also note that once his brothers and mother came to take him home, thinking him disturbed. There was no cover up of this embarrassing incident. If you wish to speculate whether or not Jesus was married that is ok, but it doesn’t alter the Gospel. I would just suggest if Jesus’ purported wedding ring appears for sale on e-bay, don’t bid too high. Yes, I think it would be better to give the money to St. Johns’s, but that’s not the reason I tell you not to bid too much.
The important thing is that the Gospel does not depend upon inherited status of privilege or a so-called bloodline. Christianity is not a caste system. The church is not a dynasty. Later, Paul in his letter to the Galatians mentions that one brother of Jesus, James, is a leader in the Jerusalem church. However he is not ascribed honor greater than the other leaders of the church. The other siblings of Jesus are never again mentioned and we have no idea if they ever became part of the church.
Again, in Christ, the weight of trivial things and barriers of circumstance are lifted away. Nothing can separate us from the love of God: neither conspiracy theory, ridicule, nor distinctions the world feels are all so important. God’s love does not depend upon who our parents are. Through God’s gift of baptism we learn that everyone is a child of God. Don’t let the world weigh down your faith with heavy boulders of the world’s barriers of popular assumptions and agendas. For in Christ, the world’s barriers, popular assumptions and agendas, are shown to be as light, ultimately insignificant and hollow as a rock made of balloons and paper mache.
And
I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
