Today's readings: Acts 15, 1-2.22-29; Apocalypse 21, 10-14.22-23; John 14, 23-29.
Since its inception, the Church has many times found itself at delicate crossroads on important issues and directions to take. In the earliest community, as we read from Acts today, the Hellenists and the Hebrews were two groups separated by events, the former having to leave Jerusalem, the latter remaining there.
Through the Hellenists, the Gospel was first preached outside Palestine and to non-Jews. For them, closeness to the preaching and discipleship of Jesus was more important than closeness to the legal practice of Jewish piety. Acts depicts a Church that had to resist not being reduced to a Judaic sect, but instead to open up and be bold enough to be a community where diversity in no way looked threatening.
Even today, the Church is called to act boldly, not to be led by fear, but to acknowledge God's richness in the rainbow of faiths. God's Word is creative and dynamic, it is not the fixed norm that at times we think it is.
As Gerard Mannion writes in his book Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, "the difficult task of fostering dialogue within and without the Church today cannot be served by any weak or woolly version of pluralism or any overt relativistic denial of genuine differences".
The pluralism of religions, of cultures, of beliefs today poses a threat to the unity of the faith as we have always conceived it. But do we really need to feel so cornered by diversity where belief is concerned?
The Church is called to move on, not motivated, in the first place, by any desire to adapt to culture, but rather pushed by a deeper reflection on scripture and tradition. The Church is permanently called to deepen its insight on what it has received from the Lord and from the apostolic era.
Renouncing to that would be renouncing to faith in a living God. We read in today's gospel: "The advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you".
Many today still feel uncomfortable with the idea that the Church can actually change its mind. But the alternative to that would be fossilisation, passing on a dead faith to the living.
God continues to speak to us even today. There is so much in between the lines for us to grasp whenever the scripture is proclaimed. There is so much that God is saying that is not in print.
Perhaps one of the most significant statements we read in today's liturgy comes from John's Apocalypse: "I saw that there was no temple in the city since the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb were themselves the temple."
The three readings today witness to the radically prophetic fabric of the Christian experience. Christian prophecy is not just belief in some future acomplishment. We believe in the Holy City which is being built today, in the time in which we live.
This is work in progress, and at times, new reality is built painstakingly, as Paul and Barnabas show when, facing conflict, they boldly chose not to be submissive. That can, at times, be irresponsible and false.
It is very appropriate to ask what Church we are projecting now and for the future. Jesus Christ helps his Church and his disciples go beyond the limitations of religion, rites, rules and custom.
Gregory Baum, who served as an expert for Vatican Council II in the 1960s, wrote the book Amazing Church some years ago in which he analyses key areas where, over the past 50 years, the Church has changed its mind. He said: "Affirming the universality of God's grace, human rights and religious liberty, the option for the poor, the validity of the ancient covenant with the Jews and a new openness to religious pluralism, official Catholic teaching has undergone profound transformation."
We need not be afraid of change. As Cardinal Newman put it, "to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often".