The Holy Spirit, the Apostles and Presbyters

Homily for 6^th Sunday of Easter Year C 2016

Acts 15:1-2,22-29; Revelation 21:10-14,22-23; John 14:23-29

Introduction

We live in times of conflict:

·        Civil war in Syria, Ukraine and the Sudan; political differences between Republicans and Democrats; and in this election year record levels of acrimony between politicians of the same political parties.

·        Even religion is not exempt from conflict, between Christians and Muslims in parts of West Africa, Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

·        And the one place you would expect to be peaceful and harmonious, the Catholic Church, even here we have our own share of friction, on issues ranging from the beginning of life to the end life and in between.

No wonder then that today's first reading tells us of a serious conflict that happened in the Church of Antioch.  But fortunately, that same incident also provides a solution, a way of resolving conflict that we can use today.

Scripture and Theology

The reading comes from Acts Chapter 15, describing the life of the Church about 10 to 15 years after Jesus had returned to the Father.  The Church in Antioch was divided over whether or not to require Gentiles who became Christians to undergo the Jewish custom of circumcision.

·        One group, the Jewish Christians, insisted that "Unless you are circumcised according to the Mosaic practice, you cannot be saved."  They saw Christianity as being simply an extension of the Jewish religion.

·        But Paul and Barnabas disagreed.  They argued that although Jesus was a Jew and observed the Jewish Law, that he had come to establish, a new religion, a way of relating with God that superseded Jewish customs.

Unfortunately this conflict was only the first of many in the history of the Church.

1.    For example, we take for granted the Creed which we profess at Mass, that Jesus is God and man, that he is of the same substance as the Father.  But Christians, even bishops came to blows over these issues until the councils of the fourth and fifth centuries solved them.

2.    Similarly for several centuries there were disagreements on the number of sacraments, how they worked, and how they were celebrated.  These issues were settled only in the councils of the 15^th and 16^th centuries.

3.    And then most recently, in the last century, Catholics disagreed on how to relate with the modern world, with other Christians, with other religions, until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, decided these matters.

And so, conflict and disagreement, like the argument over circumcision in Antioch, always exist in the Church and must be resolved.

As we heard, the Church of Antioch took care of the problem, by passing the disagreement on to the Apostles and presbyters in Jerusalem, 471 miles away.  They did this because the Apostles, who had witnessed first-hand the life and teaching, the death and the resurrection of Jesus, were responsible for the Church. Important decisions like the criteria for admission into the Church should be made by them.

What they did reminds me of a scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan.  In that World War II movie, a group of soldiers are sent behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose three brothers have already been killed in action, so that his parents would get to keep one son.  Some of the soldiers don’t see the wisdom of putting a whole platoon of soldiers in danger just to save one.  And so they continually complain about the mission, except the captain, who remains silent all the time.  One of the men then asks him: “Hey . . . so, Captain, what about you? I mean, you don't gripe at all?” This is what the captain says: 

I don't gripe to you, Reiben. I'm a captain. There's a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down. Always up. You gripe to me, I gripe to my superior officer, so on, so on, and so on. I don't gripe to you. I don't gripe in front of you.

In a similar way, by deciding to send their gripe to Jerusalem, the Church in Antioch is following the chain of command and hierarchy set up by Jesus.

And when the matter reached the apostles and presbyters, they called a council, the Council of Jerusalem, in which they did three things.

1.    First they listened to all the parties, allowing all to be heard.

2.    Second, they turned to the Scriptures and the teaching of Jesus and applied God's Word to this particular situation.

3.    Finally, they made sought the help of the Holy Spirit.  For as we heard in the gospel, Jesus had promised them: "The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you."

This well laid out procedure allowed the Apostles and presbyters to reach a satisfactory decision, which they sent to the Church of Antioch, saying:

It is the decision of the holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities,  namely, to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, from meats of strangled animals, and from unlawful marriage. If you keep free of these, you will be doing what is right.

In the usual Catholic "both . . . and" manner, on one hand, the apostles and presbyters agreed with Paul and Barnabas, that now baptism had replaced circumcision as the means of becoming God's people; but they also agreed with the Jewish Christians, that some basic Jewish practices had to continue, because Jesus had come to fulfil, not to abolish God's work of salvation through the Jewish people.

Christian Life

This same method, of discussion, reflection and prayer has been used quite well in the councils of the Church, by the successors of the apostles and presbyters, the Pope and Bishops, even in the two recent synods on the family. 

That's why Marcus Grodi, a former Presbyterian pastor, who hosts a TV program on EWTN, says he became Catholic.  He says:

Every Sunday I would stand in my pulpit and interpret Scripture for my flock, knowing that within a fifteen mile radius of my church there were dozens of other Protestant pastors, all of whom believed that the Bible alone is the sole authority for doctrine and practice, but each was teaching something different from what I was teaching.  ‘Is my interpretation of Scripture the right one or not?' I'd wonder. ‘Maybe one of those other pastors is right, and I'm misleading these people who trust me.'

It was as if Marcus was in the community of Antioch, but, unlike Paul and Barnabas, he had nowhere to go to resolve his doubts and disagreements.  He could find no peace of heart, until he found the Catholic Church, the one Jesus has equipped with a hierarchy and chain of command, that resolves issues not on its own authority, but in the Holy Spirit, in the Tradition and in the Scriptures.

Conclusion

Yes, conflict is part of life, even Church life.  But we too have our own apostles and presbyters, the pope and the bishops, tasked by Jesus to resolve today's disagreements.  And the reason we can trust them to do so was given by a third grader, who, for his religion homework wrote: “a bishop is someone, who knows someone, who knew someone, who knew someone, who knew someone and so on and so forth, who knew Jesus.”

Let us pray that like the Holy Spirit did at the Council of Jerusalem, and throughout the history of the Church, he guides the Pope and bishops, so that in resolving today's conflicts, they are faithful to the teaching of Jesus.