Last night I listened to Bill as he read a chapter in Acts, as part of our joint Lenten journey. We are at the beginning, when the apostles are amassing followers of Christ’s word. At this point in Acts, there are some 5,000 followers.
I started thinking about what becoming a follower of Christ’s word back in 33 AD meant. At my last bible class, the lecturer compared it to those of us who had scrimped and saved and sent our children to Catholic school, only to have them be fallen away from the Church as adults. Ah hem. That’s certainly me. She pointed out that these faithful Jews must have thought, “After all these years and all the pain and sorrow and persecution that we have gone through, how can our children choose to follow this crazy prophet rather than our God of Israel?” In fact, that’s at least part of the reason that the Jews decided they needed to translate their scriptures back into Hebrew from Greek.
But what these new, faithful followers of Christ heard was not a departure from God, but instead a departure from the strict, monolithic, heavily-ruled teachings of their God of youth. Jesus preached love of God and love of neighbor. How refreshing this must have seemed to these Jews.
Still, change is always scary and those that didn’t follow Christ must have been confused and even angry at their children and friends who did. Happily, Jesus’ message of love continues today to provide comfort and peace – something we certainly need during this tough time.
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