Friday of the Second Week of Easter

Today's Mass Readings

Many people do not believe in Christ because it makes no sense. To believe that someone rose from the dead, that miracles have occurred and do occur, that the bread and wine at the Eucharist become the Body and Blood of Christ – these are not things that strike people as normal, rational and possible in the ordinary world. Many prominent and popular authors today see that Christianity (and pretty much all religions) must have been made up by humans – perhaps as a way to control “the masses”, perhaps as a way to explain things that science can now explain to us. Ultimately, they say, religion is an elaborate hoax. Reason dictates that we leave faith behind. Arguing with someone who does not believe is not likely to end well. That is when it can be helpful to remember scriptures like the ones for today. In the Acts reading (5:34-42), we find that indeed, perhaps people like the ones I mention above have reason to be skeptical. Gamaliel, a Pharisee and teacher of Jewish law, points out a few other examples of people who seemed to be much like Jesus – they gathered large crowds, too, through eloquent speaking and perhaps through miraculous events. Yet after their deaths, their followers quietly dispersed.

On the face of things, Jesus looks like a lot of other messengers, prophets, and roving men that lived in first century Palestine. But Gamaliel, though he is not a Christian, raises a good point: the proof of Jesus’ ministry is not in the present, it is in the future. If this is of human origin, it will destroy itself, but if it is from God, nothing can destroy it. Jesus himself seems to underscore this point in today’s gospel reading (John 6:1-15). The crowds wanted to make him a king, but Jesus withdrew himself, because he knew: human kings can be toppled and destroyed. Jesus’ kingship was of a different order.

Maybe 2000 years later, we are far enough past those events to say: against many odds, followers of Christ still exist. Jesus is different. People are even willing to suffer for Christ still, as the apostles do in today’s reading from Acts. If we take time to look, we can see many hundreds and thousands of quiet witnesses for Christ, people who bear suffering and who practice Jesus’ radical hospitality and love. Witnesses for Christ will never be proof enough for those who want proof. Jesus’ witnesses will always seem a bit ridiculous – as indeed, they seemed to many in Jesus’ own day.

The question for us is: will we accept the Jesus difference, and try to be faithful witnesses, despite the odds?

- Jana M. Bennett