Saturday in the Octave of Easter

Lectionary: 266

So they called them back
and ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.
Peter and John, however, said to them in reply,
“Whether it is right in the sight of God
for us to obey you rather than God, you be the judges. It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.”

Today's first reading describes an attempt by religious authorities in Jerusalem to suppress the announcements of Jesus's resurrection and ascension. The city elders were especially upset when the preachers recalled that catastrophic Passover, only a few weeks ago, when the Holy City was seized with an insane desire to crucify an innocent man. 

They had conducted a midnight, kangaroo court; and then hauled the unarmed stranger before the Empire's authorities and demanded that they should crucify him. Weeks later, with the disciples standing before them and insisting he'd risen from the dead, they felt that same madly irrational impulse rising again. There was the same willingness to ignore their own time-honored, faith-based rules in the effort to silence the story. 

Later, as Saint Luke recounts the story in the closing chapters of his Acts of the Apostles, we'll read how they desperately tried to murder Saint Paul, or incarcerate him for life, or send him away once and for all. There was no legal way to do any of that and the Roman authorities wanted to release him. They finally succeeded when Saint Paul used his empirical citizenship to book free passage to Rome. Although he was a prisoner, he was mostly treated like an honored guest of the government during the journey. 

There's nothing new about censorship. It has its purposes in suppressing disgusting pornography and ugly hate speech. But Christians are often surprised when it's used to suppress the Lord's command to preach the Gospel to every creature instead.

Truth has always afflicted the comfortable, and so it reminds American of their historical, systemic racism, greed, sexual obsessiveness, and idolatry. Naturally they want our witness and challenges censored into nonexistence. But they need not worry: given the popular distaste for education and appetite for entertainment, there is no market for uncomfortable truths. 

Eventually they get sick and tired of being sick and tired. Their entertainments bore; their drugs fail, and they want to know why they feel that way. They ask for healing, and the Church is ready to speak of Jesus.