Brief synopsis of the readings: As we continue to journey through Acts we see Paul and Barnabas continue their journey, founding new communities and encouraging existing ones. To the existing communities they appointed elders. In John’s Gospel Jesus tells his followers that as he has been glorified he will not be with them much longer. He leaves them one command, that they love one another and by this love they will be known as his disciples.

The readings during Easter give us a snapshot of a fairly short period in our history. We believe that Jesus’ resurrection happened sometime around the year 35. Acts of the Apostles was written by Luke sometime in the 60s and John’s Gospel was written about 30 years after that. And looking back on these years with the advantage of hindsight it’s easy for us to assume that these events happened exactly like they were supposed to.

But let’s take a step back. In today’s Gospel Jesus tells his followers that he will not be with them much longer. In other Gospels he tells his followers to spread the faith and while he promises to return in glory he never tells anyone when that will be. So what do they do in the meantime? Do they begin to spread the word to their immediate neighbors thinking that they don’t need to do long term planning? Or do they think globally thinking that it will be a while?

I’ve spoken about this before but when the Jewish community that Jesus was born into looked to the Messiah they mostly wanted someone who would liberate them from the oppression of the Roman Empire. And God’s dreams for us far surpassed our wildest dreams: when we wanted liberation we were given salvation. Not victory over the Romans but eternal life.

So here’s the problem: At the risk of horrifying all those brave souls who sacrificed their sanity in the hopes of teaching me religion let me say this: Eternal life benefits us only after we die from this life. Every disciple of Jesus in the last 2,000 years has had to live the reality of oppression, be it Rome, the barbarians who followed them, Genghis Khan who followed them, Hitler, Stalin, Putin, etc.

Unfortunately our history has shown us several (alleged) disciples who have claimed to have “cracked the code” and have predicted when Jesus would return. In the 1840s followers of William Miller believed Jesus would return on October 22, 1844. He didn’t and they now describe this as the “Great Disappointment.” In the 1990s Fr. Jim Kolb CSP pastored the Catholic Campus ministry at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. As he told me there was a student who convinced several students that Jesus would reappear on a fixed date at midnight (Alaska time). Jim held a party that night at the campus ministry home and called him at 12:15. “Dude, did you get left behind too? Bummer. If you’re interested the rest of us are having a party and you’re invited.” Finally, in 2011 an engineer in California declared the world would end on May 21, 2011. I was still working with hospice then and called several of my fellow chaplains to make sure none of us were raptured.

I don’t think anyone at the time thought we would still be waiting in the year 2022. I think at least some of them would have felt discouraged. Jews today still await the Messiah and on Saturday evening (the end of their Sabbath) they pray that this will be the week when the Messiah will come. Several years ago a Jewish friend of mine asked me if the world today looked like a world that had seen the Messiah. Candidly, it doesn’t and these days many of us have had to cut back on our news consumption because between COVID and Ukraine, it’s just hard to watch.

But I find it interesting that Paul and Barnabas began to appoint elders in the community. I find this evidence that they began to recognize that the wait could be long because, frankly, appointing the elders began the process of building what we now recognize as the Christian Church.

It reminds me of a story about the 20th Century writer and philosopher C.S. Lewis. I may have some of the details wrong, but Lewis enlisted in the British army during World War I and befriended another soldier, Paddy Moore. Lewis was wounded and returned to England to heal and met Paddy’s mother. Paddy was later killed in action and Lewis determined to care for Paddy’s mother, Janie King Moore. But it was a difficult and complicated relationship that lasted until her death in 1951, over 30 years since Paddy’s death. It was an open ended promise and while several people in Lewis’ life counseled him that he had “done enough” he refused to abandon her. He made a promise and was determined to keep it.

In a sense that’s what we are called to as disciples. We don’t know when Jesus will return and it’s pretty clear that we do ourselves no favors by trying to predict. And we are called not only to live Jesus’ command to love, we are also called to be the elders Paul and Barnabas appointed.

From 1985 to 1988 I had the good fortune to run CCD (Sunday School) program in Manassas, Virginia. I was in my mid 20s, and the program I inherited boasted about 100 teachers and nearly 1,000 students. I can’t begin to tell you how much I learned in those three years but I also gained a deep appreciation to those parents and teachers who take seriously their role to pass on the faith. I realized, in a way I had never fully appreciated, that the generation that doesn’t pass on the faith will be our last. Teaching our children is never easy and I’ll never forget calling people and saying: “I’m new to this job and we’ve never met but the school year starts in a few weeks and I was told that you would be teaching 8th grade Confirmation.

But much like C.S. Lewis we are called to fulfill an open ended promise. And to that 8th grade Confirmation teacher? I hope you know how grateful I am.