Our People

When a bishop visited Pope Gregory XVI the pope was nearly 80 and the bishop nearly 90. (It was in the days before bishops retired in their prime at a mere 75.) The visitor said ‘Holy Father, I’m older than you’ to which the Pope responded ‘Older than us? But we have lived over 1800 yrs!’

 

So as Peter ‘stands up’ to speak in our First Reading today (Acts 15:7-21), we are aware that we are witnessing the beginnings of one of oldest institutions in the world, the papacy. Though some like to think that these things were unknown to the early church, the Acts of the Apostles vividly illustrates the rapid evolution of structures of governance and authoritative teaching from the earliest days of the Church – even if it took some time to develop such curios as Cardinals, Nuncios and Auxiliary Bishops, Vicars General, Apostolic and Episcopal, and the rest.

 

The Church is in uproar and so “the apostles and elders met together to consider the matter”. I am not sure if it was an Ecumenical Council or a Plenary Council or a Provincial Council – we will have to check with the President of the Conference. But I am sure it was a very particular council. The ancient wisdom of the Church was that a meeting of bodies and minds is sometimes necessary to resolve difficult matters. There is a need sometimes to personalise matters rather than abstract them, to hear of people’s experience in Phoenicia and Samaria and Jerusalem, and to hear their arguments.

 

Sometimes, of course, after endless talk and prayer, a decision has to be made. The grace and office of such deciding was already seen to be that of “the apostles and elders” and so it was to the Bishops that even the early Church turned for some decisions. Sometimes even bishops disagree, and they in turn need someone with the particular grace and office to decide and reunite. And so “Peter stood up” and silences all and swings even James behind his view. James, of course, tried to save a bit of the kosher laws, but Christians quickly abandoned all of them. As we found at the World Youth Day in Cologne, there are parts of the Christian world where strangled animals, blood pudding and pork are just about all one can get to eat!

 

The issue of circumcision and pork can seem to have been rather trivial to us, but it mattered a great deal to the early Church, and not just to the men who might have had to submit to circumcision or the women who might have had to banish sausage from kitchen. The dispute was about how we know what in our tradition is enduring, of divine will, and what is of passing relevance or merely human invention.

 

It wasn’t simply James’ conserve hardliners who liked neat and tidy laws versus Paul’s soft-centred liberals, all for moving goal-posts and no referees. It was not just a canonists’ dispute about which laws are binding and how they are to be interpreted. At issue was something much more fundamental: Christian identity itself. To be Christian, to be of Christ, a branch of his vine, was to abide in his love. But “to abide in my love,” says Jesus today, is not just to have a warm, sentimental, “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam” feeling. “If you are to abide in my love you must keep my commandments” (Jn 15:9-11).

 

Love, Jesus suggests, has its own grammar, logic and rules. Some things are not genuine love but counterfeits, banal, sentimental and manipulative. Hitting your wife with a cricket bat whilst telling her how much you love her is to misunderstand the language of love. So the Word of God teaches us the language of love, the love-song of Christianity, and it is that concert that we apostles and elders are asked to conduct. The Way, The Truth and The Life reveals to us the How and What and Why of Love and it is to this we bishops point others.

 

“Peter” will stand up amongst us next year during World Youth Day here in Sydney. I do not know what he will say to us and to the young people of the world. Put if he is true to form he will talk about the God who is Love and the Sacrament of Love.

 

But such an alluring call can evoke strong and diverse opinions. Each age has its own disputes about circumcision and pork, all of which is quite a challenge for the Pauls and Jameses of 2007. At times it can seem overwhelming. When James talks about “the ruined House of David” or Paul about contests with the powers of this world, we can well understand what they were feeling. So the Gospel this morning is a special gift for heavy-burdened bishops. Today God invites even bishops, amidst all the serious discussions and courageous decisions to remember we are children loved by God the Father and God the Son.
 
We are reminded that God will look after us, his children, wipe away our tears, bandaid our grazed knees, lift up our spirits on his shoulders, and feed our bodies and souls. He wants to hear us laugh, like little children, filled with happiness the way only a child can be. He wants our joy to be full, consummate, complete. Jesus is the Word, the Reason, the Law, the Purpose of God but he is also the Child, the Playfulness, the Trust, the Laughter of God. The One who sat from all eternity in the lap of the Father comes amongst us this morning in the Sacred Liturgy. Like a typical child, he keeps changing the subject on us. We have on our minds the challenges and hurts: he will only talk about hope and healing. Our society goes on about freedom and autonomy, whilst He talks about commitment and fidelity. Our age carries on about self-fulfilment; He whispers and giggles about self-giving. We want to be popular and He wants us to be holy. We want to be serious and he tickles us and says “be joyful, complete with joy!”

 

Talk of Christian joy can conjure up the born-again or the service smile of a McDonald’s waiter. Yet there is a characteristic something in the lives of the Saints that is redolent of an inextinguishable joy. A story about Blessed Jordan of Saxony, successor of St Dominic, demonstrates this:

 

 

St Paul and St James and Bishop Pat Murphy and all those Bishops who have gone before us now have the perspective of eternity from which to judge and just as ancient disputes about circumcision and pork can seem silly to us from this distance, so our big troubles might seem of little significance from the vantage point and laughter of heaven. Yet we know that as we pray this morning for our deceased brother bishops, they join us in our prayer for our people and theirs, and they inspire us to keep speaking the language of God’s love and the promise of divine joy to people of our time and place.