MAY 28, 2006: THE ASCENSION OF JESUS

Readings
Acts 1:1-11
Ephesians 4:1-13
Mark 16:15-20

Following a pattern found in many other biblical "departures," Luke uses Jesus' ascension as an occasion for the Master to give final instructions to his disciples. Jesus is specific in what he expects of them. "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth." One need only page through the remainder of Acts to discover that Jesus' followers will adhere perfectly to his geographic plan. After Pentecost they'll preach the word first in Jerusalem, evangelizing people in the immediate Judean area. Philip will then travel to Samaria, and Paul eventually will arrive in Rome, proclaiming the good news as a prisoner of the Empire. With the Apostle's proclamation in the world's capitol, the word will have its witnesses at the "end of the earth. Nothing can stop what Jesus and his Spirit have planned.

Of course, as we saw last week, Luke writes from an advantageous position: he composed Acts almost 50 years after Jesus' ascension instruction. When one narrates a prediction that long after the actual foretelling, there's always a temptation to squeeze the words into what historically happened.

We old-timers remember how this happened in April of 1968, immediately after Martin Luther King's assassination. Some reporters claimed that he'd actually predicted his demise during a talk he delivered the night before. But after tapes of that address were played, we found out that King hadn't been that specific about the time and place of his death. He had simply referred to his "mountain top" experience, something which removed any fear of what could happen to him in the future. It was next day's horrible event which led people to turn a general comment into a specific prediction.

Unfortunately, most of us aren't privy to specifics about the way Jesus wants us to live our faith. We have his general instructions, but little else to go on. These instructions are similar to those Paul shares with the Ephesians in our second reading: ". . . Live in a manner worthy of the call you have received with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit . . . ." Paul expects the Holy Spirit to help us develop the specifics of building a loving unity. We're not provided in advance with a divine road map.

Though Mark seems to agree with Paul, it takes some "scriptural sophistication" to surface his agreement. Unless you have good footnotes in your personal Bible, you'd think the evangelist ends his gospel with today's passage. Yet, even before the Council of Trent's treatment of the subject, scholars realized these verses didn't come from Mark. He actually ended his gospel in verse 8 with the comment that the women ran away from the tomb saying nothing to anyone.

Such an ending must have been too abrupt for some readers and scribes, so they created other endings for the gospel. Today's pericope was obviously constructed by a person who had a copy of Acts in front of him or her. It's a summary of some of the famous events in that writing.

But if we go back to Mark's original ending, we're left simply with the angel's message that the risen Jesus is "out there," waiting to appear to his followers. Except for mentioning apparitions to take place in Galilee - the place where the disciples live - there's nothing more specific. How fascinating it is to live a life in which the risen Jesus can surface in any form at any time and place. Too much specificity can take (and has taken) lots of excitement out of living a Christian life.

MAY 21, 2006: SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Readings
Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48
I John 4:7-10
John 15:9-17

At the age of fourteen I came close to being thrown out of my high school seminary for naively stating that I hoped the Eucharistic Scripture readings would one day be proclaimed in English. During a private audience with the rector, I quickly learned both about the "liturgical wars" being waged in American seminaries during that pre-Vatican II era, and also to keep my mouth shut about such "radical" ideas. Considering what later happened in Rome between 1962-65, my wish was harmless. So harmless, that those who have little knowledge of what our church was like 50 years ago can't understand why anyone would have gotten uptight about it.

It's one thing to look back at situations like the reformed liturgy; a totally different thing to actually live through them.

Today's three sacred authors are operating from the look-back position. Paul actually lived through it. The problem then didn't revolve around liturgical language. It arose over a more fundamental issue: what actions must followers of Jesus perform as outward signs that they're "saved?"

May 14, 2006: FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Readings
Acts 9:26-31
I John 3:18-24
John 15:1-8

We know from Paul's letters that things weren't always as peaceful and well-ordered in the early Christian communities as Luke implies in his Acts of the Apostles. Thankfully today's first reading gives us a hint that everything wasn't always copasetic, even in Acts.

First, not everyone trusted everyone else. No matter his life-changing experience on the road to Damascus, Saul's motives in joining the Jerusalem church are still suspect. Though we presume each member of the community had gone through an adult conversion, they didn't trust what some others said about their own conversions.

Second, not everyone agreed on the way their faith was to be shared by others. Being a Hellenist - a Jew raised in a Gentile environment - Saul naturally reached out to other Hellenists, with disastrous results: they put a contract out on him. No doubt there were individuals in the community who observed, "Things were calmer here before Saul arrived."

Third, things did get calmer after they sent Saul to Tarsus, far away from Jerusalem. It seems not everyone could be integrated into every Christian community. In spite of Barnabas’ intervention, as long as Jerusalem Christians limited their outreach to other Palestinian Jews, Saul was more a problem than a gift.

Perhaps that's one of the reasons the author of I John encourages his readers, "Children, let us love not in word or speech, but in deed and truth." It's far easier to keep a church together when its members just talk Christianity than when they live Christianity. Believing in the name of God's Son, Jesus Christ is relatively simple and non-divisive. It's when we love one another as he commanded that we run into problems.

Because no one specific action always shows love to everyone all the time in every place, we can have legitimate disagreements on how we're to imitate the love of Jesus in the concrete situations we encounter every day of our lives. One gives oneself for others in one way, someone else in another way. Yet no matter how we love, our goal always is to "remain in him . . . the way we know that he remains in us . . . from the Spirit he gave us."

That seems to be why John the evangelist has the soon-to-die Jesus stress the unity he expects his followers to have with him. "Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches."

We're one with the risen Jesus not just when we feel comfortable in our faith. We're also one when, like Jesus, we're reaching out to others. We can identify with his pain and joy because in trying to copy his behavior, we experience the same pain and joy. We're one with him not just in faith, but also in action, even if at times our actions create problems within the community whose faith we share.

Luke presumes his readers know that Saul's interaction with the Jerusalem Hellenists prefigures the direction the whole church will eventually take. As disturbing as it was in the beginning, that was the direction which eventually produced the fruit of Gentile conversions which all Christians take for granted today.

It's important to note that the only branches which are lopped off the vine are those which produce no fruit. Perhaps the "pruning" Jesus refers to - the pruning which always produces more and better fruit - comes from the very tension arising in Christian communities when all their members actually try to live their faith.

May 7, 2006: FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Readings
Acts 4:8-12
I John 3:1-2
John 10:11-18

We frequently forget the authors of the Christian Scriptures based their narratives and quotes of Jesus on something other than what they actually saw the historical Jesus do or heard him say. None of them had ever come into contact with the carpenter from Nazareth between 6 BCE and 30 CE. They had often heard the stories about him with which the early Christian preachers filled their homilies and sermons. Yet the only Jesus they personally encountered was the risen Jesus. It was their experience of that "new creation" which determined how they thought and wrote. When we hear the Christian Scriptures we're hearing not so much what happened during the earthly Jesus' ministry as we're hearing how the risen Jesus intersected the lives of the sacred authors and their communities. They're relating not memories, but actual encounters which changed and gave meaning to their lives.

That's why Luke can confidently have Peter proclaim, "There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved." Luke is supplying us more with his own faith than with the faith of the historical Peter. He informs us about the uniqueness of his experience by quoting Psalm 118: "The stone rejected by you, the builders, has become the cornerstone." Jesus was rejected 50 years before Luke wrote by the vast majority of his fellow Jews. But even more important, few individuals during Luke's lifetime as a third-generation Christian are willing to die enough to surface the risen Jesus in their own lives.

The author of I John concentrates on the rising dimension of the Christian's dying/rising experience. He agrees with Luke about rejection: "The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him." But he quickly reflects on both the present and future implications of such a rejection. "We are God's children now," he writes, "what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."

The same force which gives the risen Jesus life also gives us life. No wonder we'll be "like him" one day. We're already like him in giving ourselves for others. They're simply two aspects of the same action.

It's precisely the giving aspect of Jesus that John the evangelist emphasizes. Notice how committed the good shepherd is to the sheep. "A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." No half-hearted or half-way dedication; no "I'll go this far and no further." John has discovered that the only way to gain life is to imitate Jesus' determination to surrender his life for others. ". . . I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me; I lay it down on my own."

Like us, Jesus' first followers knew that everyone experiences pain and suffering in life. Even atheists die. These Early Christians were different because they went beyond the unavoidable. They freely accepted a different kind of pain, suffering and death; a kind that could be avoided. It resulted from their freely giving themselves to others. Only this pain, suffering and death brought them life.

John was certain that the historical Jesus had "taken up" life again because John experienced something parallel when he imitated Jesus' laying down his life for "the flock."

But perhaps the most "dying" aspect of our commitment springs from something Jesus seems to refer to in passing. He's willing to give himself also for those "other sheep that do not belong to this fold." No one achieves life more deeply than when he or she reaches lovingly beyond "the flock," to those whom others are comfortable ignoring.