Pentecost 5, Year B

Proper 8 -- Wisdom 1: 13–14; 2: 23-24; Psalm 30;  II Corinthians 8: 7-15; Mark 5: 21-43

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at St. John’s Church, in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, June 28, 2015.

“FULLY RESTORED”

(Homily text:  Mark 5: 21-43)

Imagine that, as you are about to enter the church, your priest greets you at the door and begins to ask a series of questions about your health and about your lifestyle and occupation:  “Do you have any skin conditions or disorders?  Have you come in contact with any blood, or with a dead body?  Are you a ‘notorious sinner’ (for example, is your occupation tax collector or prostitute)?”

I suspect, if such a scenario as this were to take place at the front door of our church, many people in this day and age would simply refuse to answer such questions.  Furthermore, I suspect that many – if not most – people would not attend service that morning.

But such things did take place 2,000 years ago at the Temple in Jerusalem as worshipers went to do the sacrifices and ceremonies that the Law of Moses required.  Priests were stationed at each entrance, and their job was to screen out any and all person who were considered to be “unclean” because of a number of different situations, such as the state of their health, and their lifestyle or their occupation.  According to the Law of Moses, only those who were “clean” and who were perfect could enter into God’s presence.

Two observations are in order at this point, I think:

1. Such practices and such a mindset seem very strange to us, don’t they?
2. I would make a terrible priest if I had to work at the Temple 2,000 years ago.

If we can keep this ancient mindset in mind, we can see a deeper dimension to Jesus’ healing of the woman who had had a severe bleeding problem, and to the raising back to life of Jairus’ daughter, for the issue of who is “clean” and who is “unclean” figures prominently in each case.

Ritual purity – that is to say, the ability to enter the Temple for worship by being in a “clean” state – affected all aspects of Jewish life in Jesus’ day.  The woman who suffered such a terrible illness was ritually unclean….she could not enter the Temple at all.  Furthermore, anyone who came in contact with her also became ritually unclean.  Jairus’ daughter had become unclean because she was dead.  Touching her – as Jesus does as He raises her up – also made Jesus unclean.

The system and the attendant mindset created two classes of people:  those who were “in” and those who were “out”.  Moreover, the sense that the gospel accounts convey is that if a person was “out”, they were permanently “out”.  This was especially true in the estimations that the Pharisees and the priests had of tax collectors and prostitutes….such persons were forever “out”, beyond the reach of being able to become “clean”.  Or at least that’s the sense the gospels tend to convey, I think.

But, of course, any brief reading of the gospel accounts shows that Jesus spent a lot of time with those who were “out” according to the calculations of the Jews of His day.

An added dimension must be taken into account when we consider the ancient people’s regard for those who were either “in” or “out”…..God’s people rightly regarded the human condition in its entirety, as a unified whole.  That is to say, a human being was created in the image and likeness of God (see Genesis 1: 26).  Being made in God’s image meant that a human being was made up of body, mind and spirit.  Each of these aspects of what it means to be human were interconnected, one with another.  So, for example, what affected the body also affected the mind and the spirit.  The same is true of the spirit’s condition affecting the mind and the body, and so forth.

Arising out of this view of the human condition as being a unified, interconnected whole was the idea that illness or sickness was caused[1] (at least in part) by sin.  So it’s possible that the woman who suffered from a hemorrhage was also regarded as being a sinner, her illness being caused by some grievous offense against God.

We said a moment ago that Jesus spent a lot of time hanging around with those who were the outsiders of His day.

Jesus cuts through the perceptions that were common 2,000 years ago, restoring those who were ill to good health, and raising those who had died, restoring them to life.  He breaks down the barriers that separate people from God and from one another.

The Lord’s purpose is to restore all people to a relationship with God and with one another.   Such a purpose is now given to the Church as its mission.

It is the work God has entrusted to us as God’s people, to break through the barriers that separate, in order to restore everyone to a healthy relationship with God through Christ, and to restore one another to a lively and ongoing relationship with one another, gathered around the Lord.

Today’s gospel reading provides us with some important reminders about how this process of restoration works:

Faith is key:  Notice that Jesus commends the faith of the unknown woman who managed to get close enough to Him to touch his garment.  He says quite clearly that her faith in God’s ability to heal was the key that made her healing possible.  Many times in the gospels, we read that faith was the central reality that made healing possible.  Faith involves putting our trust in God’s ability to do something.  The woman who was healed put her faith in the power of God that resided in Jesus, and that made her restoration possible.  (I can’t resist saying that both the unnamed woman and Jairus had faith in Jesus’ power to help them in their respective plights, while the disciples were still unbelieving….people who have faith may surprise us!)

Change is inevitable:  The woman who was healed was forever changed, and her circumstances were improved dramatically.  The same can be said for Jairus’ daughter, and for her entire family.  The truth to be gleaned here is that, when we encounter God, things will change.  God never leaves us where He finds us.

What might we take away from today’s reading?  After all, this is always an important question to ask whenever we hear or read a passage from Holy Scripture.  Perhaps the “take away” from today’s reading might be this: 

We human beings are a unified entity:  In that, the ancient people of God regarded the human condition rightly.  What we do with the way we live our physical lives will have an effect on our minds and on our spirits.  The same is true of the ways in which we think and believe, for our mental and spiritual states will have an effect on our physical lives.

The Lord comes to offer healing to the whole person:  Since we are a unified entity and are created in the image and likeness of God, the Lord comes to address the wholeness of who we are.  No area of our life can be set aside, to be “off limits” to God’s power to cleanse, to heal and to restore.  We cannot shut God out of any area of who we are.  To do so limits a faithful response to God’s power, for if we shut God out of one area or another of who we are, we will – in effect – be telling God that we can handle that area that we have tried to shut off to God all on our own power and ability.

May we, through the power of the Holy Spirit, surrender the whole of who we are to God’s power to restore, to heal and to cleanse, that we may be restored to a right relationship with God and with one another.

AMEN.

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[1]   In addition to sin as a cause of illness, demon possession was also regarded as being a cause.

Pentecost 4, Year B

Proper 7 -- Job 38: 1 - 11; Psalm 133;  II Corinthians 6: 1 - 13;  Mark 4: 35 - 41

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at St. John’s Church in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania,  on Sunday, June 21, 2015.

“LORD, DO YOU NOT CARE……?”

(Homily text:  Mark 4: 35-41)

“Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” the frightened disciples say to the Lord as the waters of the Sea of Galilee begin to wash over the gunwales of their boat.

“Lord, do you not care that we are perishing under the heavy hand of Roman oppression?” the early Christians to whom Mark was writing his gospel account may have asked.

“Lord, do you not care that we are perishing at the hands of a mass shooter?” the members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church may have asked this past week in Charleston, South Carolina.

In each of these circumstances, the Lord’s power and presence are known in the dire, threatening and difficult events which came into the lives of the original disciples, into the lives of the early Christians to whom Mark was writing, and into the lives of the members of Emanuel Church this past week.

All of these events have something in common:  The Lord of all life reveals Himself in troubling circumstances, causing each believer to come into a close, enduring and personal relationship with God through Christ.  Arising out this foundation for a faithful Christian life, is the power to change the world.

Before we look at the implications of our relationship with God and the things that flow from that relationship, let’s look at today’s gospel reading in some detail.

With today’s reading, we enter a new section of Mark’s gospel account, as Jesus begins to reveal more and more of His identity to His disciples.  In today’s reading, Jesus reveals His power over nature and over the forces of chaos.  In the coming weeks, we will explore Jesus’ power over death, over illness and disease, and over the powers of evil.

There is much more to this reading than meets the eye.  So let’s do some exploring into the background of this incident.

The setting for this incident is the Sea of Galilee, a beautiful lake which is located in the northern part of the Holy Land.   This body of water is roughly triangular in shape, and is about thirteen miles long, north-to-south, and is about seven miles wide at its widest point.  At first glance, it looks like a mountain lake, for it is surrounded on the west and on the east by hills and mountains.  But, in fact, it is about 600 feet below sea level.  (It is a very beautiful place.  No wonder our Lord loved it so much.)

Since it is surrounded by hills and mountains, it is quite common for sudden and severe windstorms to descend upon the lake, stirring up the waters with high waves.  If the Lord and His disciples were traveling from the west side of the lake (where He had been teaching) to the east side in a typical first-century boat of the time, it might well have been a sailboat which was about 27 feet long, with a beam of about seven feet or so.  (Such a boat was found about 30 years ago and has been preserved in a museum on the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee, containing about a dozen different types of wood in its hull.)  Such a boat might have been a dangerous place to be as the waves mounted higher and higher.  And, add to the fact that the group was traveling at night, the fears of the disciples would have been even greater.

But there are other factors at work in this miracle:  The ancient world view regarded raging waters with suspicion and fear.  The chaos of raging waters had the power to destroy life. Such a place was a place in which evil dwelt.  In ancient times, Jews thought that sea monsters inhabited the deep waters.  In addition, raging waters represented a sort of chaos.  This view of the power of water persists in our contemporary world view.  (Consider the power of raging waters in the accounts of the flooding in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, as an example.)

Such a world view is preserved in the creation account which is found at the beginning of the book of Genesis.  There, in Genesis 1: 1, we read that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form and void, and waters covered the deep.  And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”  After creating light, and after separating the light from darkness, we read that God separated the waters that are above the firmament from the waters that are beneath it.  Then, in Genesis 1: 9 – 10, we read that God caused the dry land to appear from the waters, making possible plant life, animal life, and finally, human life.

So Jesus’ power over the chaos of the waters demonstrates that He has the power that only God has to control chaos and its destructive power.

The full meaning of Jesus’ miracles does not rest on the immediate facts of the miracle itself.  We do not read Holy Scripture in the same way we might read the newspaper or a textbook.  Each account which arises from Jesus’ earthly ministry is meant to convey something about Jesus’ nature and the powers of God that are at work in Him.  Put another way, the biblical accounts each convey a theological truth, theology being the study of the nature of God and God’s means of interacting with us.

So, the bottom line of the miracle we are considering today contains the truth that Jesus is the only Son of God, the One who fully possesses God’s power over the forces of chaos and over evil, the One who has the power to preserve life.

Jesus reveals Himself to those original disciples, in order that these twelve will come into a close, enduring and personal relationship with Him.  That close, enduring and personal relationship is the essential foundation for all the good work that they will do in spreading the Good News of what God had done in the sending of Jesus Christ to take on our humanity.

To this truth, the truth that a close, enduring and personal relationship with Christ is absolutely essential if the Christian life is to be lived correctly and faithfully, the early Christians in and around Rome bore witness.  Following the disciples-now-become-apostles’ practice, they gathered each week to hear Holy Scripture, to pray, to take part in the sacramental life of the Church, and to promise to love and support one another in their walk with Christ.

Their faithfulness gave them the power to tell the pagan world around them that there is a better way to live.  Theirs was a quiet witness to God’s power to change their hearts, and then to change the world.  They did so, even though they lacked political power or military might.

In time, their faithfulness and the faithfulness of the Christians who would come to know the Lord through their witness allowed the Christian faith to conquer the Roman Empire itself.  Their weapons in this conquest were the benefits of Baptism, faithful, regular worship, studying and hearing Holy Scripture, regular participation in the Sacraments, and promising to uphold each other in their Christian walk.

This past week, we have witnessed the power of faithful Christians as the members of Emanuel AME Church have lived out the Christian life.  Instead of breathing judgment and recrimination against the young man who stands accused of the shooting that took nine lives, instead of vowing to get revenge, they have offered forgiveness and their prayers for the young man, his family and the community itself.

In the midst of all this, perhaps the question, “Lord, do you not care about what has happened to us?” has come to the minds of Emanuel’s members.  If it has, perhaps the answer has also arisen in this form:  “The Lord says, ‘I do care, I am present with you, and your faithfulness to the Good News will bear good fruit for the advancement of the kingdom of God in the world.’”

At a troubling time like this, it is well for us to consider just what makes the Christian life work.  In the event which is recorded in today’s gospel, in the lives of the early Christians to whom Mark was writing, and in the lives of Emanuel AME Church, a consistent pattern emerges.  All three bear witness to these essentials of faith:

A close and enduring relationship with God through Christ:  We enter this relationship through the waters of baptism.  In Baptism, Christ claims us as His very own, forever.  Baptism creates a permanent mark on the individual’s soul.  We come to Christ through these waters one-by-one, becoming a part of the Body of Christ here on earth, that is, the Church.  So there is an individual component to God’s act of saving us through Baptism, and there is a corporate aspect to our salvation, as well.  Both are essential and must be held in a creative tension.

Nurturing our life in Christ: We must nourish our bodies in a number of ways if we are to be healthy.  For example, we must eat wisely, we must exercise regularly, we must get enough sleep, and we must do other things that advance our health and wellbeing.  The same truths apply to our Christian life….we must nourish our spiritual life by maintaining an active prayer life, through the study and the hearing of God’s Word, and by receiving the Sacraments (particularly the Eucharist) regularly.  The social aspects of our daily living are important to our wellbeing.  So the social aspects of gathering for worship and for fellowship are essential parts of the Christian life, as well.

All of these things allow us, as Christians, to work to better the societies in which we live.  They allow us to bear witness to Christ as the better way to live.  The early Christians living in and around Rome to whom Mark was writing, along with the apostles, bore a quiet-but-effective witness to the pagan world that Jesus’ ways were superior in every respect to the ways of the world.  As such, they refused to take part in the pagan rituals of the Roman Empire, refusing to burn incense to the emperor, and refusing to countenance the violence that was so much a part of Roman life.  They refused to participate in the debauchery of daily life, the drunkenness, the promiscuity and the freewheeling aspects of life in the Roman Empire.

We would do well to follow these early Christians’ example, by refusing to countenance and accept the violence that permeates so much of what we see in the movies and on television.  We would do well to simply refuse to watch such things, and to refuse to buy tickets to movies that glorify violence.  We would do well to closely monitor what our young people and children are doing on the internet, where an abundance of degrading and tantalizing information can be obtained in the privacy of one’s own room.  We would do well to tell the world by what we say and by how we live that Jesus’ way is the best way to live, the way God intended for us to live.

The power to do all these things arises from the foundation of a close, personal and ongoing relationship with God through Christ.  Such a life is nurtured by immersion in the waters of Baptism, and it is sustained by a life of prayer, by ongoing study and hearing of God’s Word, and by regular reception of the benefits of the Sacraments that God has left to us as means of His grace.

May we, empowered by this relationship and guided by the Holy Spirit, be enabled to change the world, transforming it into God’s design, one heart and one mind at a time.

AMEN.

Pentecost 3, Year B

Proper 6 -- Ezekiel 17: 22-24; Psalm 20; II Corinthians 5: 6-17; Mark 4: 26-34

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at St. John’s Church, in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, June 14, 2015.

“THE KINGDOM COMES AND GROWS”

(Homily text:  Mark 4: 26-34)

At one point in my priestly ministry, I was a volunteer chaplain at three different hospitals.  In two of the hospitals, the entire chaplain corps was staffed by volunteers.  But in the third one, there was a full time chaplain who was on the hospital’s staff, and this individual happened to be an ordained minister from an evangelical denomination.  (The fact that this individual was a paid employee of a Roman Catholic hospital always fascinated me….he was wonderful in his work in every respect, and the hospital regarded him very highly).

One day, I came in to be the on-call, volunteer chaplain, and we got to talking before I made my rounds.  He said that it was time for him to fill out a routine report that he had to do for his denomination periodically, and the report asked him how many people he had led to the Lord (had gotten saved) during the reporting period.  Then he said something like, “I always struggle to fill out this report, because the kind of work I do here at the hospital doesn’t always lead to people making professions of faith in the Lord.”

I’ve reflected a lot on the chaplain’s comments over the years.  One thing that arises out of this reflection is that the kingdom of God grows in various ways.  The chaplain’s comment touches on two of those ways: 

·       One is dramatic, such as when a person comes to faith in the Lord and professes a conversion experience.  Oftentimes, such an event is noticeable and perhaps even quite sudden.  A person who’s had a conversion experience like that can often name the date, the time, and the place and circumstances of their salvation experience.

·       Another way the kingdom grows is by quiet and steady work, as a person shares the love of Christ in acts of caring.  That’s the kind of work my chaplain friend was engaged in: Quiet, steady caring for those in need, caring which was rooted in a deep love for God and for people.

In today’s gospel reading, we hear two short parables about the kingdom of God. In the first one, Jesus likens the kingdom to the planting of seed, which sprouts without outside assistance, all on its own  (verses 26 – 29).  Jesus says that the seed grows “by itself”.  In the second parable, Jesus assures His listeners that the kingdom of God will grow from its small beginnings into a mighty reality (verses 30 – 32).   The Lord uses another agricultural image – that of a mustard seed – to illustrate the assured growth of the kingdom.

These two parables must have had a lot of importance for Mark’s original audience.  They are important for Christians to hear today.  Let’s take a moment to explore the implications for each.

If it is true that Mark wrote his gospel account to Christians in and around Rome shortly after the first organized persecutions arose under the Emperor Nero (perhaps around the year 65 AD or so), then Mark might have been writing to a demoralized and depressed Christian community.  Perhaps these early Christians could see no future for the spread of the gospel.  Perhaps they saw only a future that involved hardship, persecution and even death for being a follower of Jesus Christ.

If this assessment is true – and I believe it is quite possible that it is accurate – then Mark might be passing along Jesus’ teachings in order to give encouragement to these Christians.  Mark might intend to remind them that the kingdom’s growth is assured, even if challenges to its arrival and its growth arise.  That seems to be the point of the first parable.  The second parable seems to encourage these early believers to see beyond the immediate circumstances of their predicament in order that they might see that the kingdom will be, one day, a mighty reality in the world.

If we reflect on our own circumstances as Christian believers in the twenty-first century, it might seem as though our faith life is lived out in somewhat similar circumstances to those of the first century Christians living in and around Rome.

It is true that we do not face outright persecution for our Christian faith like those early believers did.  Our Christian walk isn’t a matter of literal life or death such as they faced.  But it’s just possible that we might think that there is little or no future for the kingdom of God in the world in which we live.  We might think that the kingdom of God won’t ever amount to the great entity Jesus tells us will someday come into being.  After all, many people who are alive today don’t seem to have much if any interest at all in the things of God.  Some people are even quite hostile to the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Our situation is a lot like the situation those first century Christians faced, absent the outright persecution they endured.

Jesus’ parables, heard today, are meant to give us hope, and to allow us to see the big picture of God’s plans for the coming and establishment of His kingdom.  Two truths attend the coming and the growth of the kingdom:  1.  The kingdom will come because God established it and because God is the ultimate guarantor of its growth, and 2.  Because of God’s power, the kingdom will flourish until the point that it is mighty in its power and size.

So how do we fit into God’s plans?  Do we have a role to play, given the fact that – as Jesus says – the kingdom will grow “by itself”?

It seems as though Jesus is spurring His followers into action with the telling of these two parables.  After all, the early Christians who were living in Rome about the time Mark was writing down his gospel account had come to faith through the living and the teaching of other Christians.  We know that St. Paul made his way to Rome, and we also can be reasonably sure that St. Peter made his way there, as well.  (By tradition, both were martyred under Nero’s reign, perhaps not long before Mark sat down to write his account.)  Both of these great saints bolstered the faith of those early Christians by their presence and their teaching.

In time, the faithfulness of Christians, even to the point of martyrdom, conquered the Roman Empire. In truth, the blood of the martyrs became the “seed of the Church”, as has been said.

We, too, are called into action with the hearing of these two parables.  We are called to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ by “word and example” as our baptismal covenant calls us to do (see page 305 in the Book of Common Prayer, 1979).

Proclaiming the Good News with the words we speak might result in a dramatic and sudden growth of the kingdom, as a new Christian comes to faith through our words, being born again.

Proclaiming the Good News by example – by the way we live our lives - allows the kingdom of God to come, often without our noticing that it is coming into being.  This sort of growth is quiet, slow and sure.

Realizing that we have a role to play in bringing about the arrival of the kingdom of God prevents us from sitting on the sidelines, doing little or nothing to assist in God’s work of bringing the kingdom to earth.  It is true that God is the designer and creator of the kingdom.  But it is also true that God calls us to be a part of His overall plan to redeem and rescue the world and its people by bringing the kingdom into being.

AMEN.

Pentecost 2, Year B

Proper 5 - Genesis 3: 8-15; Psalm 138; II Corinthians 4: 13–5: 1; Mark 3: 20-35

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at St. John’s Church, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, June 7, 2015.

“THE END OF TRIBALISM”

(Homily text:  Mark 3: 20 - 35)

It is Sunday morning, and the faithful are gathering for worship.  A man comes up and says to the priest, “I don’t have anything to eat.  Can you give me some food?”  Service time is about five minutes away.  The procession has already formed and the priest is fully vested and ready for service.  He looks back at the man who’s asked for help, and realizes that he is different from the members of the congregation in just about every way possible:  He is different racially, different in his economic status, different in his dress (he is wearing a very dirty tee shirt and an equally dirty pair of athletic shorts).  The priest wonders what the parishioners will think, seeing the man at the front door.  Setting those concerns aside, the priest says to the man, “Service is about to start, and I don’t have time to go get you something to eat.  But if you’ll stay for the service, we will see to it that you get some food after it is done.  If you want to sit next to my wife, she will guide you through the service.”  The man agrees to stay, and service proceeds.  Not a single worshipper that day ever says to the priest, “Why did you let that man in here?”  On the contrary, at coffee hour following the service, many parishioners speak with the individual, and following that, the man is taken to the grocery store so that his needs can be met.

The Lord asks, in today’s gospel reading,  “Who are my brothers and sisters?”  Looking around at those who were sitting around Him, He then answers His own question, saying, “Here are my mother and brothers!  Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

It is not hard to imagine that, in the first century world of the Roman Empire, such a scene as we began this homily with played itself out many times. Scruffy-looking persons, whose social standing, manner of dress and appearance proved that they were among the down-and-out of those days probably presented themselves to the Church, looking not only for their needs to be met, but also so that they could be accepted for themselves, accepted by Christians out of the love that these Christians, themselves, had come to experience as a result of having come to know Christ.

So just who are the Lord’s brothers, sisters and mothers?  The short answer is that everyone who does the will of God is the Lord’s brothers, sisters and mothers.

Doing the will of God unifies.  Doing the will of God erases all distinctions of race, class, and social standing.

Let’s unpack this just a bit.

In the first century world of the Greco-Roman world, and also in the world of the Jews, a person’s origins, identity, ethnicity, racial and social status were important markers of who a person was.  Even though the Roman Empire covered the Mediterranean basin with a patina of unity, yet within the empire, local identities remained important.  Consider, for example, the identities of those Jews who had come to Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost (this is a text we heard two weeks ago, from the first part of the second chapter of the Book of Acts)….St. Luke (the writer of Acts) tells us that people were identified as being Cappadocians, as Medes, as Elamites, or as residents of Phrygia or Pamphylia (to cite just a few of the origins of those pilgrims who were present for the festival).

The Jews themselves parceled out the world according to who was a Jew and who was not.  (Although it must be said that the Jews welcomed Gentiles who had come to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, even though they had not formally converted to Judaism….such people were known as “God-fearers”[1].)

Beyond the distinctions, in the ancient world, of race, ethnicity and religious belief, there was the distinction of social and economic status.  The Roman Empire was a deeply stratified place.  One’s place in society was fixed and was unchangeable, for the most part.[2]  There was a small noble class, a small middle class, and a large underclass of slaves and the poor.

Jesus breaks down all these barriers.

During His earthly ministry, He hangs around with the outcasts of Jewish culture, the prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners.  He breaks down the barriers of Jewish conviction that separated the world into those who were “clean” and those who were “unclean.”  By so doing, He opens the way to these “unclean” persons – persons who were regarded by the likes of the Pharisees as being permanently unclean and therefore, beyond redemption - the way of restoration of a relationship with God and with others.

Likewise, the Lord breaks down the barriers of race and ethnicity, willingly choosing to associate with the Samaritans, a group that was passionately hated by the Jews.  He mingles with non-Jews and shows Himself willing to heal their sick.

Once the Good News of Jesus Christ becomes known, there are, no longer, any permanently unclean and unacceptable persons.  Everyone can become a new creation in Christ, everyone!

In time, the Holy Spirit descends with power on the Apostles and on the Lord’s disciples.  They are charged with going out into the world to be the Lord’s witnesses to “Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”[3]

Implicit in the Lord’s charge that the Good News will be preached to the ends of the earth is the realization that this Good News will reach the ears of non-Jews.  It took the Church awhile to realize that that was God’s intent, that everyone everywhere would be invited to come into relationship with the Father through the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Once SS. Paul and Barnabas turned to the Gentiles, to tell them the Good News of God in Christ, the Church was faced with a crisis:  Should the Gentiles who had come to faith in Christ be required to become fully observant Jews, as well?  St. Luke records the debate that took place at the Council of Jerusalem (held in the year 49 AD) concerning this question.[4]  The council’s decision is that, no, Gentiles do not need to fully follow the requirements of the Law of Moses.

As the Apostles fan out throughout the known world, the Christian Church becomes a place where noble men and women and slaves sit next to one another in worship, each calling the other “brother” and “sister”.  This was an affront to the Roman view of social relationships.  Distinctions of class and economic status disappear, for all are called to be one in Christ.

Much the same thing can be said of the distinctions of race, ethnicity and geographical origin.  These distinctions, too, disappear.

If we reflect on the world in which we live today, we can see that much of its nature is quite similar to the Greco-Roman world of the first century.

For example, the social makeup of society today resembles that of the ancient world in that there are large numbers of the poor, whose lives are marked with much the same sort of hardships and lack of hope that the poor of those earlier days experienced.  To them the Church, proclaiming the Good News, offered hope to people who had no hope.  The Church told them that their lives mattered to God and to those early Christians.

Many of the poor in those ancient days were separated from the places they had grown up in by virtue of economic necessity, or by having been sold into slavery.  The Church became a new family for such persons.  The call to the Church today is to offer that same opportunity to the disadvantaged and the hopeless of our contemporary culture.

In Christ, all things became new.  Persons who had experienced the new birth of Baptism also found that whatever identities they formerly claimed as being foremost in their identification of themselves were now replaced by a new and primary identity:  They had become a child of God in Christ.

May we, in our day, time and place, offer the same sort of a new beginning in Christ to those who look without hope toward the future.  To them, and to all persons, we proclaim the Good News that God so loved each one that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that each one might have a new life, and have that new life in abundance (I am paraphrasing John 3: 16).

AMEN.

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[1]   One such example of a “God-fearer” is the Roman centurion in Luke 7: 1–10.

[2]   There were provisions for a slave to buy their freedom, and there were provisions for a non-citizen to buy their citizenship, however.

[3]   Acts 1: 8

[4]   The council’s deliberations can be found in Acts 15: 1–35.