Friday of the Third Week of Easter
Today’s scriptures cause me to reflect on the fact that Christianity is quite a bit strange. What we celebrate during the Easter season – Jesus’ resurrection – is odd in itself, but then add in everything else we believe: the virgin birth, the ragtag band of followers that wander around Judea, the disciples that proclaim Jesus in the face of persecution and death, all the various permutations of Christianity that exist in our world today. In the words of one of my students, “Christianity is entirely weird” and that is sometimes a stumbling block for people who find the weirdness to be anti-rational. But perhaps it is also the very weirdness of the Christian story that can cause us to have faith, as well.
The biggest weird point in today’s reading is in the Gospel (John 6:52-59). I am struck by the incredulity of the disciples who, upon hearing about Jesus’ Flesh/Blood statements, say, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” I can well imagine all the kinds of strange thoughts going through their heads. Is Jesus speaking about cannibalism? (Indeed, early Roman pagans would accuse Christians of being cannibals and that would be one of the charges leading to their arrest and torture.) How indeed could we “eat” and “drink” someone we know? The more one thinks literally about the passage, the more gross it seems. In fact, in the verses that follow today’s, we read that some are so perturbed about Jesus’ statements that they leave his company.
I think about another person who asked a similar question, directed toward the Angel Gabriel, when he said she would bear a son whose name would be Jesus. Mary asks, “How can this be, since I am a virgin,” (Luke 1:34-35) and the angel answers that the Holy Spirit will come upon her. In a way, the angel’s answer is not really an answer, and yet it is sufficient for one who has faith. God, who is in no way human, who is utterly mysterious, will cause this to happen.
Ananias seems to be hedging on a similar question when God asks him to welcome Saul/Paul in today’s second reading (Acts 9:1-20). Saul had been one of the most well-known persecutors of Christians; how can God be asking Ananias to heal him, when Saul has done so much evil to others? But Ananias, like Mary, is willing to go along with the strangeness of God’s requests. If he had not done so, would Saul have ever become the apostle Paul, one of the most famous and most widely read Christians in history? God moves in strange ways, for sure.
How can this be? It is a question that we ask because I think we humans do not do altogether well with change and surprises. For every surprise birthday party I’ve heard about or attended, I’ve also known people who say, “I just don’t like surprises.” Sometimes women, like Mary, are surprised by pregnancy tests. Sometimes people surprise us because they don’t act the way we thought they would (good or bad). Everyday offers surprises, things we didn’t think would happen (whether good or bad). In other words, everyday life itself is strange and a bit weird, but I think we often try to pretend that surprises and strange occurrences are abnormal.
Christianity speaks to the truth of the unknown surprise factors that happen in everyone’s lives every day. We are always permitted to ask the question, “How can this be?” We are permitted to have doubts, be scared, worry about the future. But we are also faced with a choice about how to respond to God’s mysterious actions in our lives. Will we trust, like Mary and Ananias and Paul? Or will we leave, seeking the veneer of a seemingly well-ordered non-surprise-filled like, like so many of Jesus’ disciples did?
- Jana M. Bennett