Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter

Lectionary: 284

Both Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and said, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first, but since you reject it and condemn yourselves as unworthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, "I have made you a light to the Gentiles, that you may be an instrument of salvation to the ends of the earth.”
The Gentiles were delighted when they heard this and glorified the word of the Lord.

There are many passages in Scripture that never appear in our Roman Catholic liturgy. Most are not important, but a few are seriously embarrassing. I think especially of the cursing psalms. They are heard neither during the Mass nor in the Liturgy of the Hours. 

And then there are some passages that are heard in our Church and shouldn't be. The worst is the dreadful story of Jephthah from the Book of Judges. Another is today's passage from the Acts of the Apostles.

I'm sure a scripture scholar could put this story in context and make it less offensive. They might explain that the rabbis of the first century often engaged in furious debate about the finer points of their religion. Within the relative security of the Roman Empire they could have these quarrels under the watchful eye of civil authorities who would send in armed and armored soldiers when things got out of hand. If the Jews never participated in the Greek and Roman games, and never watched the gladiators hack at each other in the Colosseum, their sport was religious argumentation. 

We are party to those quarrels as we hear the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles read. Gentiles of twenty centuries later should not presume to take sides in these contests, though we might enjoy the way Jesus and his disciples "win" so many arguments. 

In my experience, nobody wins an argument; rarely do differing parties concede even a minor point, much less admit they have been bested. I think the Evangelists exaggerated when they described Jesus' triumphs. 

I find this particular passage offensive because it "condemns" the Jews and declares them "unworthy of eternal life." 

We all say things we regret later, and sometimes we text or email words we instantly wish we could take back. In this passage, Paul and Barnabas declared very rash words which have haunted Jewish-Catholic relations for centuries. They should not have been recorded. It's not a stretch to suppose this biblical passage led to the murder of millions of Jews during the Nazi regime. And that horror was only the crowning incident of centuries of anti-Semitic violence. The Church has much to atone for.
Saint Luke describes the traumatic birth of the Church as the gospel was announced "beginning in Jerusalem"and reaching to the ends of the Earth. There was a great deal of disappointment, anguish, and suffering amid this turmoil. Families were split, friendships were severed, and neighborhoods disintegrated into violence, as some people embraced the story of Jesus and others did not.

We have yet to resolve this painful dilemma, and given its roots in the Bible, it might never be. We pray that we will never forget and will always remember the extermination camps of Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz  (also called Auschwitz-Birkenau), to name only the most notorious of the camps. The story staggers the imagination and there are Christians today who deny it ever happen. Perhaps, in their ignorance, they refuse to accept what no one can explain. 

I pray that God has already delivered the millions of victims to Eternal Bliss in fidelity to the oaths he swore to Abraham, Moses, and David. 

I pray that this generation of Christians will take up the work of atonement and make every necessary sacrifice so that our tradition might be purified. If this and other Scripture passage have any merit, perhaps they remind us of the horror of our sins.