Frances Flatman reflects on next Sunday's Readings :
As we get close to Pentecost our Readings turn decisively towards the sense of the lawful and established understanding of the Christian community. Those who have been reading the story of the ups and downs of the first Pauline mission abroad in Acts will have noted how his ministry, and that of his companions, has been continually disrupted by hard-line Judaisers and their insistence on circumcision and the full commitment to the Jewish law. What we have in this week’s Readings is all orientated to what we have come to know as Church Order, the acceptance of unanimity in belief and practice from the (then) leading Christian group. This understanding of ‘belonging’ and knowing what we all form a part of has continued to mark and shape the Church ever since, albeit there have been break-away movements and even times of violent internal opposition based in the understanding of what and whose we are. This foundation gives us coherence and solidarity from which to move out and fulfil the Lord’s command to take the Gospel out to the nations, and it is still today a vital part of the life of the Christian community.
In Acts (15:1-2.22-29) we are invited into the first and crucial debate in which this took place. Luke, we must remember, is telling his patron Theophilus the story of how the Christian community came into being, initially within Judaism, but increasingly and especially after the Jewish Revolt of 66-70 CE as an institution increasingly open to converts like himself from paganism, and specifically without the requirement of adoption into the Jewish faith which had previously made it well nigh impossible for Roman citizens, who would have been unable to keep the Jewish law or be circumcised. We are informed that the ‘Council’ in Jerusalem was the subject, not simply of ‘disagreement’, as in the Jerusalem Bible, but rather in Greek, ‘No small dissension and debate’, for which I think we can imagine a fiery argument, and that when the affair had ultimately been decided by the Jerusalem Christian community they responded to the church in Antioch with instruction, and recorded the fact that those demanding full adherence to the law had ‘Acted without any authority from us’. Clearly, as the group were in complete agreement, they were able to make a definitive judgement and condemn the Judaisers in no uncertain terms. It would have marked the parting of Judaism from Christianity. With the proviso against food offered to idols and the eating of blood (the life-force for Judaism) and some moves to reform behaviour, the way was now open to include non Jews. Elite Romans may well have followed the Stoic virtues anyway and had no problem with much of this, though we should note Paul’s Corinthian reasoning here too. We might think this simply arcane, but the principle it laid down has proved very important for the Church. It was an argument which was significant later for the inclusion of non Europeans and slaves for instance.
This idea of completeness is drawn out towards the end of the Apocalypse (21:10-14) with its insistent symmetry in its picture of the New Jerusalem (though why what it describes as ‘jasper’ is for us altered to ‘diamonds’ is a mystery!) It is the constant repetition of the ‘Twelve’ and the author’s total focus on God and the Lamb presiding over all which give the sense of completion, and what a relief too after all the violence and slaughter of so much of the text. Here, at the end all is resolved in God.
In our Reading from John (14:23-29) we get this sense of wholeness, repeated by the Trinitarian references which give completeness to our text, where everything is shown to be the work of Father, Son and Spirit. We have to remember once again that Jesus is in Jerusalem for his Passion, he has just washed the feet of the disciples, as the sign of his humility and his vision of the Church, and he goes on to foretell the betrayal by Judas and the failure of Peter. And here he spells out the essence of the Christian community as rooted in love. Once more, we must remember that this love is throughout overhung by the Passion, death and resurrection; this agape is not sloppy or sentimental, and Jesus makes clear that love for him is rooted in action – here, the ‘keeping of his word’. When we consider that for John, as stated in the opening of this Gospel, Jesus simply is ‘The Word’, his entire identity, we are beginning to be able to grasp what John was on about. John reports that for Jesus enemies of the faith are those ‘Not keeping his word’. That word, as we see, is moreover rooted in the Father and will be the essence of the Spirit which the Father will send in his name/place to be with us ‘He will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you.’ In themselves therefore the Trinity is completion, consistency, and this again is emphasised by his promise of ‘peace’ which Jesus will give, didomi in Greek, here three times repeated. So our certainty of hope and eternal life is rooted in the unity of Father, Son and Spirit, we are safe in God. ’I have told you this now before it happens, so that when it does happen you may believe.’ We have our place within the relationship of the Trinity.
Comments