Friday of the Second Week of Easter
It is so, so easy these days to feel a lot of anxiety about the world we live in: will we lose all our drinkable water by 2020? Will there be a nuclear attack from North Korea? Will the Catholic Church keep hemorrhaging members (currently 30% of the American population considers itself ex-Catholic)? Am I doing enough to fight poverty? Am I doing enough to maintain my health? And so on. The anxiety-producing questions are both global and local in scope, both focused on the needs of others, as well as the needs each one of us has individually.
What pitches the anxiety level potentially even higher is the way we have conversations about all these things. More often than not, even simple conversations that begin with all good will end in vitriolic disagreements about how to "fix" the problems that cause our anxieties.
Today's scriptures are a good reminder not to let anxiety - or a desire to fix the problems that lead to anxiety - get the upper hand.
In today's first reading (Acts 5:34-42), I think the most impressive character here is actually the Pharisee, Gamaliel. He makes the case to his fellow Pharisees that the Apostles are not some "problem" they NEED to fix. Quite the opposite - Gamaliel reminds them of many other groups that started, only to die away on their own lack of merit. There was no need to fix anything, because the "problem" resolved itself.
In deciding that this is not a problem to be fixed, Gamaliel actually makes room for the possibility of God's presence in the Apostles' witness - and he consequently (in my opinion) makes room for the possibility of God's presence in his own life. It's hard to see God's presence when your encounter with the world is one of needing to fix the world and all its problems.
The gospel reading (John 6:1-15) shows Jesus doing the miracle of the five loaves and two fish - from that meagre amount of food, thousands of people are fed. The disciples try to find ways to "fix" the problem, but they know that their solutions won't do much at all . God himself thus "fixes" the problem because there is space for God in that time and place.
It is also significant that Jesus realizes that the people want to "fix" all their problems by making him their king. Jesus of course knows that kingship, in the way the people understand it, will not fix anything but will merely replicate the same kinds of power and governments that already exist. It will perpetuate the problems.
He knows that the "fix" looks nothing like what the people think they need or want. In the space of Good Friday to Easter Sunday, God gives us a radical and unexpected "fix". Jesus' death and resurrection still seems, 2000 years later, as no kind of fix at all, to many. Following Jesus and believing in his possibilities instead, is still a radical "fix".
Today, let us reflect on ways to make space for God's possibilities by being honest about what we cannot "fix" and by remembering where God's possibilities have shined in our lives.
- Jana M. Bennett