2nd Sunday after Easter 22.4.07 Church and world
Last week we were reminded of Our Lord’s intention to build up His apostles and disciples into a fighting unit, fully convinced of their faith and able to make inroads into the unbelief of the surrounding world.
Ever since, the Church has been attempting to do this, to make converts of as many people as possible and to convince the world that Christ is risen, and thus Saviour of all who unite themselves with Him.
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, reminding us in a different image that Our Lord gathers us into one body, one flock – for our protection, for one thing, but also to go out again to bring others into the flock.
We are a flock being protected, but not in the sense of being huddled together in fear. We are more like a fortress where we both gather strength and prepare to make further sorties into the surrounding world.
We are not a passive flock but very active (or at least supposed to be).
We are the Church which goes into the world, not the World which comes to church!
We are not just people who ‘go to church’, but rather people who ‘go to world’, from the Church in which we are firmly embedded.
Our identity as Catholics, members of the Church, is our most fundamental identity.
We may be other things, like president of the indoor bowls club, or longest serving bar attendant – but to be a Catholic Christian is far more than any other description that could be placed on us.
It is even more important than our family identity, certainly more important than our racial identity, or academic achievement or good looks or whatever other way we distinguish one person from another.
So, with this identity firmly established we go to the world. We may feel afraid of the world, feeling heavily outnumbered, perhaps.
Or we may feel the world is beyond repair, people being so set in their ways that nothing we could say or do would change them.
No. Fear and doubt are two qualities that have no place in the flock/fortress of Christ.
We have those qualities removed by constant exposure to His grace, and we are recharged to go out into the world and make converts.
If we take enough of His reality into our hearts and minds we cannot fail to make an impact when we go back outside.
We believe Christ is risen, and we believe everything else that He wants us to believe about Him – such as His teachings.
One of the objections to the teachings of Our Lord is that they are unrealistic, set too high for ordinary consumption.
So we have to water them down if we are going to have any hope of reaching people, especially children and young people.
Not a bit of it. It is the world that is unrealistic, setting its sights too low, living like animals when they could be living like angels; putting the things of the flesh over the things of the spirit.
And this can be our problem too. We might be bringing worldly thinking into the church instead of Church thinking into the world.
How can we train ourselves to be more Church-centred, more Christ-like? No short cut. Just lots of prayer and good reading and self-discipline and sacraments.
So what’s it like being a Christian? Don’t know, haven’t started yet.
Well, we have started, but we are like frightened sheep too much of the time, and we need an injection of courage and charitable aggression to get us on the attack.
We can convert the wolves that would devour us, or at least pluck a few sheep from the wolves.
Good Shepherd, gather us and send us forth in Your grace!
