What I Believe Is What I DO!

So, after much study and thought about the pattern for organization, worship and community in the early Church, I find myself disappointed. Disappointed that 'the pattern' I had always been taught existed within those first followers has vanished like a mist between my fingertips. It seems to me that the early Church did whatever was expedient for the building up of the Kingdom of God, and didn't necessarily repeat that 'system' in other places as the Gospel spread throughout the globe.

So, to borrow a phrase from the book Blue Like Jazz..."what I say I believe is not what I believe. What I believe is what I do!" What DO these characters from the Bible DO? For good and / or bad, how do they follow God on a daily basis? So, for the next few weeks, I plan to consider some of these 'character studies' from the Old and New Testaments...some will be familiar to you, and some may not. But we will to endeavor to see life within the kingdom from their eyes, their point of view.

Jacob

Joseph

Shiprah & Puah

Hannah

Rahab

Ruth

David

Nathan

Solomon

Simeon

Matthew

Simon Magus

Christians who bless others

The Black Death

Catherine of Siena was born in 1347. That year, according to writer Charles L. Mee, Jr., “in all likelihood, a flea riding on the hide of a black rat entered the Italian port of Messina.… The flea had a gut full of the bacillus Yersinia pestis.” With that rat, flea, and bacillus, came the most feared plague on record. In just three years, 1348 to 1350, the Black Death killed more than one-third of the entire population between Iceland and India. Remarkably, the young Catherine survived the onslaught.

Symptoms of the Black Death

What was this plague like, this unseen killer which so changed the fourteenth-century world? “The first symptoms of bubonic plague often appear within several days,” writes Mee in Smithsonian (February 1990). They include “headache and a general feeling of weakness, followed by aches and chills in the upper leg and groin, a white coating on the tongue, rapid pulse, slurred speech confusion, fatigue, apathy, and a staggering gait. A blackish pustule usually will form at the point of the flea bite. By the third day, the lymph nodes begin to swell … The heart begins to flutter rapidly as it tries to pump blood through swollen, suffocating tissues. Subcutaneous hemorrhaging occurs, causing purplish blotches on the skin. The victim’s nervous system begins to collapse, causing dreadul pain and bizarre neurological disorders.… By the fourth or fifth day, wild anxiety and terror overtake the sufferer—and then a sense of resignation, as the skin blackens and the rictus of death settles on the body.”

Society Unraveling

“It is hard to grasp the strain that the plague put on the physical and spiritual fabric of society,” Mee concludes. “People went to bed perfectly healthy and were found dead in the morning. Priests and doctors who came to minister to the sick, so the wild stories ran, would contract the plague with a single touch and die sooner than the person they had come to help.” People barred themselves in their houses or fled to the country. A fourteenth-century writer, Jean le Bel, wrote that “one caught it from another, which is why few people dared to help or visit the sick.”

Yet when another wave of the plague struck Catherine’s hometown of Siena in 1374, she determined to stay. Following the example of the early Franciscans and Dominicans, she and her followers stayed to nurse the ill and bury the dead. Respected nineteenth-century historian Philip Schaff wrote that during the plague Catherine “was indefatigable by day and night, healed those of whom the physicians despaired, and she even raised the dead.”

Such courageous service was nothing new to Catherine. When she began her ministry, writes Caroline Marshall, “she performed the most distressing nursing chores among those incurably ill of cancer and leprosy. Her patients were in pain and often abusive. She believed that these experiences helped her to share in the suffering of the crucified Christ and were, therefore, a great help along her path to the mystical union with God, which was her ultimate goal.”

The Path

The author Goebel Music once wrote a book that was intended to be the Mishnah for the Churches of Christ. The title was 'Behold The Pattern' and detailed how the New Testament creates an exact picture of how we should 'do' Church, and that anyone that wasn't following this pattern clearly was not serious about the life of faith.

After studying the New Testament over many years, and especially some of our in-depth studies of the last 18 months, I cannot find said pattern. There are almost no 'snapshots' of life in the early Church, only one-sided eavesdropping sessions on conversations between Paul and some the early communities of faith. Further, I find no New Testament evidence that Paul intended his letters to be normative in any way for 'the church' throughout all times and ages. Evidence certainly points to the contrary. He gives Timothy and Titus different lists for how to choose their leaders, based on the unique situations that Timothy faced in Ephesus and Titus on the Island of Crete. At the end of the book of Romans Paul points out Phoebe, a deaconess from Cenchrea, who his readers were to follow: both in word and example. But one finds it hard to believe that he would have said the same for Phoebe if the scene was shifted to Corinth, where there must have been some women causing trouble.

In the last few weeks as we have looked at leadership, I have been looking for those scriptural signposts that would point the way that we are to follow today. But in Acts 1, when replacing Judas Iscariot, they roll the dice, trusting God to give them the person they should choose. I think we would have a hard time convincing anyone to follow this path today. In Acts 6, when workers were needed to mediate a dispute about the widows and to distribute food, the community was directed to choose seven men so that the Apostles could continue teaching and preaching. Did these 7 guys have any say in the matter? Or were they simply volunteered whether they liked it or not? In Acts 15, when there is a large schism amongst the growing kingdom of believers regarding the role of circumcision, they apply to the elders and apostles in Jerusalem, rather than listen to Paul, who is with them. That is ironic because the writings of Paul has certainly become the arbiter of right and wrong for Church life today. And then, it is not Peter or Paul who solves this dispute, but rather James (Jacob?) who stands up and sums up his decision. Was this the Son of Boanerges or the brother of Christ or someone else all together? And why was it HIS role to speak the definitive word, instead of Peter or Paul?

Then, later, when giving Timothy and Titus instructions on choosing leaders...there are these qualities / qualifications that seem to most of us to be impossibly better than most of the folks we know. Titus, in particular, is told by Paul simply to choose these leaders. Not consult the community, create a committee, or hold a vote.

So, what is the pattern...roll the dice, give the community the choice, or have the obvious leader (Titus) or the not so obvious leader (James) the final voice? Behold, the pattern seems to me to be hidden in a foggy mist of variety.

So, I go back to ground that seems more solid. We are to be disciples. Followers of Christ. Ministers of Reconciliation. A holy priesthood. A royal nation. To love God, love others as we love ourselves, and allow the rest to flow out of this simple philosophy. To BE the people God called us to be. However we go about organizing ourselves as a people.

To You

One of the songs we sang during evening vespers at St. Meinrad Abbey contained these lyrics:

To you all time belong;

To you this day belongs;

To you all praise belongs.

Amen.

Be still and KNOW that He is God.

Pilgrimage

"According to the dictionary, the word pilgrimage derives from the Latin peligrinus, foreigner or wayfarer, the journey of a person who travels to a shrine or holy place. Another older derivation, more poetic, reveals that pilgrim has its roots in the Latin per agrum, 'through the field.' This ancient image suggests a curious soul who walks beyond known boundaries, crosses fields, touching the earth with a destination in mind and a purpose in heart.

In Richard Niebuhr's elegant description,

'Pilgrims are person in motion--passing through territories not their own--seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps the word clarity will do as well, a goal to which only the spirit's compass points the way.' "

Let's seek to be pilgrims today, crossing boundaries and fields in the name of Jesus Christ!

Come Awake

Sacred is the pause that draws us into stillness. Nourishing are the moments when we step away from busyness. Lord, teach us the wisdom of pausing. Reveal to us the goodness of stopping to breathe...

Eternal God, I want to stop trying to control the hours so that new paths of inspiration are free to unfold within me. I want to remember that I have the potential to be a blessing in the lives of those with whom I live and work. Take my scattered thoughts, my fragmented moments. Breathe into them and draw them into YOUR heart. Open my eyes that I may see your grace that waits for me in every moment. You are the source of every moment's blessing. TEACH ME TO LIVE AWAKE!

Anoint the moments of my day -- may you make this prayer true in my life. Amen.