APRIL 27, 2008: SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Readings:
Acts 8:5-8, 14-17
I Peter 3:15-18
John 14:15-21

The authors of today's first and third readings believe the role of the Holy Spirit in our everyday life of faith is more significant than some of us modern Christians acknowledge.

Our I Peter author mentions something that applies to all of us. "It is better to suffer for doing good, if that be the will of God, than for doing evil." The writer presumes all people have to suffer. No one escapes pain. His concern is that the newly baptized whom he's addressing will suffer for their "good conduct in Christ;" that the pain they'll endure will come not just because they're human, but because they're imitating Jesus' dying and rising.

One of the questions which bothered Jesus' earliest followers was, "How do I know what Jesus wants me to suffer? How do I decide what's good and what's bad?"

Of course, as we saw last week, we're to make Jesus' value system our value system. What he thought important, we're to think important. But in the day by day circumstances of life, how can we be certain about which specific thing or person the risen Jesus wants us to concern ourselves. What should we put in the center of our vision and what should we relegate to the periphery?

That's where early Christians believed the Holy Spirit comes in. The Spirit helps guide Jesus' people to where Jesus expects them to be.

John's Jesus dedicates a lot of his Last Supper discourse to the Spirit. "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him. But you know him, because he remains with you, and will be with you."

John simply believes no one can be a true disciple of Jesus unless he or she gives themselves over to the Spirit within them. Having been raised to call on the Holy Spirit only during and before school exams, this Father-sent force played only a small role in my life after my formal education ended.

In some sense, Luke informs us in our second reading that I wasn't alone in living a low or non-Spirit life. "When the apostles in Jerusalem heard Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent them Peter and John, who went down and prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for it had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus."

Among other things, this narrative tells us that our present baptismal formula - "I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" - wasn't universally employed in the earliest church. But it also points up the fact that some Christians simply don't use all the help Jesus provides us in order to fully carry on his ministry. In some sense, we feel like the orphans Jesus mentions in our gospel pericope. Though the church's structures and dogmas provide us great security, they aren't able to provide us the Spirit-filled security Jesus planned for us to experience. No matter how perfect the structures or perceptive the dogmas, there's something missing.

The I Peter writer knows this. That's why he ends today's passage with a comment about Jesus' dying and rising. "Put to death in the flesh, he was brought to life in the Spirit." No matter how deeply we delve into our faith, if we refuse to fall back on the Spirit for daily guidance, we're really not alive in that faith.

APRIL 20, 2008: FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 6:1-7
I Peter 2:4-9
John 14:1-12

If our only contact with organized Christianity has been limited to a hierarchical structured church, we'll find it difficult to appreciate the message our three sacred authors are trying to convey today. They're not interested in encouraging us to look to a higher rung on the authority ladder in order to discover God's will in our lives. They're concerned with making certain each of us understands the dignity God has implanted in us, independent of any authority structure.

The I Peter author, addressing newly baptized Christians, can't be clearer. "You are a ' chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may announce the praises' of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light."

Before Vatican II, the classic definition of "Catholic Action" was "the participation of the laity in the ministry of the local bishop." Because of the council's scriptural orientation, that non-scriptural definition was quickly discarded. Now we're to see each of us as members of the People of God, individuals whose call to minister to others isn't mediated through a hierarchical structure. Such actions are rooted in God's spirit embedded in each of us.

John's Jesus, during his Last Supper discourse, promises his followers something we often forget. "Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father."

Our life of faith isn't just a matter of remembering the terrific things Jesus accomplished during his earthly ministry. He presumed that anyone who dared imitate him would continue his ministry after his death and resurrection. Jesus trusts all of us not only to accomplish what he achieved, but to even go beyond what he was able to do.

The only problem is that many of us have been led through the centuries to believe that such accomplishments are for "others," not for us. As the old axiom stated, our role in the church is simply to pray, pay, and obey.

That's where today's Acts pericope comes in. Luke describes a problem in the early Jerusalem community. Hellenist widows think they're being short changed "in the daily distribution" of food. Hellenist, in this context, refers to Jews who aren't natives of Israel. They've spent most of their lives outside the Holy Land. Some of them probably don't even speak Aramaic - the language the "Hebrews" speak. By nature, such a situation leads to misunderstandings.

But the solution the Twelve offer isn't as natural as the problem. "Select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint to this task . . . ."

Notice the names of the seven: "Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas of Antioch, a convert to Judaism." There's not a "Hebrew" in the lot. Every name is Greek. They're Hellenists.

Luke is telling his gospel community, "If there are problems among you, those who have the problems should solve the problems." Don't expect a solution to be decreed from above. If each of us really is as important as Jesus and our early Christian authors believe we are, our problems should always be solved from below, by those who have a Spirit which will help them in this process.

We certainly have a long way to go in the future before we get back to how it was "in the beginning."

APRIL 13, 2008: FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Readings:
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
I Peter 2:20b-25
John 10:1-10

I recently was honored (and humbled) to participate in a McAllen, Texas lay congress. Among other things, I quickly discovered my fellow-participants shared a belief about our country's plan to build a wall on its Mexican border which differed from the opinion many of us "Northerners" have on the subject I returned home not only with a suitcase packed with "No Border Wall!" bumper stickers, but also with a new way of looking at the issue. Those deeply committed Christians reminded me that, as other Christs, we're not just Americans concerned with guarding the frontiers of our country and culture from "foreign invaders," but before anything else we're children of God, concerned with helping other children of God live up to their potential. Their Christian frame of mind on this matter helped alter my own frame of mind.

I especially recall my Texas experience when I hear the exchange between Peter and his Pentecost audience in today's Acts passage. "When they had heard this (speech), they were cut to the heart. They asked Peter and the other apostles, 'What are we to do, my brothers?' Peter said, 'Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.'"

As in Jesus' first public pronouncement in Mark and Matthew, the key word of this exchange is "repent." In this context it means much more than just the "be sorry for your sins" aspect of confession most of us learned in second grade. When Jesus and his gospel disciples employ the term, they're talking about a complete change of someone's value system: a 180 degree turn in the way we look at everyone and every circumstance in our daily lives.

I correctly learned as a child that all sins committed before baptism are forgiven in baptism. But at the age I learned this, I wasn't yet mature enough to understand the biblical reason for this forgiveness. It wasn't just that our sins were washed away in the sacramental waters; it was that the person being baptized was no longer the person who had committed those sins. The sinner was dead. He or she had experienced a "metanoia;" they had replaced their value system with Jesus' value system. No longer did they just have faith _in_ Jesus; they now shared the faith _of_ Jesus.

John's Jesus speaks about the same concept in poetic language. "The sheep hear his voice as the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out . . . He walks ahead of them. The sheep follow him because they recognize his voice. They will not follow a stranger; they will run a way from him because they do not recognize the voice of a stranger." We know Jesus' voice because we've made Jesus' ministry our ministry.

The I Peter author employs a somewhat different metaphor, but the teaching is the same. "For you have been called (to do good), because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps . . . . For you had gone astray, like sheep, but you have now returned to the shepherd and the guardian of your souls."

Our entire life of faith revolves around listening for Jesus' voice, calling us the midst of life's other voices; the voice inviting us to walk behind him down a road few travel. It's a road only those who have experienced repentance dare travel. In some sense, we're called to become different people everyday of our lives, to hear aspects of Jesus' call today we never noticed yesterday.

We don't have to travel down to the Rio Grande Valley to experience mentanoia. But, if you do, be prepared to hear the good shepherd's voice calling you to follow him in a new direction.

APRIL 6, 2008: THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER

Readings:
Acts 2:1-4,22-23
I Peter 1:17-21
Luke 24:13-35

One of the perks of being a sacred author is that you get to write people's speeches for them. In today's first and third readings, for instance, Luke composes everything Peter and Jesus say. Peter's Pentecost and Jesus' Easter discourses are well-known for their explanation of the events which occur on the days they're delivered. At these points of his double volume work, Luke isn't as interested in what happened as much as he's concerned with why it happened. Why did Jesus rise; why did the Holy Spirit descend?

In his classic work, The Real Jesus, Luke Timothy Johnson, presuming both Matthew and Luke copied from Mark, states, "Matthew and Luke feel free to alter virtually every other aspect of Mark, but (the) image of the suffering One they do not alter in the least . . . . For Luke (especially) the heart both of the Scriptures and of the good news is that 'the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory.' ... For (Jesus' disciples) the path of suffering marks the authentic following of the Messiah."

As we see in today's passages from Luke and Acts, the evangelist can't explain these two crucial phenomena in Jesus' and the Christian community's life without constantly hammering away not only on the experience of suffering, but also on the necessity of suffering.

Of course, Luke isn't alone in employing this concept. A generation after Luke composed his gospel and Acts, the I Peter author echoes the same theme. "You were ransomed from your futile conduct, handed on by your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless, unblemished lamb." We only live because he died.

But as Johnson stated above, Luke, more than any other author, emphasizes the "must" of Jesus' suffering and death. Listen carefully as Luke's Jesus chides his two runaway disciples. "Oh how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not _necessary_ that the Christ _should_ suffer these things and enter into his glory?"

Like all Jesus' followers, these two (probably Cleopas and Mrs. Cleopas) thought they could be disciples yet escape suffering and death (symbolized by Luke's concept of Jerusalem - the place they should never have left.)

According to Peter's Pentecost speech, Jesus wasn't delivered up and killed by accident. These things happened "by the set plan and foreknowledge of God." That can only mean God set a price of suffering and death on Jesus pouring forth the Holy Spirit on his followers. According to Luke, no one can have the Spirit or experience true life without imitating Jesus' suffering and death.

One last point. Don't overlook the final line of our gospel pericope. "The two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread." Scripture scholars for a long time have reminded us that this Emmaus passage contains a Eucharist. We first have the Liturgy of the Word: Jesus explains the Scriptures. Then we have the Liturgy of the Bread and Wine: he joins them at table. The "breaking of bread" is one of the earliest ways of referring to the Eucharist.

Many of us, formed by a more modern idea of Eucharist, would expect the two disciples to exclaim, "We recognized him in the bread!" It's important for Luke that their recognition took place in the breaking of the bread - in the whole action and experience of people participating in the Lord's Supper. As Paul reminded his Corinthians community more than 25 years before, "As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes." I Corinthians 11:26

Is it possible that some of us only recognize Jesus in the bread and not in the community which breaks the bread? That can only mean we refuse to suffer and die enough to become totally one with every person in that community.