Word to the Wise
Saturday, May 8, 2021 - 5th Week of Easter - Sat
[Acts 16:1-10 and John 15:18-21]"If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you......If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me." [Jesus]
What would you think of when you hear the word, "the world." We have many expressions of it in English. "I think a WORLD of that person!" "What in the WORLD?" "He/she is the WORLD champion." The Greek word "kosmos" is translated in English as "the world." And this word appears often in the Gospel According to John. John 3:16 and other places in the first half of the gospel speak of a "world" that God loves, but it is in darkness and God has sent his Son to bring light to it. There is a kind of "cosmic" struggle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light, represented now by the disciples of Jesus. The Farewell Discourse is both a warning as well as a description of contemporary circumstances in the community the gospel was addressed to initially.
In our own time, we speak of "the secular WORLD" as a force that either opposes or ignores or is indifferent to religious faith. Charles Taylor's book A SECULAR AGE is well worth the reading to obtain an understanding of this situation. God indeed has so loved the WORLD, but Jesus and his disciples (including us) can expect hostility and resistance to our faith. Our response is not to be hostile or hateful of "the World" but to consistently shine the light of Christ. Christians are not some kind of superior elite in the human race, but rather brothers and sisters who are called to love the world as God does and continue to bear witness to the One whom God has sent. AMEN