Today's readings: Acts 13, 14.43-52; Apocalypse 7, 9.14-17; John 10, 27-30.
Josephus, a 1st-century Jewish historian who recorded the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, claims that the Jews' religious ceremonies constantly attracted multitudes of Greeks - an intriguing precedent for the first outreach to the Gentiles by Christian Jews at Antioch. But as today's reading from Acts suggests, Christianity is much more than the external expression of a religion.
The esoteric dimension of religion privileges the transforming effect of prayer. It finds expression above all in mysticism, focussing on the inner reality of the relationship between God and man. The Easter season is precisely meant to take us from the external manifestations of religion to a deeper intimacy with the mystery of Christ risen.
Every fourth Sunday of Easter focusses on Jesus as the Good Shepherd, highlighting that "the sheep that belong to me listen to my voice". But as Lucy Winkett writes in Our Sound is our Wound, "Our lives are lived against the backdrop of external and internal soundscapes". What are these soundscapes, and how do we listen for the voice of God within them?
For a long time now, the so-called conventional and cultural religion made us feel at home. Like the first apostles, we are learning the hard way to pull down barriers and let go of age-old concepts and frames of mind to see things as God would. The age of the law is over; Christ had begun the age of grace.
It sounds ironic in today's first reading that on a sabbath, many Jews joined Paul and Barnabas, and the next sabbath, the same Jews turned against them and expelled them from their territory. "The Jews worked upon some of the devout women of the upper classes and the leading men of the city and persuaded them to turn against Paul and Barnabas."
That the good news of the Gospel is for everyone was never to be taken for granted. God needed to teach this surprising truth the hard way both to Peter and to Paul, the two pillars of the early Church. Considering the background stories Paul and Barnabas had already gone through together, it is clear that internal divisions are much harder for the Church to endure than external persecutions.
We still struggle hard, we still consider it too challenging and hesitate to count the risks to "turn to the pagans", as Paul and Barnabas boldly did at Antioch. At times, we turn hostile towards the world, which instead should be the 'locus' where redemption is accomplished and experienced. We need to recapture the forward-looking optimism of the apostles in Acts.
The world is posing questions for which our catechisms provide no ready-made answer. Instead of an exclusive and judgmental attitude towards the world, towards other religions and other faiths, towards people whom we easily place outside our boundaries, we are being invited to move towards inclusivism, even if this may be disturbing.
Jesus came precisely to open new ways because "the Father is greater than anyone, and no one can steal from the Father". But instead, we tend to think in terms of 'one-size-fits-all' - the way we worship, the way we search God, and the way we reach out to him. The theologies or even the doctrinal teachings produced in our Western laboratories no longer serve people to connect with God. This also is disturbing, but something which needs to be acknowledged.
It is not our voice that people need to listen to, but Jesus'. He is the good shepherd. Paul and Barnabas "shook the dust from their feet in defiance and went off to Iconium". Going to Iconium in our case demands opening new ways towards those whom we may call 'non-practising' but whom Jesus acknowledges as belonging to him and to whom he gives eternal life so that they will never be lost.