Easter Week 4 Thursday

Readings: Acts 13:13-25; Psalm 89; John 13:16-20

There was a practice in medieval times of dividing a sermon in two. A first part was delivered in the morning, a second part, called the collation, in the afternoon or evening. The lectionary does something like this with Paul's sermon in the synagogue of Antioch, the other city with that name, in Pisidia (Acts 13:13-41). We get the first part of his sermon today and a second part tomorrow. Unfortunately, the final part, verses 34-43, is not to be found anywhere in the Catholic lectionary.

This sermon shows us how Paul set about preaching the gospel message to a Jewish audience. When he gets to Athens we will see him preaching to non-Jews. That will be in Acts 17 and it is instructive to compare his different approaches to the same conclusion as he adapts his preaching to his different audiences.

It was Jesus himself who taught the apostles to interpret everything in the scriptures as being about himself. We see it in Luke 24 as well as in the speeches of Peter in the earlier chapters of Acts. Obviously the scriptures, the record of the promise of God to Israel, is the place to begin when speaking to a Jewish audience. Paul shows that he also knows how to do this. In fact Paul's 'conversion' is not so much a change of religion or faith as it is him simply - but how radical this is! - coming to see that the whole trajectory of the scriptures, and the whole of Israel's history, is towards Jesus. 

That history begins in Egypt, or even earlier, with Abraham, and the theme all through is the promise made to Israel's ancestors. That promise, sealed with a covenant that was renewed across the generations, guided the people and their leaders through the exodus and the conquest. It sustained them through the time of the judges and the kings. It informed the preaching of the prophets and the meditations of the wise. It encourages them to hope during the exile and to look forward to some kind of definitive fulfilment in a coming kingdom.

The apostles preach that this promise is not only still valid but that it has now been definitively fulfilled, a fulfilment sealed with a new covenant in the blood of Jesus. This was the scandal that blocked Saul before he became Paul: 'cursed be anyone who hangs on a tree'. But now he preaches boldly that God has brought a saviour to Israel, a descendant of David in accordance with God's promise, Jesus of Nazareth.

It is an amazing claim and many of his Jewish listeners will find it impossible to accept. The claim is that Jesus not only takes his place alongside David, Samuel, Moses and Abraham, but that he is somehow superior to all of them. It is not that Jesus is to be understood in relation to them, it is that they are now to be understood in relation to him. Just as the disciples too are to be understood in relation to him: 'whoever receives the one I send, receives me', as he says in today's gospel reading. It applies to Peter and John and Paul, but also to Abraham and Moses and David.

Jesus pushes the story even further back, or higher up, to the eternal and heavenly source of the promise and of its history. It is the Father who has sent Jesus, and so anyone who welcomes him is welcoming the Father, the Creator of all things and the Lord of all history. Jesus is inserted in Israel's history as its end point but also as its origin and as its centre. In fact it is more true to say that that history has always been inserted within the career of the Word of God, that it finds its place within the Word's presence in creation and his work in history. The prophets and kings belong there too, in this history of Jesus the Saviour. Moses and Elijah have roles in it and so do Peter and Stephen, Paul and Barnabas, Augustine and Aquinas, Catherine and Teresa - down to our day and to our 'being sent'.

It may still seem incredible. The promise is for us and for our children. The salvation offered is for us and for those who come after us. Washed in the blood of the saviour we are sent to speak to others about him and about what he has come to mean to us. 'If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them', Jesus says to the apostles after he has washed their feet.

Let us seek to find our place, our role, in this history of salvation. For there is a place for each one, there is a role for each person. It is what we name our 'vocation', the way in which each of us is called to give testimony to the truth we have come to realise.