The Sánchez Archives FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER YEAR A

By
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez

EXPLORING ECCLESIAL IDENTITIES

ACTS 6:1-7
1 PETER 2:4-9
JOHN 14:1-12

Each Sunday during the Easter Season, the early Christian authors of the New Testament invite us to renew our familiarity with the nascent church. Each week, the selected texts open a literary window, as it were, through which contemporary believers can glimpse into the lives of our spiritual ancestors and therein discover for ourselves a fresh source of edification and encouragement in living the faith.

In the weeks, months and years following Jesus’ death and resurrection, the disciples who believed in him had to come to terms with the fact of their faith and its consequences upon their lives, both as individuals and as members of a growing community called church. Men, women and children who would otherwise have had little or nothing to do with one another because of cultural, social, political and/or economic factors were suddenly thrust together by virtue of their common commitment to Christ. As this diverse group of believes grew larger, and as their mandate to preach the good news caused the disciples to travel to different areas throughout the then known world, the ever-changing and often conflicted complexion of the community required continual and careful attention.

In their efforts to support and maintain a holy and wholesome harmony within the church, the ancient authors offered their contemporary readers (and us) a variety of models or ways of understanding themselves and one another as church. Each model was designed to remind believers that their shared rootedness in Christ was the origin of their unity with one another and the reason for their ministry in his name.

The late first century C.E. author of 2 Peter (second reading) called his correspondents to think of themselves as living stones, built into a spiritual temple and founded on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ. As stones, Christians are to be stable, secure and unshakeable in their commitment; as an edifice of living stones, the church provides a sure shelter for those in need and a holy place where the glorious works of God are proclaimed and lived.

Luke, in the first reading from Acts described the church as an ever growing and increasingly pluralistic community whose oneness and holiness depended upon its ability to adapt its ministry to changing needs and circumstances. Like Jesus, whose compassion and care were offered indiscriminately to all, regardless of race, gender or creed, the disciples were to think of themselves as his apostolic or commissioned servants, entrusted with a catholic or universal ministry.

In today’s gospel the Johannine evangelist has portrayed the church as a union of sincere seekers of the Father and as followers of Jesus who is himself the Way to the Father and the one through whom the Father has chosen to reveal his saving love.

Following the lead of their early counterparts, subsequent Christian authors have also challenged the ecclesial identity of believers with still other concepts or models of church. Robert Bellarmine’s sixteenth century definition of church as “the community of men brought together by the profession of the same Christian faith and conjoined in the communion of the same sacraments under the government of the legitimate pastors. . . and the one vicar of Christ, the Roman pontiff” remained dominant until the Second Vatican Council. In keeping with the Council’s efforts at renewal and its appreciation of our earliest traditions, Avery Dulles (Models of the Church, Doubleday and Co. Inc., New York: 1974) invited the church to consider itself and its mission from a variety of complementary perspectives, e.g. as herald, community, service, institution, and sacrament. By keeping its various dimensions in a balanced harmony, the church remains true to its source and raison d’être, viz. Jesus Christ. Barbara O’Dea has suggested that Dulles’ models also describe an evolving pattern of how people grow to maturity in the faith; “emphasis on the Word is formative of a community of believers who experience individually and corporately a call to service of others which leads to an understanding that the church is indeed a sign community, a sacrament of God’s presence in the world” (The Once and Future Church, Celebration Books, National Catholic Reporter Pub. Co, Kansas City: 1980).

At each gathering of the believing assembly the various models of the church are represented and celebrated and the ongoing process of growing in the faith is continued.

ACTS 6:1-7

Previously during this Easter season, the first reading (Second Sunday of Easter) was comprised of an idyllic description of the early Christian community as “devoted to the apostolic instruction, the communal life, the Breaking of Bread and the prayers.” Sharing all their material goods, the early believers saw to the needs of one another, took their daily meals in common and won the admiration of all who knew of them (Acts 2:42-44). Today’s selection from Acts represents one of the many real situations which put the professed ideals of the early church to the test. While the dispute was attributed to disagreement over the daily dole for the widows, the cause of the friction was much more pervasive. Baptism had washed away sin and initiated the first generations of believers into the mystery of Christ and the church but it had not washed away their cultural differences. These remained and were a daily challenge to the growing community.

Hebrew-speaking Jewish Christians came to the community from a background steeped in the Law, the prophets, messianic promises, ritual feasts, and purifications. Careful to avoid anyone and anything which might threaten their traditions, many Hebrew Christians were disinclined to associate with non-Jews. Hellenistic Jewish Christians, having grown up in the diaspora were less provincial in their attitude toward foreigners. They spoke Greek, read the Hebrew scriptures in Greek (Septuagint) and while they were faithful to the Law, they purged it of those elements that were not acceptable in the countries where they lived. Whereas Hebrew-speaking Jews (and, for a time many Jewish Christians) centered their religious life around the temple (Acts 3:1, 5:42) and were quite strict in their observance, Hellenist Christians were less rigid in their observance and more cosmopolitan in their outlook.

Reginald Fuller has suggested that this text and the conflict it recounts should be appreciated on two levels. First, it records an actual historic situation in which very real tensions existed between Jewish and Greek Christians. Secondly, the pericope reflects the recognition of the Greek speaking Jewish Christians by the Twelve, thus averting a breach between the two parties (Preaching the New Lectionary, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville: 1974).

Selected by the community and described as filled with faith and the Holy Spirit, Stephen and the other six Hellenist Christians were presented to the apostles who prayed over them and imposed hands on them. The process of the commissioning of the seven for diakonia (Greek), or service, was reminiscent of similar ceremonies of mandating and conferring power and authority recounted in the Hebrew scriptures (Numbers 27:23, Deuteronomy 34:9). As is reflected elsewhere in the New Testament, the Christian church continued to designate people for their various ministries in the same manner (1 Timothy 4:14, 5:22, 2 Timothy 1:16).

In the weeks to come, it will become obvious that these newly appointed ministers were more than an “ecclesiastical quartermaster corps” (James Gaffney, Biblical Notes on the Sunday Lectionary, Paulist Press, New York: 1978) assigned “to serve at table” (Acts 6:2). Stephen would become the first to die for the faith (Acts 7:54-60); Philip and other Hellenist Christians would be the first to move the mission of proclaiming the good news beyond Jerusalem and Judea into Samaria, Gaza and beyond (Acts 8; 11:19-22).

For contemporary Christians, this narrative abut the Seven and the Twelve underscores the necessity of mutual respect for the differences among us and of being readily adaptable to the ever changing needs and circumstances of those whom we are called to serve.

1 PETER 2:4-9

In this rich passage, the author of 1 Peter has pieced together a mosaic of Old Testament metaphors concerning two central motifs, stone and people, in order to set forth his ideas on the nature and function of the church. By calling Christ a living stone, an obstacle and a stumbling stone to those who resist him, but approved as precious, and set as the cornerstone by God, the author referenced: (1) the promise recorded by the prophet Isaiah (28:16), viz. that God would lay a sure foundation of salvation in Zion and that those who put their faith in it would not be shaken. (2) Psalm 118:22 originally this psalm expressed Israel’s appreciation of its special role in God’s saving plan. While it may have been dismissed as insignificant by human standards, Israel was designated by God as the basis and cornerstone of his salvific action in the world. In describing the reaction he had received regarding his ministry, Jesus applied these words to himself (Matthew 21:42, Mark 12:10, Luke 20:17) as did the author of 1 Peter. Rejected by those he had come to save , Jesus is nevertheless the cornerstone of the kingdom. (3) Isaiah 8:13-14, wherein God “is described as an obstacle and stumbling stone to those who are unfaithful to him. In the same manner, those who found Jesus to be an obstacle, were, in effect, walling themselves off from life and salvation whereas those who accepted him found sanctuary. As Jerome Neyrey (“1 Peter”, Collegeville Bible Commentary, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville: 1989) has explained, this Christ-stone is the pattern for the church; like Jesus, believers are chosen and precious to God; we are also rejected by pagans and unbelievers. But, with Christ as our cornerstone, we are as living stones, built into a holy place, “an edifice of spirit where acceptable sacrifices can be offered to God through Jesus” (1 Peter 2:5).

In verse nine, the prerogatives of Israel as a chosen race and a people claimed by God to be his own (Malachi 3:17) are applied to the church. Like their spiritual ancestors, Christians are divinely elected (Isaiah 43:20-21) to be a holy nation and a royal priesthood (Exodus 19:6). Through the exercise of their priestly function, believers: (1) have been granted access to God in Christ Jesus and are thereby responsible for affording similar access to others. (2) are to offer spiritual sacrifices to God. Reginald Fuller (op. cit.) reminds us that the sacrifices offered by the priesthood of living stones are not cultic but ethical; i.e. the living of an authentic Christian faith in the world. Moreover, the sacrifices offered by the church must necessarily include the proclamation of God’s glorious works (vs. 9). By both word and work, at the liturgy and in the marketplace, whether welcomed or rejected, the people constituted by Christ into a holy place of living stones, are to manifest the good news for which he died and now lives.

JOHN 14:1-12

One of the greatest challenges of the earliest disciples of Jesus was the fact of his departure from their midst and their uncertainty as to when they would once again know the joy of his presence. Each of the evangelists helped his respective community to negotiate this challenge and at the same time aided their contemporaries in arriving at an understanding of their purpose in the world until Jesus’ return. The Johannine author, in particular, has offered a wealth of insight in this regard; his lengthy Last Supper discourse continues to speak to the hearts of believers who ask, Where are you going? How can we know the way? Show us the Father!

From the outset, the Johannine Jesus counsels his followers that their anxieties about themselves and their survival after his departure should be dissipated by their faith in God and their faith in him who has come so that the Father’s saving work and will can be known (vss. 1, 9-11). He insists that his departure is necessary in order that he prepare a mone (Greek), a dwelling place for his own (vs. 2). Later in John’s gospel it will become clear that the dwelling place which Jesus is preparing is not “somewhere out there in the far off future”, but within the believers themselves, because Jesus will return to dwell within them through the Paraclete or Holy Spirit (John 14:20-23, 17:20-24).

The questions of Peter (13:36), Thomas (14:5) and Philip (14:8) provide the occasion for Jesus to explain that he has not left his followers alone or without direction; they are privileged to know the way, the truth and the life. Just as the Father’s dwelling is not a place, but an experience of Jesus’ presence, the way which leads there is not a path but a person. It is Jesus himself who communicates it to his disciples by revealing the truth and offering a share in his life.

No doubt, the term way reminded John’s readers of several Old Testament references wherein the law was featured as the way (ha derek) of truth and life (Psalm 119, Wisdom 5:6, Tobit 1:3). For their part, the Essenes at Qumran, who took to heart the exhortation of Deutero-Isaiah to “prepare in the wilderness the way of the Lord” (40:3), regarded their way of life in the desert as a pathway to God. Later, the early believers in Jesus described themselves and were known as followers of “the way” (Acts 9:2, 19:9, 22:4, 24:14).

Today, the church which professes Jesus as the way, truth and life and in whom he makes his dwelling place is charged to model itself after him. This Johannine gospel is yet another illustration of the principle: Christology dictates ecclesiology.

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