5th Sunday of Easter - Cycle A

What happens when you have too much of a good thing?  Moments like when a business wins that lucrative new contract or expands into a new location?  Or taking that same idea a bit closer to home, what happens when two families merge through marriage, or when a family welcomes a new child?  We consider this kind of growth to be a good thing, but as with all things, these successes also come with their own baggage.  Our readings for this 5th Sunday of Easter have our Apostles facing similar challenges in the face of their growing successes.

The Word for the 5th Sunday of Easter
Acts 6:1-7
Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 18-19
1 Peter 2:4-9
John 14:1-12

Our reading from Acts of the Apostles, we see the Apostles learning the hard way about the challenges that grow out of their continued success when their number of followers continues to grow.  Up to this point the Apostles have been doing their best to address the needs of the community, both spiritual and physical, but the community has grown so large now that they are becoming overwhelmed.  Realizing that they didn’t have the time to step in and negotiate every minor problem or day-to-day issue, the Apostles looked for help.  They delegated.  From among the community they find seven men who are “filled with the Spirit and wisdom,” lay hands upon them, and set them to their tasks.  To us modern Christians, we recognize this laying on of hands as the primary symbol of ordination – men filled with the Spirit and wisdom to lead the community, just as a deacon or priest would do today.  Further, we see the Apostles pulling away from the “day-to-day” management of the church so they can focus on “the word of God,” not unlike our bishops today.  The troubles with growth like this are common with any organization, but our Psalm gives us the guidance we need when we face these types of challenges when we sing, “Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.”

Our second reading continues our study of 1st Peter.  This week, Peter teaches that we, the people of God, are the new Temple.  Temple worship has been a long-standing tradition among ancient peoples, including the Israelites.  But Peter is abandoning that idea – that worship does not happen in a place but that it happens among the people, no matter where they are.  This is a monumental shift in thinking, especially for the ancient Jews, for whom the Temple in Jerusalem was (and is) the place that binds them together.  Peter calls us “living stone” as our bodies become a “spiritual house.”  This isn’t so much a change as it is a returning to the ancient Mosaic tradition where the worship of God isn’t limited to a single place, but recognizing he lives among and within his people.  Mind you, Peter also had some additional motivations for this new thinking.  Not only had the Apostles and the other followers of Christ been physically thrown out of the Temple, but by the time this letter was written, the Temple itself had been destroyed.  The young Christian church was a church of the dispossessed, not unlike those former slaves who fled Egypt.  We are the stones of the new Temple.

Our Gospel, taken from the Last Supper Discourses from John, has the Apostles still focused on “place.”  Jesus has promised that there is a place for them in the Kingdom of Heaven, but their thinking is still very focused on the physical, what they can see and what they can touch.  They still see this “Kingdom” as a physical place, and therefore, are concerned about its limitations.  Jesus, of course, is speaking of a higher place – a spiritual place.  Thomas is concerned about how they are going to get there.  Philip asks Jesus if they could just see the Father so they could assuage their concerns.  It is here that Jesus must step back and remind them that if they have seen him (Jesus) then they have seen the Father, and further tells them that because of this connection, their belief in Jesus can lead them to even greater works.  Jesus is trying to get the Apostles to think “outside the box,” a lesson that still needs some time to sink in.

Final thoughts:
Who’s job is it to hand down the faith?  When you ask most people, they will likely say this is the job of our priests and bishops, or in the case of other faiths, their religious leaders.  While they are not wrong, neither are they entirely right.

In their book, Handing Down the Faith, Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk use scientific and data-driven methods to show us that “…parents of American youth play the leading role in shaping the character of their religious and spiritual lives.”  To press their results home, they continue:  “…the single, most powerful casual influence on the religious lives of American teenagers and young adults is the religious lives of their parents.  Not their peers, not the media, not their youth group leaders or clergy, not their religious school teachers.”  In other words, the stewardship and survival of the church is not in the hands of of our deacons, priests, bishops, and consecrated lay religious – it lies with us.  It all begins with what we call the “domestic church” or our faith at home.

The domestic church has been the primary teacher of children and the “passers on” of the faith since the beginning, but somewhere during the last century, as modern mobility and the “nuclear family” became the norm, the domestic church has begun to crumble, with many parents outsourcing their responsibilities to their parish religious education and youth formation programs.

Our readings this week remind us that WE are the church, WE are the new Temple, WE are, as St. Paul taught, the “Body of Christ.”  The physical nature of the church lies within us.  This is what makes us part of the priesthood of the laity – that the action of the church can only happen through our action.  We all have our duties as members of the church.  While ordained ministers (deacons, priests, and bishops) all have their roles defined, this doesn’t mean we get to sit back and let them do all the work.  By our Baptism we are also priests on a certain level, and thus have our own role to play – to be that “living stone.”  Without our active participation the church cannot survive and thrive to spread the Gospel.