Joyful Acceptance versus Jealous Rejection, Fourth Saturday of Easter, May 17, 2014

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Bernadette Parish, Fall River, MA
Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter
May 17, 2014
Acts 13:44-52, Ps 98, Jn 14:7-14

To listen to an audio version of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Over the course of the last two days, we’ve heard St. Paul’s homily in the Synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia in which he covered six points: the Jews’ longing for salvation; Jesus’ coming as Savior; their leaders’ rejection of that salvation through conspiring to have him crucified; God’s response in raising him from the dead; God’s desire to bring that salvation to all; and our choice to accept it or reject it today. Today we see the response to that homily. Some joyfully accepted the salvation Jesus was offering through Saints Paul and Barnabas and others jealously rejected it.
• The setting is the same Synagogue on the following Sabbath. Since their initial homily, word had spread. Now, a week later, “almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord.” Jews and Gentiles had all come. The Jews had come because of what they had heard Paul and Barnabas say last week. They wanted to hear more. The Gentiles had come almost certainly because the “God-fearers,” the technical term for non-Jews who used to come to the Synagogue each Sabbath to hear the Word of God but who didn’t want to submit to circumcision or other aspects of the Jewish law, had doubtless spread word of the two men who had talked about salvation through the forgiveness of their sins being extended even to them. The Jews, however, were upset that so many Gentiles were there, hearing the Word of God as if it were meant for them. They could tolerate a few “God fearers,” attesting to the worth of what happens in their Synagogue. But to have the whole city there risked watering everything down. And so, rather than continuing to listen to Paul as they did the previous week, they turned on him. St. Luke tells us, “When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and with violent abuse contradicted what Paul said.” A short time later they “incited the women of prominence who were worshipers and the leading men of the city [and] stirred up a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their territory.” Even though the prophets Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah and Ezekiel had all prophesied that salvation would be extended to all the nations, these Jews wanted to maintain their privilege, and for that reason they, like many of the scribes, Pharisees, and chief priests in Jerusalem, refused to allow the fulfillment of those words. When Paul and Barnabas said, “The Lord has commanded us, ‘I have made you a light to the Gentiles, that you may be an instrument of salvation to the ends of the earth,'” many of the Jews in Antioch of Pisidia tried to extinguish that light.
• But the Gentiles there rejoiced in that light. Paul and Barnabas said to the Jews, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first, but since you reject it and condemn yourselves as unworthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles.” Acts tell us that the Gentiles “delighted when they hear this and glorified the word of the Lord.” They “came to believe” and to help spread the word of the Lord to the whole region. Even after Paul and Barnabas were expelled, “the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit,” because they had received the Lord and were now walking in his light.
• This is more than an historical episode, but something that points to a perennial truth about how we’re supposed to receive God’s word and particularly his will to save all people. Do we really share that universal redemptive desire of God? The Word of God has been, in some sense, spoken to all of us “first,” like it was to the ancient Jews, but do we want it to spread to everyone? At a very practical level, what would your reaction be if, five years from now, thanks to immigration and evangelization, a thousand new Spanish speaking parishioners started to worship here at St. Bernadette’s? Would it be, “Thanks be to God for the faith of all these new brothers and sisters in Christ?,” or would it be to murmur, “My parish is not the same! Now there are three Spanish Masses and only two English Masses! Father seems to spend more time speaking Spanish than he does English!”? The reality is that some of us accept with joy God’s wanting his Gospel to reach everyone and others of us reject that will because of jealousy over our own privileges or conveniences. We need to be aware of this, because we will never share the word of God with others — which is what all of us should be doing as faithful disciples! — unless we really want everyone to receive and live by the Word of God. If we’re jealous, if we want to keep things to ourselves, we’ll be very sparing in our spreading the Gospel, giving it only to those we think eligible to be members of our religious club and not spreading it to those who fail to meet our standards of membership.
• This dynamic of acceptance versus rejection is developed in the Gospel. Jesus often talked about the hardened, rocky and thorny soil that rejects his word, about the weeds and the wheat, about the big net of fish including some will be tossed back in. These are all images of how some accept him and others reject him, and in doing so accept or reject his salvation. Jesus yesterday told us that the only way to the Father’s house, to heaven, to being united with God forever is through him. “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,” he declared. “No one comes to the Father except through me.” To accept Jesus as the Way means that we will follow him. To accept him as the Truth means that we will believe Him and allow that truth to set us free from the lies on which we often comfortably base our existence. To accept him as the Life means that we will live off of him, deriving our very life from him not just theoretically but practically every day. In today’s Gospel Jesus continues that discourse by reminding us that to accept him means to see the Father in Him, to hear the Father speaking through Him, to observe the Father doing his works through Him. Accepting Jesus also means that others will be able to see the Father and the Son in us, to hear his words through us, to see his deeds of love done with our own hands and hearts. Jesus not only prophesies that we will go “greater” works than he has done (see the homily on May 3 for a greater discussion of this) but wants us to do those greater works, so that God will be glorified. He wants us to pray in his name, promising that whatever we ask the Father in the person of Jesus, Jesus himself will do. He wants us to be able to do everything in his name, everything in his person. “Whatever you do, in word or in deed,” St. Paul wrote to the Colossians, “do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God through him” (Col 3:17).
• But there is a mystery of rejection built in here. People who want to follow their own paths rather than follow Jesus, those who don’t want to accept his teaching when it doesn’t align with their opinions or preferences, those who don’t want to live full-time off of him, but receive his gift of life and then go do their own thing, those who want to hear themselves rather than pass on Jesus’ words, those who want to do things for their glory rather than God’s, those who want to be seen rather than those who humbly want God to shine. One of the things that made Saints Paul and Barnabas so effective is that they realized it wasn’t about them, but about God, and they were able to preach his salvation and seek to bring others to receive it because they themselves were united to God in all of these ways, even joyfully uniting themselves to Jesus’ rejection and sufferings when those came their way as well.
• Today as we come forward to receive within us the Way, the Truth and the Life and to consume the Light to the Nations, we ask him for the grace to accept him to so great a degree that we will unite ourselves wholeheartedly to his saving will and carry out his will here in Fall River like Paul and Barnabas did in Galatia and beyond!

The readings for today’s Mass were: