8th May. Friday in 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.

“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.

The virtue of compromise

Our readings today combine ideals with reasonable compromise. A deep loyalty was required, to belong  within the early church, but in face of real difficulties they could find workable compromises on what at first seemed insurmountable disputes. After vigorous debate, the Jerusalem group allowed gentile converts into membership of the church. Both the decision of the  Council and the call to love without limit are at the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Some people regard all compromise as tainted and as opposed to fidelity. 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 the conservative Jewish Christians had repudiated Paul’s vision and grimly held to their preferred, narrower view of church, Christianity would have remained a small satellite of Judaism, and never blossomed into what Jesus intended; the people of the new covenant for the whole world.

The church faced this crucial test of her core mission by calling an assembly of the whole church in Jerusalem, under direction of the apostles and elders. That Council followed the policy of open discussion, so that everyone bore the responsibility of the decision. It also voted for freedom wherever possible. Conservative Christians disliked the compromise reached at the Jerusalem Council. Practices of piety and devotion, styles of worship and prayer that were 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. If it is a moment of growth it was also a moment of pain and separation. It makes one wonder what kind of compromises are called for in our church, today.

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Graced and chosen

How reassuring to Jesus say to his disciples, and to us, “You did not choose me, no, I chose you.” The Lord has chosen each of us, personally; he is the good shepherd who calls his own by name. His choice of us is prior to our choice of him; his personal call to each one of us comes before our response. In the same gospel reading Jesus says, “I call you friends.” Friendship happens when two people choose each other. Very often one of the two people initiates the choosing, initiates the friendship. Jesus tells us in the gospel that he has chosen us as his friends first; our choosing of him is response to his choosing of us.

We have been graced by the Lord’s choice of us, the Lord’s gift of friendship to us, and we respond out of that grace. There are times in our lives when we just need to allow ourselves to experience that grace, to rejoice in his choice of us, to receive the gift of his friendship to us. Out of that receiving, we are empowered to respond, by choosing him as he has chosen us. According to Jesus in our gospel reading, choosing him entails befriending one another as he has befriended us, loving one another as he has loved us. That is his commandment to us, but the grace is always prior to the commandment. [Martin Hogan]