19 May, 2017. Friday, Week 5 of Easter

1st Reading: Acts 15:22-31

The decision of the Jerusalem Council goes out as a circular letter

Then the apostles and the elders, with the consent of the whole church, decided to choose men from among their members and to send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leaders among the brothers, with the following letter: “The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the believers of Gentile origin in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. Since we have heard that certain persons who have gone out from us, though with no instructions from us, have said things to disturb you and have unsettled your minds, we have decided unanimously to choose representatives and send them to you, along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”

So they were sent off and went down to Antioch. When they gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter. When its members read it, they rejoiced at the exhortation.

Gospel: John 15:12-17

The disciple who truly loves will bear fruit, fruit that will last

Jesus said,
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”

Flexibility promotes Community

Today’s readings combine high ideals with reasonable compromise and flexibility. A high level of loyalty to tradition was practiced in the early church, but they could also, when faced by real difficulties, find workable compromises on what seemed at first to be insurmountable points of dispute. After vigorous debate, the Jerusalem disciples allowed that gentile converts could become full members of the Christian church. Both the decision of the Council and its implementation were at the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

Both then and now, people of conservative mentality tended regard any change or compromise as tainted and as opposed to tradition. Yet the message of the Jerusalem Council was: “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and ours too, not to lay any burden beyond that which is strictly necessary.” The word strictly indicates some relaxing of the rules; but it was a Spirit-inspired compromise that resolved one of the sharpest threats ever faced by the church. If James and his supporters among the conservative Jewish Christians had repudiated Paul’s vision and held to a narrow view of church, tied to circumcision and the whole panoply of the Mosaic Law, Christianity would have stayed a satellite of Judaism, and never blossomed into what Jesus intended; the new covenant for the whole world.

The church faced this crucial test of her nature and mission by calling an assembly in Jerusalem, directed by the apostles and elders. That Council followed the policy of open discussion, so that everyone shared the responsibility of the decision. In the end, it voted for freedom wherever possible. Even if conservative members disliked the compromise reached at the Jerusalem Council, they grudgingly accepted it. Practices of piety and devotion, styles of worship and prayer received from their ancestors would no longer be binding on gentile members, who would soon far outnumber the Jewish Christians. The torch was being passed to a new generation. It is a moment of growth accompanied by a sense of loss. It makes one wonder what kind of compromises are called for in our church, today.

As I have loved you

Friendship is one of the great blessings of life. Friendships don’t just happen; two people have to choose each other as friends, on the basis of a mutual attraction of some kind, a set of common interests, a shared way of looking at things. Friends tend to share deeply with each other. In today’s gospel, Jesus calls his disciples friends, “I shall not call you servants any more.. I call you friends.” He goes on to say to them, “You did not choose me, no, I chose you.”

As the Lord has taken the initiative to befriend them, so he has chosen to befriend all of us. He shows his friendship by sharing deeply with us. He has revealed to us what is most personal to him, his own relationship with God his Father. Jesus proves his friendship by emptying himself on our behalf, by laying down his life for us. He has done his part, but if the friendship is to happen, we need to do our part. We need to choose him as he has chosen us; we need to befriend him as he has befriended us. We need to remain in his love, his friendship. According to the gospel, that will entail loving one another as he has loved us, befriending one another as he has befriended us.