SAVED BY FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST

VI EASTER SUNDAY - Acts 15:1-2,22-29

Throughout the ages, the Church has gone through many difficult times, which seemed impossible to overcome. In spite of facing crisis after crisis, led by the Holy Spirit, the Church has made strides towards a better expression of the universality of God's saving plan. In the Acts of the Apostles, we find a narrative of the first great crisis. We may say that the Church started as a movement within Judaism. The first Christian community lived in Jerusalem and the Christians worshipped in the Temple. Due to persecution, they scattered, thus spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, leading to the creation of the second big Christian community in Antioch, where a growing number of Gentiles became Christians. This success would bring a big crisis that needs to be solved in order to guarantee the openness and the universality of the Church. Seeing themselves as the defenders of the faith and as the model for all other Christian communities, some Christians of Jerusalem, passing through Antioch, scolded the community, accusing them of deviating from the right path by allowing the Gentiles in the community without demanding obedience to the Law of Moses, signified by the circumcision. For them, the Law of Moses is the foundation upon which the faith in Jesus Christ can be built. This left the Christians of Antioch in big turmoil and so upset that they could not solve the problem by themselves. So they decided to take the issue to Jerusalem, that is to the mother Church, sending some representatives to see the apostles. A meeting was organised to discuss and deliberate over the issue. The Apostles sat together with the elders and, after a long discussion, James proposed a compromise: the Gentiles would not be forced to undergo circumcision and to follow all the Jewish rules and traditions that go with the Law of Moses; however, they should keep some of the rules, like “to abstain from food sacrificed to idols; from blood, from the meat of strangled animals”. Reading the letter which the Apostles wrote to the Christians in Antioch, we may think that dispute was settled once and for all. However, if we read the letters of Paul and the whole book of the Acts of the Apostles, we discover that this dispute accompanied Paul wherever he went and we even sense that the defenders of Judaization were having the upper hand. In the end, they did not win, because of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman army, leading to the dispersion of the Christians and the loss of influence of the Church of Jerusalem.

Cultural, social and political issues had always a big influence in the life of the Church, but, guided by the Spirit, she has managed to sail through rough waters, leading her children to a safe harbour, the harbour of salvation in Jesus Christ, who is “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Rev 22:13).