What I find astounding in the Acts reading today is that the Samaritans accept Phillip’s preaching and then they receive the visit by Peter and John, who had arrived to survey what was happening in Samaria. The Samaritans and Jews were bitter enemies, yet the Samaritans accepted these preachers from Jerusalem and the Christ they proclaimed.
Imagine how the early Jewish Christian communities would have to adjust to Samaritan Christians in their midst! Wasn’t John (along with James) the one who wanted Jesus to call down fire on the Samaritan village that had rejected him (Luke 9-54)? The good news in the story is that former enemies are united by their faith in Christ. Forgiveness and reconciliation were fruits of the Spirit’s presence among those early Christians — but let’s hope, not just “back then,” but for us too!
The Samaritans were outsiders, to the extreme, for the Jews; but God is consistent in giving the free gift of grace to those formerly excluded. Now the aliens are aliens no longer. All people are eligible candidates for God’s gifts and are made brothers and sisters through their baptism. What Jesus promises in today’s gospel has happened–the Advocate, the Spirit of truth, has been given us. Now we are all brothers and sisters in Christ–not orphans, but children of God. There should be no “outsiders” in our community; none counted as “late-comers,” or second class parish members.
As we look around our congregation this morning whom have we or our parishioners considered Samaritans, the least likely to join us in prayer? But here they are! We cannot ignore them, especially if they, like the Samaritans, show signs of the Spirit’s life. We welcome and respect one another; none are lesser in God’s eyes, nor should they be in ours. Peter calls us today to “good conduct in Christ.” What better conduct can we do as a Christians, with past and present differences, than be united as a community of Christ’s disciples?
There’s an “issue” in today’s Acts reading which probably will confuse main-line churchgoers. It occurs in the second part (8:14-17) and it’s about baptism and the gift of the Spirit. More fundamental Christians would argue for a baptism of the Holy Spirit to complete the work of Baptism. Early Christians saw the Spirit working in very obvious, external signs (speaking in tongues, ecstatic behavior, etc.) And so they expected to find these signs as proof of the Spirit’s presence. Paul had to deal with how to address the Corinthian community’s manifestations of the Spirit. While he appreciated these gifts, he also saw how they could cause rivalry and partisanship and divide the church. Remember where he put the emphasis in his letter to the Corinthians, “There are in the end three gifts that last: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love (I Cor 13:13). In our church tradition we might see, in the apostles’ laying hands over the Samaritans and their prayer for the Spirit to come on them, as a foretaste of our celebration of Confirmation.
Today’s gospel has one more selection from Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse” to his disciples the night before he died. He is preparing them for his departure. He directs them that, if they love him, they will keep his commandments. It’s what you might expect a religious leader to say before departing: “Here’s my last will and testament.” Or, “These are my last words to you–don’t forget them!” But I want to ask, “Where is the book of commandments Jesus left behind? Let’s open it up and check off how we have been doing.”
It’s a mistake to think that, just before he is about to leave his disciples, Jesus is springing a set of rules on them. That’s not the way he lived life with his disciples. We don’t have a rule book to remember him by and guide us. We may have had a student’s list of proper behavior when we were in grammar school. Perhaps now, at work, we have a list of procedures and guidelines which employees are to follow if they want to keep their jobs. But we don’t have a rule book for Jesus. We know what he wants us to do: to love one another as he loved us; to be forgiving and self-sacrificing towards those who need us–even if they don’t deserve it–just as he was with us. How can you write that down in a rule book? Or spell that out in a list of commandments? Jesus calls us to do more than any law would require. Laws narrowly define how we are to behave. But Jesus’ love breaks laws confines and sets us free to be loving — even towards our enemies.
As I write this we Americans are celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden. He was a terrible man who inflicted pain on tens of thousands of lives–his victims, their loved ones and those who suffered the conflict of war and acts of violence as a result of his actions. I was in New York on 9/11 and you could see and smell the burning towers, with their human and structural contents, across the city. My family’s parish had 25 funeral masses those weeks.
James Martin, S. J., in a recent blog for “America” magazine, (posted May 2, 2011), shared his memories of ministry to survivors, victim’s families, rescue workers and medical personnel near the site of the World Trade Center. He says that while he is “not blind to the death and instruction caused by Osama bin Laden” still, we are Christians celebrating the Easter season when Christ, an innocent victim of violence, rose from the dead. Jesus calls us to forgive, “Not seven times… but seventy times seven times.” In other words, forgiveness doesn’t have a required number or a time. Nor is it given to some, but not to others.
Forgiveness is the most difficult virtue, but it is a serious responsibility for all Christians. Bin Laden was killed on the day John Paul II was beatified. When the Pope got out of the hospital after he was shot, he went to the prison to visit the Turkish extremist Mehmet Ali Agca, who tried to kill him, to offer him forgiveness. The picture of the Pope talking in the cell with Mehmet became an icon of forgiveness for people of all faiths.
We are relieved bin Laden is no longer a threat to other innocents, but Martin reminds us that as Christians we are called to pray for him and eventually to forgive him. It is not an easy teaching to follow. Jesus himself was not untouched by violence and yet he forgave those who inflicted it on him. Jesus knew what he was asking of his followers. Left on our own we could never live out Jesus’ teachings — especially the one about forgiveness.
But he makes clear today that he has not left us, only to return at some later date to see how we have followed his teachings. Instead, he tells this disciples “I will not leave you orphans, I will come back to you.” He promises to send them “another Advocate.” In John’s gospel Jesus was the first Advocate sent by God to us. Now, he tells us a second, another Advocate, will be given them, “the Spirit of truth,”–the Holy Spirit. The Spirit will make Jesus’ present to us. That Spirit will also open Jesus’ word to us and inform and enable us to live as he did–as children of the loving God Jesus revealed to us.
Love calls and enables us to follow the way of Jesus. The Spirit he sent us floods us with an awareness of God’s love for us and overflows from us to those around us–even to our enemies. People will see in our lives signs of the Spirit’s presence in us. How else could they explain the loving and forgiving ways we live?
Next week is the Ascension of Jesus. The departure he prepared his disciples for will happen and, at first, they will feel his absence. After he is gone they will have to get busy and live the life he taught them. But not before they receive the gift of the Advocate he promised. In John’s Gospel this happens when he appears to them in the upper room after his resurrection. Each of us is aware how we need that Spirit if we are to reflect Jesus’ risen life to the world. So, as we wait for our Pentecost, we pray as individuals and the church, “Come Holy Spirit.”
We mainstream Christians, especially Catholics, tend to shy away from terms like, “evangelizing,” “bearing witness,” “giving testimony,” etc. They sound so “in-your-face.” It’s what we tend to expect from certain fundamentalist sects. Still, the one fruit of the Spirit’s presence is to form us as witnesses to Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. I find Peter’s advice to the Gentile churches today helpful as he directs them, “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence….”
Peter would know that Jesus fulfilled his promise to send the Holy Spirit because he would know of the Spirit’s presence in the Gentile Christian churches to whom he was writing. His advice to them and us, is to live the kind of lives that would move someone to ask about our faith. The presumption being that our lives are distinctive enough to raise questions. Our response should be one of a gentle respect for the person who asks.
So, when Osama bin Laden was killed and we were asked about it, how did we respond? I heard a woman interviewed from London today. She was in the bombing of the London Underground that killed over 50 people in 2005. She said she was glad that others might now be spared a similar, terrifying experience like the one she went through. But, she added, all life is sacred, even his. So, she said, she could never rejoice and celebrate the death of another human being, even if it were Osama bin Laden. Very challenging response. It has the sound of the “Spirit of truth” about it. The Spirit Jesus promised to send and guide us!