Friends
Peace be with you.
One of the common misconceptions about Christianity that is both internal and external is that we are escapists. You’ll hear it from atheistic philosophers like Karl Marx who said religion was the opiate of the masses. He believed most people who subscribed to a religion did so to numb themselves to the ugliness of this world rather than having to face it. He believes we numb ourselves by creating a perfect, heavenly world that exists after this terrible, imperfect world has ceased to exist. From this point of view, Christians are resentful losers hoping that their enemies will face the fires of damnation but who are, themselves, simply unwilling to stand up to their oppressors.
The struggle is that you’ll sometimes also hear this attitude from within the church. Sometimes Christians will say that this world is awful and that the best thing we can hope for is to die and go to heaven. To be absolutely transparent, I’ve been there. There are seemingly more and more wars breaking out world-wide every day. In our own country, political divisions seem to be getting deeper and deeper making any kind of hope to achieve common ground for common good seem impossible. The concept of family, which is one of the most basic structures building up civilized society, has been slowly unraveling to a point where the word is almost meaningless. And then, in the middle of all of this, someone climbed up on a ledge of our church and stole the copper piping off an air conditioner and wires for our internet. Remember that old commercial where a stressed out woman said “Calgon, take me away”? I’m guessing we’ve all had those weeks where we just wish God would take us away to heaven and get us out of here.
In the passage before our first reading, St. Paul and St. Barnabas were evangelizing in a town called Lystra to a group of non-Jewish residents who become so impressed with what they say that they believe St. Paul is the god Hermes and St. Barnabas is Zeus. Hermes is Zeus’ spokesperson so it makes sense that these healers are contextualized by the people as being Greek gods. However, the two are quick to correct this and encourage the crowd to move past their pagan beliefs in many gods in favor of knowing Jesus Christ. A group of Jews who had come with them from their previous two stops became so enraged that Paul and Barnabbas were thought to be gods that they whipped up the crowd to kill Paul by stoning him. Somehow, St. Paul survives and is taken to a town called Derby to recover. He and Barnabbas preach there and they convert many other people while recovering.
What’s amazing is what happens next. You would think that, if a group of people from Antioch and Iconium had just tried to kill you in the town of Lystra, the last place you would go is Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. Shake the dust from your feet and find other, more welcoming places. But not for Paul and Barnabbas. In the first reading, we hear that they went back to each of those towns to strengthen the believers there with the message “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” They appoint presbyters in each town, which is where we get the word priest. The presbyters will work with the previously appointed bishop and deacons to maintain holy order there. In this way, Paul and Barnabbas may die, but the church will continue through this early version of the hierarchy.
In doing this, Paul and Barnabbas realized what the second reading from the Book of Revelation taught. A new heaven and new earth are coming from the sky to replace the current one. This isn’t a way of describing some far off heaven we need to get to or the belief that God is slowly making this world better such that heaven will just magically appear one day. This is the belief that, even as bad as it seems to be, God is going to make all things new. It’s not escapism. We engage the world because God is going to send from the clouds a new heaven and a new earth because the old one has passed away. This means that, while we respect the gifted nature of the world, we focus primarily on the conversion of people. That may mean we see the ugly side of humanity, like being in a part of the city where people steal and damage other people’s property. But it also means we pick ourselves up and keep winning souls for Jesus, keep encouraging young people to become priests, and keep spending time with other apostles to build up their faith and our own.
Who do you lean on to help you when you're really struggling to find hope? Who needs you to be that for them?
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