Word to the Wise
Saturday, April 10, 2010 - Saturday in the Octave of Easter
[Acts 4:13-21 and Mark 16:9-15]Whether it is right in the sight of God for us to obey you rather than God, you be the judges. It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard. [Acts]
There is a funny kind of irony in the confrontation between Peter and John on the one hand and the Sanhedrin (local Jewish authorities in Jerusalem) on the other. Peter and John are "uneducated, ordinary men.." and the Sanhedrin are the elite. Yet Peter and John are able to speak about what they "have seen and heard," which presumably the Sanhedrin would know about because "all Jerusalem" knows about it, and yet are blinded to. So they try to silence Peter and John instead of realizing what is happening! The power of Jesus' name is already at work! The gospel for today indicates, however, that the apostles themselves were slow to believe in the news of the resurrection. Jesus appears to them and rebukes "them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw him after he had been raised." He then commands them, "Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature." Even then, it took the event of Pentecost to get the whole thing "jump started." We who have been "brought up in the faith" have the advantage of a lifetime of catechesis and teaching about Jesus. This can mean that the message gets too familiar and no longer startles and challenges us. We may even be uncomfortable hearing about it outside the time we spend in church on Sunday. The eagerness and enthusiasm of the early disciples seems the stuff of cartoom characters. Easter was "last week!" The challenge in the message of the resurrection is a powerful one. If we put it away in the closet of our mind in the same way we put the "crib set" away after Christmas, we are silencing ourselves from speaking about "what we have seen and heard." AMEN
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