Pascha VII

Pascha VII

Acts: 1:15-17, 20-26; Psalm 103; 1 John 4:11-16; John 17:11-19

What does it mean when Jesus says we do not belong to the world?

There are many groups throughout Christian history who have taken Jesus at his word and removed themselves from the world. The monastics of 4th century Egypt to Saint Benedict in 6th century Europe. There are the Amish and Mennonites, descended from the Anabaptist movement of the 16th century Radical Reformation. In response to our increasingly secular culture, there are contemporary Catholics taking what is called the Benedict Option, named after Saint Benedict, forming small communities of like-minded Catholics. Similarly we might consider the Hasidim of the Jewish community or the fish bowl worlds of immigrants who formed Little Italy and Chinatown in Manhattan; Little Ethiopia in Denver; Tehrangeles in Los Angeles; or Frogtown in Saint Paul.

It takes a great amount of courage to be different in the midst of a dominant group or culture. Ask any adolescent or young adult. Ask a young man who has entered seminary or a woman who seeks the life of a vowed religious as to the response of many parents and their peers today. I remember being at the Molson Center in Montréal for a hockey game, Les Canadiens vs USA. We were two Americans in a sea of Québécois. Do you know how much courage it took to cheer on the US Team? I was glad we lost the game.

There are advantages to being a member of a small, like-minded group: security, confirmation, and support in your ways of thinking and living. The underside is you can begin to feel exceptional. You can become insulated and never challenged and thus not mature. The group can buy into a persecution complex.

In such communities, it is initially difficult to know if you are leading a committed way of life or just running away from the world. Only time will tell.  We therefore need to respect longstanding communities like the Amish.

Do you remember the incident in Nickel Mines, PA on 2 October 2006 when an intruder entered an Amish schoolhouse and shot ten girls, five of them fatally? Being unmoved and used to mass shootings in our country, I expect we have long forgotten the incident. What the world found bewildering was that hours after the shooting, Amish people visited the relatives of the attacker to offer their sympathy on his death. Within 48 hours of the attack the Amish families whose daughters were wounded and killed responded not with calls of revenge but with gracious acts of compassion. Six days later, when most people stayed away from the gunman’s burial, local Amish people including parents who had buried their own daughters the day before, comprised half of the mourners at the man’s funeral.

The ‘world’ was unprepared and struggled to make sense of the Amish response. It is sad the ‘world’ was unprepared, followers of Jesus Christ have been around for two thousand years. Why isn’t the ‘world’ accustomed to such Christian responses? So, the Amish were denounced as forgiving the man too fast; that the act of forgiveness was emotionally unhealthy; that they were denying the innate human need for a punishing justice.  In ability, the unwillingness [?] to forgive, self-preservation and revenge were the values expressed by the ‘world.’

In an unfazed response to all the flurry, one Amish man said, “It’s just standard Christian forgiveness, isn’t it?”  That is why the ‘world’, and maybe even we ourselves, do not understand the crucifixion. Rejection, putting up no defense, praying: “Father, forgive them…” taking on the guilt of others are not values of the ‘world’. But, they are standard Christian values.

What does it mean to not belong to the world? I don’t believe it is absenting ourselves from the world but as the Amish response at Nickel Mines showed the world; it is the living out of values that are different from that of the world. This is just how Christians respond and live.

It is not easy to be different and not belong to the world but that is what Jesus prayed for hours before he would be crucified. His crucifixion is when the ‘world’ got rid of the non-conformist, the challenger, the person who lives values that prick people’s consciences. When Jesus breathed his last, the ‘world’ breathed a sigh of relief. It was over and the ‘world’ had won.

But the ‘world’ has not won. Christ is risen from the dead. And we are baptized into that same death, self-giving, life and values. And though the world continues to be baffled and mystified when Christians do live out our standard values; it is why we have been sent by Jesus into the ‘world.’

The Amish are one example of a Christian people that challenge not only the world but other Christians as to what it means to not belong to the world.

I wonder what our parish response would have been; might be, some day.