Sunday Homily, April 27, 2014, 2nd Easter, Cycle A
Readings:
Acts 2, 42-47, Awe came upon everyone.
Psalm 118, Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his love is everylasting.
1 Peter 1, 3-9, Although you have not seen him, you love him.
John 20, 19-31, Unless I see the marks of the nails.
Observations on Acts:
What : The second half of Luke’s work, the first part being his gospel. Acts starts after the Resurrection. We will read Acts all through May and read the last selection June 1, then June 7, Pentecost. The work focuses on the spread of the early church with special attention given to Peter and Paul and their conflicts over who was to be a Christian, and Jewish laws, like circumcision. The conversion of Paul is described.
Who: Luke, an educated and civilized Jew who wrote in Greek.
Date: around the year 65, or about 30 years after Jesus’ death.
Our Selection: Luke describes and idyllic community, not a real community. This was utopia, a vision Plato had of the perfect community. It reminds me of advertisements Rosemary & I get for idyllic retirement communities, beautiful elderly people, smiling, hiking, enjoying excellent meals in charming dining rooms, all in perfect harmony. Look at the struggles Peter & Paul had with each other’s view of Christianity and you get a view of today’s Christianity.
1 Peter observations:
Peter is writing to the first Christians in what is today Turkey and, get this, Syria. He is encouraging them in their struggles.
Sources: Jerusalem Bible, Wikipedia
The Doubting Thomas Syndrome
This morning I would like to talk about the Doubting Thomas Syndrome. The syndrome is usually dealt with like a sickness. The medication and remedy, ‘Don’t doubt, just believe.’ I have heard this since I was a kid in Christ the King school.
The problem with this, of course, is that the remedy is really an invitation to hat check my God given, marvelous intelligence at the door. A don’t think dictum. Let me offer an example of how this can put you in an unpleasant mind set.
You all know that I have been studying French since I was recuperating from my two new hips in 2010. You also know that Rosemary & I just returned a week ago from 11 days in France. I am sure you have also heard and believe probably the common opinion that French are all snobby and rude. Here is what I saw on one occasion.
Rosemary and I are in a small market, like a small supermarket about the size of one of our convenience stores, but bigger and more like our supermarkets. I get about 6 bananas and Rosemary gets some things for her evening snack. It is about 5 P.M., so a number shoppers are wandering around.
Once we have everything we want and have wandered the store enough, we get into the checkout line. A young girl is there checking out, very polite and cordial. I chat her up in French. The items are scanned just like here until she gets to my six bananas.
She holds them up, looks them over, and indicates something on the bananas. Turns out it is not something on the bananas, but something missing, the cost, which should have been calculated back in the little produce department.
This is all going on in French, of which I suddenly can’t remember squat. There is a line now of about 3-4 others behind us. I get the idea finally, but I don’t know where the scale is to calculate the price. I can see us holding up the line for ten minutes while I wander the produce department.
Suddenly, the professional looking French man behind us says in English he knows what to do and would be happy to solve the problem in a minute. Which he does and we check out. We depart with wishes to have a nice visit from people around us. Nobody was impatient.
I was most touched and thought, ‘So much for the word around that all French are snobby and rude.’ Certainly these folks were just the contrary.
This exemplifies in a small way how beliefs can be one hundred and eighty degrees off. We will never know the truth if we simply have faith.
My Jesuit training pushed us to question, investigate, and to doubt. The alternative is to hat check my God given, marvelous intelligence at the door.
Got no doubts? Robots & drones have no doubts. They just do what they are told by someone else.
Got some good, healthy doubts? How do you handle them?