Overwhelmed by truth, we should take it in sips

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/051319.cfm
Acts 11:1-18
John 10:1-10

The two readings for today help to define what belonging to Christ means, but the ramifications overwhelm the imagination. 

Too much is going on in these two readings to drink up in one gulp, but that is the way of scripture. We must sip. Nonetheless, we can taste what we’re drinking right away. We know coke from coffee, in other words. Over a half hour, a cup of coffee is still coffee. Truth has its own array of flavors, warm and inviting, and also bitter at times, and it doesn’t come in just one cup. That’s my goofy way of saying there’s a whole lot going on here, so it’s important to take our time and savor it.

The reading from Acts highlights the limiting view that circumcised Jews held regarding membership of Christ followers, which they logically assumed would require acceptance of Jewish traditions and rubrics. Peter experiences a radical awakening, that the divine brotherhood of Jesus Christ, and therefore God’s Kingdom, does not exclude followers based upon foreknowledge and adoption of Jewish religious practices. Angels and promptings from the Spirit within the community of Gentiles reveal to Peter the breadth of God’s reach. Rather than fenceposts and barriers, Peter is shown a continuing horizon.

As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them
as it had upon us at the beginning,
and I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said,
“John baptized with water
but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” 
If then God gave them the same gift he gave to us
when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
who was I to be able to hinder God?
When they heard this, 
they stopped objecting and glorified God, saying, 
“God has then granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles too.”

(Acts 11:15-18)

John’s Gospel reading from chapter 10 establishes that the leadership of the flock of followers know their shepherd’s voice. He is not a foreigner, but “walks ahead of them,” showing them the way on a path already taken. John builds this chapter carrying references to Jesus’ mix of both witness and sacrifice behind the roles of shepherd and the gatekeeper. In a very real sense, Jesus leads sheep to abundant life in the midst of thieves and robbers. A beautiful relationship with God, envisioned as a lush pasture of sheep, lies in the midst of saboteurs intent on subordinating God for their own designs.

All who came before me are thieves and robbers,
but the sheep did not listen to them.
I am the gate.
Whoever enters through me will be saved,
and will come in and go out and find pasture.
A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy;
I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.

(John 10:7-10)

Our tendencies to compartmentalize are no different from the Jews, and our organizational hierarchies (office work, manual labor, delivering goods, etc.) follow similar comparisons to a shepherd and his sheep. We’ve got personal experiences that pop up as we read these two interestingly related sections of scripture.

Our Catholic membership can have parochial similarities to the Jewish rubrics, but this is not the primary purpose, I think, for this scripture. Yet, that’s probably where most of us go when hearing Peter’s explanation for a vision that allows for Gentiles to be as welcome to Christ as Jews. We know our practices are vital to increasing our faith, but mature Catholics know the practices don’t really “add” to our faith. Increasing our faith means to become closer to God, not better at acting like a good Catholic. We don’t actually believe religious practices are a competition. While that can happen, and does, religious gamesmanship is just another form of sinful behavior. 

Practices keep us enlightened in our relationship to God in all three persons, engaged in our fellowships with every age and type of believer, and employed as a functioning and fruitful witness in faith. So, those things are good reasons for being a practicing Catholic. The scripture of Peter’s vision has much more to tell us other than competing for God’s attention and racing ahead of the pack in our skills and dedication to our exercise of faith. 

In fact, Peter’s vision confirms the reality that God speaks to us in ways we can understand, specifically regarding his direction for us. Indeed, our visions line up with other Christ followers, as did Peter with his Gentile “brothers.” We are all enlightened, engaged and employed together in a remarkable, coordinated restoration of creation. 

That’s just a couple of sips of this scripture. The horizon of teaching is much richer than that, Yet, much more important is the sheer excitement over God’s incredible desire to be with us, to interact with us.

The gatekeeper and shepherd analogies flowing out of Chapter 10 in John do not stop at one or two comparisons either. My goodness, the references I’ve traced to just Numbers, and Isaiah, and the Psalms reveal that scripture’s consistency and interconnected details are pretty much inexhaustible. It’s simply too much to absorb.

Our instant analogies might point to interlocutors at work who try to take over responsibilities from someone else in authority. Or, the horror at a company where we work being disbanded, or destroyed, due to the terrible management of just one or two people. Yes, these memories do serve to remind us of God’s specific authority in our faith-based lives, and how others can pry us apart from faithfulness to God. That’s just the first sip, though, on this scripture.

Chapter 10 continues on a steady rampage, including a wolf analogy, and ends up showing that our shepherd in Jesus could not change the corrupted way of the religious worldview of his own prescribed flock of Jewish people. The particular presence of Jesus as God does not fit into the mind’s eye of the very religious leaders he established as a nation of witnesses. They can’t see their God in their midst even as he proves himself to be who the scriptures said he would be. 

And that is where our sipping must be very serious. As displayed in Acts, with Peter’s vision repeated three times, we each find great difficulty in seeing and believing in a God who appears so revolutionary to our sense of order. Every responsibility that is offered to us, agreed upon, and subsequently occupies our time, probably came to us from God. Certainly a few were simply bad choices on our part. (OK, maybe more than a few.) 

Our conversion to faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Holy Spirit as our comforter, and the Father as our authority means that we no longer connect our dots to constitutions and contracts without fealty to God. We no longer belong to anyone other than God. Even in our joining as married partners, we are one with God, not just with each other. No contract, no commitment, and no vow should displace our relationship to God the Father, prompted by the Spirit of God, and witnessed for the divinity of Jesus as God. 

None of this is easy. Not all of this is even logical. In constant practice and putting one foot in front of the other, though, all of it is real. We know what blessings are when we are showered in them. We know grace when it flows too and from each other. We know love when it carries us.

The scriptures are always ready for another sip, another taste of the truths we have yet to encounter.