Sermon Notes: Myrrh-Bearers
Acts 6:1-7
Mark 15:43-16:8
…there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists, because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution…
Christ is Risen!
It’s worth noting that this is only a few pages after the Story of Pentecost. If Acts is the story of the “Earliest Church”, we’re already screwing it up. In fact, if we turn back a few pages we were a mess even earlier. This church of ours: it’s really rather human, no? And here’s fight from the beginning between what really is “the way we’ve always done it” and “some new thing”. The Church had always been Jewish. And here, at the beginning, is a wrestling match between Jews who are (seemingly) based in Jerusalem, perhaps in the Temple community (the text says many of the priests were coming into the Way of Jesus) on the one hand and Jews who are from the Diaspora. Out and about in the world. They live in among the Gentiles, they even do commerce with them, perhaps have them over for dinner? They may even marry them. They don’t speak much Hebrew, though. They are, if you will, “liberal” or “reform” Jews, if I can be forgiven the 21st century labels. And they get dissed by those in power – the conservatives.
This same conversation will get repeated again later – on a larger scale – when the almost entirely Jewish church (Hebrew and Greek speaking) will deal with actual Gentiles converting, first from among the Proselyte community (nearly Jewish Gentiles) and then, later, Gentiles “directly off the street” as it were?
The conservatives want to keep things as they always have been. The liberals want to move things forward. What happens next decides the fate of the whole endeavour – every time.
So what is that?
Well part of the Church drifts slowly, almost irrevocably, over and over, into the hands of the liberals- the ones bringing a new thing. The folks who thought Jesus is God, the icons… over and over it happens. And part of the Church locks down, buckles under and tries to keep things exactly the way they have always been. The “Judaisers”, the “no Gentiles at all” party, the Iconoclasts, and, today, the “Let’s get back to the Early Church” folks – be they Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant.
Anthropology, following the work of Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, et al, will divide humanity into “Neophobes” and “Neophiles”. People afraid of new things, and people in love with them.
We see it in Orthodoxy, too, long after the Iconoclasts: the “Old Believers”, the Calendar controversy (and I say that being in a Church that uses the old calendar), the “us vrs ‘World Orthodoxy’” folks who think there’s only 2 or 3 “real” Orthodox left in the whole world, and the modern American Converts who think the only way to be “really” Orthodox is to be stuck in some Live-Action Roll Play game version of an 18th Century Russian Village crossed with Mount Athos.
The “old way” eventually fades away as a new thing comes to be… and the things that are new set about recreating the history to make it look as if they’ve always been there. The story that St Luke painted the first icon with Mary as a live action model comes to mind… and the folks who hold on to the old thing as if it were life or death to them end up… stuck in the past. Notice all the new Deacons have Greek names. This may or may not be their “real names” but it was Greek-speakers, the “New Party”, the Neophiles, that gets to write the story.
What the women, going to the tomb, discovered that something new had happened: life had broken in. Death, clinging to all the old ways, fades away into darkness. Death is supremely neophobic.
Isaiah promises that when God does a new thing he will take us by the hand and show us. But most of us are afraid of new things. I put myself under that category. Sometimes this shows up as unwillingness to try strange foods. Some times it shows up as inability to dislodge from current locations or jobs – even when they are unhealthy. We’re afraid of new. It’s part of our genetic heritage from the time when “new” or “strange” always meant “dangerous”.
Paul tells his people, over and over, that now there is no difference between “us” and “them”… but we still like to divide ourselves, the church, into “good” and bad”, “us” and “them”. The sad truth is usually it is the ones marking out (not making) the division who fall away: the “real Jews only” folks in today’s passage, the “only Jews – real or otherwise” folks later in Acts, the “eat the right foods” people later, the no graven images people… they all fall away. The CHurch needs both Neophiles and Neophobes to hold on to the Tradition while still growing, but in the end, the Neophobes drop out because of even the tiniest bit of new. The Neophiles, who most often don’t reject tradition just because it’s old, win.
Things change too much here, you can’t keep up. I’m going into a little box in the corner where it’s safe.
Jesus, however, comes out of the box.
Christ is Risen!
