A Reflection for Tuesday of the Twenty-third Week in Odd Time
And he got here down with them and stood on a stretch of level ground.
An important crowd of his disciples and a lot of the people
from all Judea and Jerusalem
and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon
got here to listen to him and to be healed of their diseases;
and even those that were tormented by unclean spirits were cured.
Everyone in the group sought to the touch him
because power got here forth from him and healed all of them. (Lk 6:17-19)
It’s a snapshot of a peaceable kingdom, a time of calm and compassion that briefly reigned before the betrayal and the Passion, the apostles first joined in a novel brotherhood of loving equals, not vying for authority over each other, not high-elbowing a bonus or working an angle that provided a meager fringe of power or control or position. All were content to be a part of this unprecedented community of reflection and healing, desperate to share with all they might encounter—a merciful calm before a storm of suffering looming in time ahead of them.
And after that suffering was a victory they might not imagine, holding up a promise of salvation if we could only attain it. The early Christian communities that followed tried to recreate in a broken time that irenic moment glimpsed in today’s Gospel. They were sinners washed clean of their sins, attempting to sustain this latest life.
The primary reading, Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, captures that community faltering, falling into self-righteous judgment and recrimination, brother against brother and sister against sister, exploiting the laws of men to hunt advantage over their Christian brothers and sisters, creating scandal before the broader community who thought they might know these Christians by their love. As an alternative, remonstrating and escalating, they deprive themselves of a salvation that had been freely given without ever having been earned.
A lot of us call ourselves Christians today, but we don’t struggle to live the community these Corinthians attempted. A few of us live in communities literally gated from other people. Other gates, erected by class and wealth, race and religion, are less obvious but are equally efficient creators of outsiders and insiders.
A lot of us call ourselves Christians today, but we don’t struggle to live the community these Corinthians attempted.
And now we fancy ourselves lords over latest manners of community, these not wrought from stone and wood but virtually fabricated on computer servers. Within the digital communities, now we have performed little higher. How quickly Christians turn to squabbling and judging in these electronic town squares, pulling community down as a substitute of constructing it up.
We usually are not angels, though Paul says we may sooner or later judge them, so I feel it’s alright to forgive ourselves when communities falter due to our pettiness, wrath or self-righteousness. The Corinthians little question struggled the identical.
Did they heed Paul’s warning? Within the aftermath of their failure to place old lives behind them and live this latest Christian life, did they pull the scattered pieces of community back together and check out again?
I prefer to think that they did, picking themselves up and pressing forward with an eye fixed on that impromptu community by the Sea of Galilee, feeding the hungry, welcoming all newcomers, sitting on the feet of the master and drinking in every word of his wisdom, desperate to share it with the world.
