Still Thinking – Easter Love

Recent scholarship has shown us that there was a great diversity among the Christian gatherings and communities after the death of Jesus.  The central debate among those communities was between Jewish and non-Jewish (Hellenistic) beliefs and practices.  These were expressed through a diversity of rituals, symbols and practices in those first Christian communities. The writings of Paul to the churches were often a response to the question, “how should we follow Jesus in our gatherings,” rather than just specific questions about belief.  Some have argued that the early church was more concerned with orthopraxy - right action, than it was with orthodoxy – right belief. And of course this was motivated by the view that Jesus had initiated a movement of radical inclusive love not just a system of belief.  The following quote for Wikipedia is helpful:

Christians proclaimed a God of love who enjoined them to share a higher love with one another. Some interpreted the Old Testament as revealing primarily a God of justice, whereas the New Testament, particularly the letters of Paul and the Gospel of John, revealed a more loving God. Parallels are found in Pharisaic and Rabbinic Judaism. Paul of Tarsus is represented in Acts 17:22-33 as equating the Unknown God of the Greeks as revealed in the Christian God. Early Christian communities welcomed everyone, including slaves and women, who were generally shunned in Greco-Roman culture…

Oh dear, where did we go wrong? Perhaps it was in our (the early Christian Community’s) embracing of Empire.  It is difficult to find anywhere, where the church and the state have come together, that the church has been able to maintained its commitment to radical love.  When the Christian church no longer wants to be the salt, but instead become the salt shaker, it tends to lose it unique savour.  Maybe this evolution from Christian community to state sanctioned church is built into the very message of the early church.  The more successful we are at making disciples, the greater the desire to make the whole society in which we live, Christian.  And so the community that practices this form of radical inclusive love must bow the knee to what our society or nation tells us.  Therefore the enemies of the state become the enemies of our Christian faith.  We can no longer love our enemies because the state to which be give allegiances forbids it.

However, the most subversive Christian communities have always been willing to love and include whoever they choose.  While love is a belief of the Christian faith, it only finds true expression in action.  It is said of the infant Christian community by those outside, “Oh how they love each other.”  While that was in the first century, the same was also said of the Methodist/Wesleyan communities that gathered around the Wesley brothers in the late 18^th and early 19th century.  It seems that these gatherings of people lived, as the early church did, in a time of exceptional grace. And such times encourage a spirit of welcome and hospitality.

Do we live in such a time today? Is there a movement of open and welcoming hospitality in our age, in the 21^st century?  As we unshackle ourselves from the oppressive aspects of our society and culture and practice what we preach, will we experience a time of exceptional grace? When we stop trying to be like other Christian churches and communities and become authentically ourselves drawing from the well of inclusive love, will that shape and reshape us into the kind of community where our words and actions are in harmony?  I believe so. That’s Easter love!

Christopher