Today’s readings: Acts 13, 14.43-52; Apocalypse 7, 9.14-17; John 10, 27-30.
The reading from Acts today portrays a Christianity persecuted in the temple and finding fertile ground in outsiders. It gives the feeling of a déjà vu. It speaks about the resistance Paul and Barnabas were facing from those who believed that faithfulness to God’s grace was simply to be taken as faithfulness to traditions. We do not remain faithful to God by sticking to a religion that we have transformed in a culture.
Religion turned into a culture can easily be the fossilisation of faith. Faith is something different, it is dynamic and living, it evolves and develops in response to changing situations. It can never be domesticated, it is a lifelong journey but it is also a deep search for the God who saves. This is a major challenge ahead for us today, particularly for the post-Christian West which is apparently distancing itself from institutionalised religion but still in need and in search of meaning.
Recently a small group claiming to be theologians issued an open letter accusing Pope Francis of heresy and asking for his removal. It is the same story as in Acts with the Jews chasing Paul and Barnabas out of the temple accusing them of betraying their traditions. If and whenever faith fails to regenerate and rejuvenate itself, it dies.
Paul and Barnabas had to turn to the pagans in search of new fertile ground where the seed of God’s word could germinate. Very similar to the Jewish synagogue, our churches unfortunately are no longer fertile ground for the seed of the Gospel to yield fruit. There is so much resistance in the name of religion itself, or rather in the name of religious traditions held more sacred than what they should actually stand for.
The vision we read about today in St John’s gospel and then in John’s Apocalypse about “a huge number, impossible to count, of people from every nation, race, tribe and language standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb” risk sounding idealistic and alien to what our communities concretely stand for.
The people following the Lamb “had been through the great persecution and had washed their robes white again in the blood of the Lamb”. Becoming “white again” means rediscovering our true dignity, reappropriating ourselves of whatever makes us live life fully. The way forward for Christianity to survive in today’s social and cultural contexts is as a life-path for those who may even be ‘pagans’ from our standpoint but who turn out to be fertile ground for the Spirit because they seek meaning. This is the ground the Church is called to tap today away from the weary activism of our devotions and religiosity. The Church can be true to its vision and mission not by giving in to the whims of those for whom religion is only traditionalism and those who fear threading on new ground. Locally, I really doubt how we can be visionary and of inspiration as a Church.
If Acts were to be re-enacted today, we would undoubtedly throw Paul and Barnabas out of our temples on the grounds that they are disturbing our peace. We have translated their original proclamation in devotional language and in centuries-old structures and robbed it of its healing and transforming power.
We need a new wave of iconoclasm as things are, and yet we keep wasting our energy and big money on playing Church. Ours is becoming a Church suffocated in temple worship and ever more alien to ‘shepherding’ by providing the right vision for the right time. The situation locally calls for urgent action because Church and nation are simply running parallel.
We have become mute on practically everything and risk not being credible whenever we speak out. When I think of what we are passing on to the emerging generations, what I see is a legacy of pomp, pageantry and empty, though embellished temples. This is not the proclamation we received. This is simply the betrayal of our call, perpetuating an alienated Church that fails to cater for the real needs and thirst of people.