Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
I remember my teenage self being really upset with Christianity and its churches. Why did people bother going to church anyway, I wondered? Most of the time, church time looked like any old social hour anywhere, whether it was a bowling alley or a golf club, a community art class, or other such gathering. In addition, I knew a lot of people who didn't "really" believe all that stuff about Jesus's resurrection and so forth - and spirituality and worship were such personal and individual things so we could and should believe whatever we wanted.
Well, then, I thought. If that's the case, why bother with it at all? Just go do spirituality on your own and be done and get the spiritual time elsewhere. If Jesus doesn't matter, why live a lie?In this age of "spiritual but not religious" I suspect there are a lot of people who think very similarly to the ways my teenaged self did.
An important note: I think that lying, by the way, is distinct from having sincere questions or doubts about faith, but nevertheless persisting in attending church anyway and trying to work it out. If we live a lie, it involves really not bothering to wrestle with faith or life at all, just going through the motions because it's easiest.
As Paul wonders himself in today's first reading (1 Corinthians 15:12-20), why are you bothering to profess a faith if you really think Jesus wasn't raised from the dead? Why come at all? We all must be lying if the resurrection didn't happen!
Of course, Paul firmly believes in the resurrection, because he knows people who saw it, and because he had an encounter with the risen Jesus himself.
How can he exhort others to believe in this Jesus and his resurrection, especially if, unlike Paul, they DIDN'T have a personal encounter with the risen Jesus? Both Paul and the gospel reading (Luke 8:1-3) offer some clues. In the gospel, it is not only encounter with Jesus that causes people to listen to the Good News, but it is encounter with Jesus' followers, like Mary Magdalene and especially surprising followers like Chuza (who is Herod's steward's wife?!?!) Paul, too, exhorts the people to believe in Jesus, on the strength of the fact that they know him.
Knowing other people and having real, true relationships with them, to the point that we believe them because we know their character, is how we decide many things are true: history, scientific facts (because, I haven't seen an atom, but I believe the people who demonstrate all the ways that atoms works), and so on.
So we, the gathered Church and people of God, are not a mere social club! We are witnesses to and for each other of the risen Christ. Some of us have had direct encounters with this Jesus; others of us have not. But each of us is called to give joyful witness to the gospel, the good news of Jesus.
Today, let us pray for each other, that we will build each other up in faith, that we seek out Jesus in daily encounters, and that we truly think like Jesus, talk like Jesus, and act like Jesus!
- Jana M. Bennett