6th SUNDAY OF EASTER

At the heart of today’s liturgy is an important question about how we see the world. The story begins with the death in Jerusalem in 37AD of Stephen, the first martyr. This was followed by a clampdown on the Christian community there and as a result of this a number of individuals fled Jerusalem and sought refuge in Antioch, part of what we now call Turkey. In Antioch they began to preach the Gospel, but initially this was restricted to the Jews in the city. One day, however, a really amazing thing happened. Some of the more bold and imaginative among them, whose names, sadly, have not come down to us, made a truly historic decision, the consequences of which were to prove far-reaching. Instead of just preaching to the Jews, they began to preach to the Greeks too. And, to their delight and astonishment, these welcomed the Gospel with open arms. And so began a process of reaching out beyond Judaism to the pagan world, which 250 years later reached Scotland and has led directly to our being here today.

The next thing that happened in Antioch, however, was that the Christians there, wondering what to do next and who might be the man to guide them, decided to send Barnabas to Tarsus to look for Paul. He brought him back to Antioch and, as the NT tells us, they spent a whole year together there. Then, at the end of that year, in 45AD, they set off on the first of three great missionary journeys made by Paul around the Mediterranean world. It lasted three years and in 48AD, they returned to Antioch filled with stories of how, in the words of Acts, God had opened the door of faith to the pagans. And there was great joy in Antioch over it.
But as we heard this morning, not everyone was happy with this. Some men, including members of the Pharisees’ party who had been converted to Christianity, came down from Judaea and began insisting that the pagan converts had to conform to the Jewish tradition and be circumcised before they could become part of the new Church. Only in this way, they claimed, could they be saved. This led to a disagreement, and, after a long argument, it was decided, as we heard, that Paul and Barnabas should go up to Jerusalem to discuss the problem with the apostles and elders. For some reason which I don’t quite understand, the passage which describes what happened in Jerusalem has been omitted from today’s reading, but suffice it to say that it was a long and difficult meeting.

On what we would call nowadays the liberal or progressive side were Paul and Barnabas. Their case was based on the fact that they had seen with their own eyes how God had given the pagans the gift of the Holy Spirit in exactly the same way they themselves had received it. To insist now that these should be circumcised and take on the traditions and practices of Judaism would, they argued, be a deeply backward step. It would be to deny the new thing God was doing in the lives of these people and impose on them burdens which were unnecessary. Christianity wasn’t a sect of Judaism or an extension it. It was something new, something fresh, something fundamentally different. Judaism was national. Christianity was international. It was for everyone and no-one was excluded.

For the conservative side of the argument, however, this was very difficult to accept. They were Jews and their parents and grandparents before them had been Jews. God was their God, they were his people, and the idea that the pagans could be saved without becoming Jews and going through the same process that they had gone through was too much for them. God was doing something new and they were unable to accept it. God was opening the door of faith to the pagan nations and they were not able to rejoice in it. At that meeting in Jerusalem in 48AD, however, the Church as a whole, faced with this conflict and guided by the Holy Spirit, chose the way of freedom over law and accepted that faith in Jesus made the rules and regulations of the Old Testament redundant. It was a truly great day for the Church – reflected in the second reading’s vision of a new Jerusalem devoid of a temple which symbolized the old ways and with gates facing outwards in every direction, north, south, east and west – and I invite you, even now, 2000 years later, to be thankful for it.

But, of course, today’s liturgy is about more than just remembering what happened all those centuries ago. The conflict between the open-mindedness of people like Paul and Barnabas and the ‘but we’ve always done it this way’ approach of their opponents is an eternal one and it is worth reflecting for a few moments on where we ourselves might have stood on the matter had we been present that day in Jerusalem. The Jewish converts of Paul’s day, despite everything Jesus had said and done, continued to consider themselves superior to foreigners and looked down their noses at them. But do we do the same? How do we feel about people different from ourselves? What is our attitude to immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers and migrant workers? When we go abroad on holiday, do we respect the people we meet there? Do we try to speak their language and eat their food or do we expect them to speak English and serve fish and chips every day? And if a group of foreigners suddenly arrived on our doorstep and wanted to come to Mass each week, do you think we would welcome them and adapt what we do to accommodate them or would we expect them to fall in with what we have always done?

And what about our attitude to change in the Church or in the way we think about God and the things of God? The Scriptures speak over and over again about a God who is always doing a new thing. Because we are on a journey of faith, it follows that we have never arrived at our destination, and so, like our nomadic ancestors in faith in the Old Testament, we have to be always moving on, breaking camp every morning, and going where God leads. But how willing are we to do this? In Jerusalem that day in 48AD, would we have been with Paul, the innovator, or would we have been with the ‘But we’ve always done it this way’ party. Spend some time this weekend thinking about these questions and answering them for yourself.

It was about embracing the future with courage or clinging to the past in fear. So what side would you have been on?

BIDDING PRAYERS

The meeting which took place in Jerusalem in 48AD is sometimes called the Council of Jerusalem, the most recent Council being the Second Vatican Council held in the 1960s. This Council, too, was about reaching out to the world. Pope John XXIII spoke at the time about opening the windows of the Church, after years of being tightly shut, to let in light and fresh air. The Council wanted to embrace the modern world with God’s love and we pray that the Church will remain faithful to that movement now.........Lord hear us

The letter sent to Antioch after the meeting in Jerusalem spoke, as we heard this morning, about not placing burdens on people apart from what was essential. And so we pray for the Church today that it will have the wisdom it needs to apply that same principle in our own time. We pray especially that we will always know how to distinguish what is merely human regulation, and so open to change, from what is from God and so remains true regardless of current thinking or the latest fashion.......Lord hear us

The Book of the Apocalypse offered us today a beautifully poetic vision of the Church, the New Jerusalem. It glittered like a jewel of crystal-clear diamond and had twelve gates facing north, south, east and west, a symbol of the fact that Christianity, unlike everything that had gone before it, is a world-wide faith which recognizes no barriers between peoples. And so we ask God to lead us beyond narrow nationalism, xenophobia and racism and stir in us an internationalism based on the teaching of Jesus........Lord hear us

Part of the vision of the New Jerusalem in the first reading was the fact that there was no temple in the city. The temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70AD, had been, for the people of the Old Testament, the sign of God’s presence among them. But in the New Jerusalem, the Church, there is no temple. The Risen Jesus himself is the temple and he is not confined to any one place. He is everywhere, in everything that happens, and in every person we meet. And so we pray for the wisdom to recognize him........Lord hear us

The Gospel passage today speaks about how the Holy Spirit will teach us everything we need to know and remind us of everything Jesus has said to us. Left to themselves, those early Christians could never have carried out Jesus’ command to teach all nations. They would not even have known where to begin. But with God all things are possible. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to recognize how the Spirit has always been at work in the Church and still is today despite our human weakness........Lord hear us

On Thursday, the people of Britain elected a new parliament and in the coming days we will find out who is going to form a government. And so we pray for all those who have been elected, especially our own MP, Katy Clark. We pray that the Holy Spirit will stir in the hearts of all who exercise political power in Britain today a desire to act in the interests of the poor and needy both at home and abroad and a willingness to reach beyond national boundaries to work with people from every part of the world..............Lord hear us