Reflection - Why are some confused about the evidence?

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090318.cfm
I Corinthians 2:1-5
Luke 4:16-30

A few months ago, while browsing in a cleverly named second hand store, I happened to pick up a book entitled Non Campus Mentis. The title was clearly a play on words, intending to remind the reader of the Latin phrase non campos mentis which the dictionary defines as “Not of sound mind and hence not legally competent.” The subtitle on the cover of the book explains it all: World History According to College Students. My curiosity was immediately piqued. A quick glance at the interior revealed these startling ‘facts.’

• Prehistory, a subject mainly studied by anthro-apologists, was prior to the year 1500.
  
• Social division of labor began when a tribe split into hunters and togetherers.
  
• Advances were most common during the inter-galactic periods.
  
• Civilization woozed out of the Nile about 300,000 years ago.
  
• The Nile was a river that had some water in it.
  
• [In those days] People were allowed democratic freedoms like taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
  

The text continues, advancing our understanding of human history almost up to the present day where we are informed that:

• The Iran-Iraq War was fought in the nineteenth century between the Arabs and Israel.

Now, if I were you, about this time I would be thinking one of two things:

(1) Where can I get a copy of this book? OR (2) What has this to do with the Scripture readings today. I don’t know where to get the book — try Amazon — but bear with me a bit longer and I’ll explain how all those folds in my brain led to an interconnection of Non Campus Mentis with Scripture.

I believe I have mentioned in one or more of my previous reflections that I spent seven years as a Director of Religious Education. In at least one of those reflections I had to have questioned the material that was then taught to our students. As many of you may also remember, dogma, in the form of the Baltimore Catechism, was the principal content of religion classes in my elementary grades. My years as a religious education director caught the tail end of that particular content. A transition to something new was attempting to sprout in those post Vatican II years. That’s probably why this text from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians has been both a puzzle and a source of wonder to me.

When I came to you proclaiming the mystery of God,
I did not come with sublimity of words or of wisdom.
I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling,
and my message and my proclamation
were not with persuasive words of wisdom,
but with a demonstration of spirit and power.

I can easily understand some of what Paul is referring to. His words about “knowing nothing except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” are fairly easy to get hold of. After all, there wasn’t much in the way of dogma to be passed along in those days.

Reflecting on the whole passage this past week has led me to two different points worth mentioning. The first of these points is clearly tied to the book originally cited. It addresses a question which has persistently been on my mind during the years after my work as a Religious Education Director: What should we be teaching those new to the faith?

When Paul approached the people of Corinth, he would first have contacted those in the Jewish community who were living there. He would not have needed to tell these people of God’s saving work among them in the past. They already knew about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David and all the other figures whose stories feature so prominently in the Old Testament texts. Consequently, Paul didn’t need to repeat the stories of God’s saving work throughout history; the people already knew about that. Rather, Paul brought them the word about “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” In Jesus was the fulfillment both of God’s ancient promises and of all God’s saving work in the preceding centuries. The books of the Old Testament were about Jesus, but the people couldn’t know that until he arrived to live in their midst.

Such is not the case today. By in large, even many of those who would be the people of God are ‘non campus mentis’ when it comes to Salvation History, the history of God’s work to save the fallen children of Adam and Eve. We don’t know that Old Testament past and so have only a minimal idea of some of the more important things that the Father was teaching before he sent his Son. So, in the end, the confusion is on par with those college students who would purport to explain that Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt and Truman were known as the ‘big three.’

While that is a notion worthy of being explored further, it appears to me to be but a primer used by the Spirit to lead me to the topic He wanted discussed. That takes me to the second point; a point about which I have become only incrementally aware over the past several years and which has particularly come into focus for me only recently. It flows from Paul’s words: “I came to you with a demonstration of spirit and power.” What kind of demonstration? What kind of power? Where is the evidence to support Paul’s claim?

In recent months and years the work of God in my life, both significant and incidental, has become more and more evident. Now, that is not to say that God is doing more — though that may actually be the case — rather, it is to say that my previous indifference to many of the events in my life has been supplied a visual clarity that gives witness to God’s active presence in my life. Some of these events have been simple when experienced but too complicated to explain here. Some events border on what we might declare miraculous if we had enough technical information to support that claim. Some even fall into the category of what I call the work of my social director — the unexpected removal of a schedule conflict, the improbable simplification of yard work I am trying to complete, needs unanticipated on my part but nonetheless provided for when the need made itself known.

In our day it is common to accuse the Pharisees, or even the people of Nazareth as we read about in the gospel text, of being antagonistic because Jesus wasn’t the Messiah they wanted. Or similarly, to accuse them of greed — greed to protect their social position, greed to have ‘cornered’ the road to the kingdom, greed for the status of being the most respected religious figure. Jesus’ most common description of their failure is the image of blindness. Blind to the work of God among them. Blind to the teachings of the one he has sent. Blind to his active presence in their daily lives.

Seeing the active presence of God in our lives is not a Pollyanna notion for one who truly believes in Jesus Christ. In fact, Jesus promised it would be that way. But over the years, decades, centuries, that understanding has been minimized, scoffed at and consigned to the junk pile of myth and primitive thinking. Yet, in Paul’s way of thinking, it is the way God’s salvation is brought with the Spirit and with power. With the Spirit because it is the Spirit who brings forth these miracles, both large and infinitesimally small, into our lives. And with power because the sharing of these incidents of presence has power to be a light to the nations.

God’s active presence is not a mirage on this desert horizon. Our vision is not deceived.