Deacon Michael's Homily for the 5th Sunday of Easter - May 14-15, 2022

Here’s Deacon Michael’s homily for the 5th Sunday of Easter - May 14-15, 2022

  You can find the Sunday Readings for this homily HERE

 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

For the past several weeks since Easter we have been working our way through The Acts of the Apostles in the Sunday and weekday Mass readings.

This journey has been taking us, in time and space, from the first days after Jesus death and Resurrection in Jerusalem out into the world of the Eastern Mediterranean

…a half a generation beyond those momentous, foundational events.

The places have changed. 

Instead of Galilee, Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria of the Gospels, we have Galatia and Ephesus, Thessalonica and Corinth, Lystra and Iconium

…and big familiar far away places like Damascus and Athens

…and Antioch the place where Jesus’ disciples were first called Christians

…and eventually toward the end of Acts, to Rome, the far away “center, heart of the Roman empire.

The names and faces have changed as well.

Instead of Jesus and the 12 in the Gospels we have Paul and Barnabas, Titus and Timothy, Prisca and Aquila, Phoebe and Aristarchus and many others who were founders, members, teachers and ministers of those early communities across what is now Turkey and Greece

…often referred to as the “Cradle of Christianity”.

For us it is hard to imagine the world in which these older brothers and sisters of ours lived and moved and had their being.

Disciples of Jesus Christ were seen as a small breakaway off-shoot from the faith of the Hebrews,

…who were themselves one of the many peoples and faiths comprising the Roman Empire.

They had no large cathedrals, printing houses, TV networks or capital campaigns.

They didn’t even have churches per se.

For prayer and liturgy they often met in the outdoors outside the town, or in the home of one of the community members that was large enough.

Few had any influential members of the local community among their number.

What they did have was their belief in the story of life, death and resurrection of the Lord

…whose dying had destroyed their death and rising restored their life

…and whose teaching on and lived example of offered sacrificial love

…motivated them to live like him and so share in his rising.

Today’s reading from Revelation offers a sense of the ultimate destiny their faith offered

…a new and transformed existence in a different realm

…a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem

…where they dwelt in the presence of God, where the old order has passed away and there are no tears, or death, or mourning, wailing or pain.

This vision strengthened them to live differently

…in how they were to treat one another and welcome strangers

…in their attitudes to material things, sexuality and human life

…in their rejection of others gods, worldly power and violence.

In sum they were “high” in faith and motivation and willing to be different

…but low in social status and influence.

This is nearly the opposite of where Chrsitians find themselves these days in the WEIRD world that you and I inhabit here and now.

By WEIRD world, I mean Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic of which middle class Connecticut emblematic, even kind of a poster child.

Where our early ancestors of New Testament times were few, their faith, motivation and willingness to be different were strong

…now the faith of many now seems to be waning

…the motivation to share it, tenuous or weak

…and for many the prospect of being different from others due to one’s faith is a scary notion.

Though the social status and influence of Christians was until recent years considerable it is waning as well.

So the Christians of the times of Acts were at the start of of a long upward path in the growth and spread and influence of the Christian faith

...and we in the WEIRD societies seem to be riding a rather quicker downward one.

Many have wondered and much has been written about how to arrest or bend this downward path back upwards.

Institutes and think tanks have been founded to ponder it

…undertaking all manner of surveys, and data, and analysis looking for clues.

Many have proposed changing this or that practice or teaching of the church

…and recommendations for changing this or that box and line on the Church's organizational chart, tweaking authority and accountability.

Well maybe. But what if it's all deeper, in something we may have lost?

But maybe we need a restart by recovering something more basic, recovering something that those people of Acts had.

Maybe the starting point is with each of us standing naked before God and asking ourselves if we really believe

…in the one whose dying destroys our death and rising restores our life

…in the new heaven and the new earth and the new Jerusalem as in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come

…in living the life of self-sacrificing love that his words and example showed us

…in all its many personal and social implications

…lived to glorify God and not ourselves.

Maybe a recovery of this will seem like something new and attractive to many

…because while its not new to the church

…it will be for many

…it can be new again for us

…and there is hope in that.