Wednesday, 14th Week of Ordinary Time

Acts 21:15-26
Morning Prayer

“Then they said to Paul, ‘You observe, brother, how many thousands of converts we have among the Jews, all of them staunch upholders of the law: it is said that you teach all Jews in the gentile world to turn their backs on Moses, and tell them not to circumcise their children or follow our way of life.’” (Acts 21:21, Rev. Eng. Bible)

And these are the Christians. Yep, Paul has gone from the frying pan of riots and opposition in Asia and Europe right smack-dab into the fire of Jerusalem. Well, we’ve read the story for ourselves. The truth is that Paul said no such thing. He has never told the Jews to abandon their traditions. He has only sought to clear a path for the Gentiles and save them (particularly the men) from a burden which the Jewish males never had to undergo, having been circumcised at birth. But these new Christians are “staunch upholders of the law,” or literally, “zealous for the law.” And for the zealots of any age, subtlety is never a virtue. Either circumcision is so important that every Christian must be circumcised, or it doesn’t matter, in which case nobody should be circumcised.

The truth is, that the “Truth” is not simple. Last evening, I preached on the tension living fully the life of the body which God has given us, and detaching ourselves from our body, but not forgetting that our bodies are God’s gift to us. The head spins. Detachment implies self-denial. Yet to live fully into God’s gift of the body is the ultimate self-fulfillment. Wait, you mean that we must seek self-denial and self-fulfillment? Well, we do call a man our Lord who said, “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it” (Luke 17:33). I think that Christian truth is so paradoxical because it envisions a time when all things that seem so contradictory to us, like body and soul, will be reconciled. The final triumph of God’s justice will not be a division of the universe into the “good place” and the bad place.” As we sang last Sunday:

A new creation comes to life and grows
As Christ’s new body takes on flesh and blood.
The universe restored and whole will sing
Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.

Let us patiently give that truth time to unfold.