The Church is not Limited to a Place or a People

On the Fifth Sunday of Pascha (the Fourth Sunday after Pascha) we hear the story of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s Well from the Gospel of John.  And from the Acts of the Apostles we hear how Christ’s disciples dispersed from Jerusalem and in Antioch began preaching to non-Jews, who came to believe and made Antioch the place where the name “Christian” was first used.  In his homily, below, Fr James Graham shows how these two stories shape our understanding of the Church and its mission.

Join us to celebrate the Divine Liturgy at 9:30 am on Sunday.  This Sunday, after lunch we will have a short parish meeting.

THE CHURCH IS NOT LIMITED TO A PLACE OR A PEOPLE

Acts of the Apostles 11:19-30…………….John 4:5-42

     In today’s reading from the Gospel according to St John, we hear two examples of misunderstanding what Jesus says.  The Samaritan Woman at the well thinks that the “living water” Jesus offers her will come from the well, drawn out in a bucket.  The disciples think that someone else has brought food for Jesus.

   

In both cases, Jesus has to explain what He really means.

     Are these people just stupid?  Or is there another reason they misunderstand?

     We must be careful about calling them stupid, because we also find it easy to misunderstand Christ’s message and hard to comprehend what He really means.

     Look at some examples from the Gospels:

     Jesus says that all those who believe in him must deny themselves, carry their cross, and follow him.  We commonly think of this instruction as a hardship or a burden.  The common phrase, “It’s my cross to bear,” applies this sublime participation in the work of salvation to almost any difficult situation or task.

     Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  We seem to think of this as a nice but pretty much impossible ideal, maybe because we often don’t really love ourselves.  Or perhaps we just don’t want to make the effort to change our lives so that we can love people who aren’t like us, or annoy us, or actually hurt us.

     Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.”  And, like the disciples, we wonder, “Then who can be saved?”  We don’t see that attachment to wealth and other worldly possessions, rather than wealth itself, gets in the way of our salvation.

     We find Jesus’ teachings hard to understand and easy to misunderstand because God’s ways are not our ways—even though they should be.  We are created good in the image and likeness of God, but sin prevents us from being in sync with God’s ways.

     This sometimes extends even to our idea of what the Church is.  How many people in our Eastern Catholic Churches think of our local parish as “our church” or “the Arabic church” or “the Ukrainian Church?”  And how many call Roman Catholic parishes “the American church?”  Isn’t the Church for everyone?

     The Samaritan Woman talks to Jesus about her people’s beliefs in contrast to Jewish beliefs, but He tells her that “true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth” . . . “neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.”

     And today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles tells us that many early disciples of Christ left Jerusalem because of persecution and then preached about Jesus as the Messiah in places as far away as Phoenicia (that is, Lebanon and Syria), Cyprus, and Antioch (modern-day Turkey)—but only to Jews.  Then, in Antioch some also preached to Greeks and Greek-speaking Jews—and many of them believed.

     The leaders of the Church in Jerusalem heard about this and sent Barnabas to Antioch to work especially with these converts.  They adapted to changing circumstances and broke out of their usual way of thinking about the Church.  As a result, Barnabas had great success and in Antioch the disciples were first called “Christians.”

     The lesson for us is clear—especially for Melkites, who are the Church of Antioch, but also for all of us, who would not be Christians now if those first Jewish Christians hadn’t decided to include the Greeks in the Church.

     Jesus Christ came for all people and his Church is for all people.  We never forget where we came from, but we have to live where we are, and reach out to strangers, as Jesus did to the Samaritan Woman and as Barnabas did to the Greeks in Antioch.

     This message is easy to understand.  It’s not hard to grasp.  The Church is not limited to a mountain or a city or a language or a country.  True believers worship in spirit and in truth, inviting everyone to hear God’s word and to share God’s love.  The truth never changes, but the Spirit leads us where we need to go—not always where we expect to go.  We have to open ourselves up and let the Spirit guide us to understand the truth so that we can let everyone learn about Jesus and discover that He is “truly the Savior of the world” and give thanks and praise and glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and to ages of ages.

     Christ is risen!  He is truly risen!