Today’s readings: Acts 13, 14.43-52; Apocalypse 7, 9.14-17; Jn 10, 27-30.

The real decline of the Church is not when the numbers of those who attend Mass or belong to it goes down but when it becomes a closed entity, with secure boundaries and rigid rules. Our faith is not static. If it were so, then the faith we profess would be dated, and bound to become fossilised, stagnant.

The shepherd imagery, which has its roots in Old Testament Judaism and which Jesus attributes to himself, lends itself more to wandering rather than settlement, to searching rather than jealously conserving. The good shepherd, as John’s gospel uniquely describes, listens and is listened to, knows intimately and is known, is basically a wanderer in search of new pastures.

If and when he settles down, then he becomes the focus, not the sheep. But for the good shepherd, the sheep are at the centre to an extent that the lost one is always the major concern. He never blames, he empathises.

I lately found it extremely soothing to read Resilient Pastors: The Role of Adversity in Healing and Growth, a book written by a former curate and vicar in south London, Justine Allain-Chapman. Resilient pastors, she writes, are those who are able to feel and convey their sadness about a situation and show compassion.

The scriptures this Sunday provoke us to ask the hard questions about what new pastures we are venturing in as Church in today’s wandering and multi-faceted culture. Paul and Barnabas in Acts were bold enough to have the intuition to go beyond the confines of the Synagogue circles and “turn to the pagans”.

This turn to the pagans is a summons even for the Church in our time. We seem to struggle hard, recycling what ‘new evangelisation’ might mean or imply for a mission which is clearly defined. Turning to the pagans still sounds far-fetched because it implies letting go of our old frameworks and of a ministry bound to straightjacket canonical norms.

Resilience is needed to minister at challenging times. A good pastor, we read in the above-mentioned book, addresses you in your situation without glib phrases or pat answers.

Paul and Barnabas turned to the pagans because they were led by the wisdom of discernment and had the insight that the seeds of survival of the Christian message, from such an early stage, lay beyond the confines of a closed religion as Judaism had become.

So the natural question at this stage would be: who are the pagans to whom we should turn today? Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, both preachers and writers, have written in their book The Shape of Things to Come: “We are both missionaries to the core. And like all missionaries we cannot stand by and watch the contemporary Church become a pale, anemic version of its former self.”

God forbid that we stand by and watch, misreading the signs that speak for themselves in our culture. But sadly enough, this is what has been happening for too long. We need the boldness to recover a sense of innovation and even entrepreneurship in our tasks as missionaries. We cannot afford exchanging the rich tradition in which the Christian faith is rooted for traditionalism.

The concern should not be the concern of shepherds in top positions in the Church but the concern of an entire Church called to listen and be listened to in a world so much in need of healing, and where faith-talk can still make so much sense. The boldness of Paul and Barnabas made them understand that the message could not be contained in old forms and concepts.

The message is still big enough to reach out to the ends of the Earth. The issues of the 21st century are still waiting to be engaged with real missional effectiveness. “It’s time to step out of the box of Christendom in order to take on the problems raised by Christendom itself,” write Frost and Hirsch.

Seeking new pastures means steering away from stagnation, not to remain prisoners of laws we’ve created and persist in perpetuating a temple religion.

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