Fourth Sunday of Easter First Reading: Acts 13:14, 43-52 Responsorial: Psalm 100:1-2, 3, 5 Second Reading: Revelation 7:9; 14b-17 Gospel: John 10:27-30
"From every nation"
by Msgr. Richard Henning
In his visions in Revelation, John of Patmos assured persecuted Christians of God’s victory over evil and death. In the vision we hear today, John speaks of a great multitude that stands before the throne of Jesus the Lamb. They have come through their trial and now rejoice now in the victory of the Lamb. The one who appeared so vulnerable and unlikely as their deliverer, has brought the blessings of life and consolation to them.
In John’s heavenly vision, people of “every nation, race, people, and tongue" worship Jesus. But this unity of faith to be found in heaven expresses that which has already begun in earthly life. Multitudes from many backgrounds have endured a shared trial by the power of their shared faith. They are one in heaven because they have been one in life.
Human beings find it very difficult to bridge racial, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic barriers. But difficult does not mean impossible. The difficulty and the possibility are on display in the reading from Acts. The passage relates to two areas of painful conflict in Acts for early Christians: between Christian believers and those who rejected the Christian message, and among Christian believers over the inclusion of non-Jews.
The fact that many of their fellow Jews did not come to faith in Jesus caused great anguish to Christians like Paul. But even as they strove to share their faith with fellow Jews, they experienced a new, unexpected phenomenon: non-Jews who responded to their message. Here in Acts, and in his letters, Paul links these two conflicts. He remembered God’s promises that one day the nations would worship the Lord of Israel and the history in which the people fail the covenant and must be summoned to repentance and return to the Lord.
In the conflicts of his own day, Paul saw the hand of God. He, like many early Christians, believed that the rejection of the Messiah by his own people was part of God’s mysterious plan to bring the light of Israel to all the nations. Even so, it remained Paul’s fervent hope that his fellow Jews would see the faith of these outsiders and would one day come to acknowledge Jesus as Messiah. In the mutual call to repentance and conversion, Paul saw the hope of God’s grace for Jew and Gentile. And perhaps Paul’s dream might have come to pass if later generations had imitated Paul’s love for his people. Instead, some Christians twisted his words to justify violent persecution of God’s chosen people, rupturing the trust between our two interrelated peoples.
Controversy over the inclusion of the Gentiles also brought Paul into conflict with other Christians. How could such outsiders belong unless they changed their strange ways? Should they not repent of their “differentness” as well as their sins? Paul, and the early Church, responded with a solution rooted in Jesus’ own ministry. Jesus had summoned people to a radical conversion of their way of life. He called them to task on their choices, but not on the circumstances that were beyond their control. The leper would not be judged for his disease, but could be judged by the quality of his gratitude for healing. The customs of Jesus’ day raised barriers between people over questions of ritual purity, many relating to questions of birth (the foreigner or the woman) or illness and deformity. Jesus definitively rejected such barriers. In his new family, belonging or not belonging was determined by the choice of the person to love, to believe, to share, and not by accidents of birth or fortune.
Paul applied this distinction to the Gentiles. The differences of their birth and culture became irrelevant. They need not become someone else in order to belong to Christ and the Church. They would have to repent of their selfishness and depravity and choose to live a new, ethical, life of faith in the Lord. But this choice to hear and obey the voice of the Shepherd made them one with the flock. Their link to him became the basis of their link to the Church.
It is difficult for people of different backgrounds to find unity. But it is possible for hearts caught up in the worship of the Lord. In the community of faith, we need not obliterate the differences of our birth and circumstances. Rather, we can rejoice in our common humanity as children of the one God and our shared link to the Lord, the shepherd who gathers us into one flock. Through our shared struggle and our shared faith, our shepherd leads us to that life giving water. We choose now to live for him because he has chosen to die for us.
