Saturday, May 13, 2017
IV Easter ~ May 7, 2017
IV Easter
May 7, 2017
Holy Trinity & St.
Anskar
I have other sheep that do
not belong to this fold. I must bring them also…
Now when Ananias heard these
words [of Peter], he fell down and died.
+In the Name of God,
the Holy and Undivided Trinity
The Good Shepherd calls each sheep by name and leads
them. But as we each have a different name, so also we each have a different
vocation — a different path in which we are led. Despite these differences, we
are all of the same flock. Furthermore, if we read on in this passage, Jesus
says that He has “other sheep that are not of this fold.” This says to me that
we had better be careful about excluding anyone, of the delusion that our path
is the only path. We Anglicans usually like to think of ourselves as given to
including people. Sometimes we are derided for that value; but, what is worse,
sometimes we don’t really live up to it.
There is tension here
between inclusivity and fidelity to the deposit of faith and the living
tradition that grows out of it. Our distaste for exclusion, arising out of the
political circumstances of the reign of the great Queen Elizabeth I, may be our
particular charism, as a branch of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
We want to be faithful to the Apostolic tradition, but also to be open to the
leading of the Holy Spirit, “Who makes all things new.”
The fact that each of the
precious sheep of the Good Shepherd has a personal name — a unique identity — supports the notion of
inclusivity. The sheep are not simply interchangeable. Each one is
irreplaceable. Each one is led along the path of its own particular calling,
some to green pastures and still waters, and some through the valley of the
shadow of death. The Good Shepherd also guides sheep from other folds, of which
we know nothing. It is a big mistake to try to enforce uniformity. That kind of
rigorism is the mark of thieves and robbers.
Maybe that’s why
our lectionary averts its eyes from the rest the story about Apostolic
communism. We hear that the first Christian community had all things in common,
that if anyone had anything, they laid it at the feet of the Apostles, and that
those who had property sold it and turned the proceeds over to the commune too.
As the Church grew, it became impossible to maintain this kind of organization,
but there have always been Christians who tried to live according to this norm,
with varying degrees of success.
Rarely, however, do we hear
the other part of the story, later on in the Acts, in which one couple named Ananias and Sapphira held back some
of the proceeds of the sale of their property, and kept it for themselves.
Peter somehow knew it and rebuked them, whereupon God struck them dead on the
spot! Talk about an exclusionary policy! We Anglicans never read it in church.
After all, we do not like to imagine the Father of Jesus behaving as
depicted in the Book of Joshua.
Neither do I. I think we
must interpret this story metaphorically, not literally. What I mean is this:
God requires everything from anyone who proposes to follow the Good Shepherd.
To hold anything back is to die — devoured by the Wolf. It is up to each of us
to discern how we dedicate everything to God — each sheep has its own name; the
Good Shepherd leads each along its own path. One size does not fit all. No one
lifestyle or social organization is uniquely Christian.
That said, we still confront
Ananias and Sapphira struck dead by God at the feet of the Apostles, and the
Church has been uncomfortable with the notion of private property ever since.
The Fathers and Mothers of the Church in the next few centuries continued to
regard it as having the nature of sin. If something is mine, it is not yours.
That means that you and I are separate, alienated from one another, and that is sin.
Wealth is redeemed only by
devoting it to the relief of the poor, but the wealthy are always in danger of
deceiving themselves and serving their own wealth, instead of God, which is to be
devoured by the Wolf.
This basic ecclesiastical
distrust of wealth has never evaporated entirely. When Pope Leo XIII endorsed
private property, it was on the basis of the Labor Theory of Value: a person is
entitled to the fruits of his/her labor. Property is “stored labor.”
Withholding the wages of a worker is a sin that cries out to heaven for
justice. Depriving a worker of property is the same as confiscating wages. In
the same encyclical, the Pope also endorsed labor unions, at a time when they
were illegal and persecuted in most countries, including the United States.
Later encyclicals built on this foundation, further defining the legitimacy of
private property as secondary to labor, which is prior.
Moreover, the Church has always
regarded Apostolic Poverty as the way of perfection – the anticipation of the
Kingdom of God, here and now. The current Pope does his best to model that for
us. He took the name of the one who called himself the “little poor guy",
who regarded himself as married to Lady Poverty. Pretty much every time he
opens his mouth, Pope Francis reminds us of what the Second Vatican Council
called “the preferential option for the poor,” what the Protestant theologian,
Karl Barth, described in my favorite paraphrase “between rich and poor, heaven
does not adopt a position of neutrality: the rich can take care of their own
future; God is on the side of the poor.”
Alleluia!
Christ
is risen from the dead,
Trampling
down death by death,
And
giving life to all in the tombs.
Alleluia!
