As I See It

by Fr. Vin

Ordinary Time, Orderly Life

Last week I wrote about how Ordinary Time got named.  It’s the season in which we are instructed on how to work effectively together in God’s cause.  In today’s readings we see two clear examples.  In the Gospel Jesus calls the first disciples.  He’s setting about forming an organization to do the Father’s work.  And in the second reading Paul addresses division in one of the church communities he’s founded.  Paul knows that division, factionalism, and mutual suspicion will destroy the effectiveness of the community and harm both its members and its mission.  We can learn from both of these things.

Let’s take Jesus’ call of the apostles first.  On a surface level, we read this text toward the start of Ordinary Time because it appears early in the Gospel.  But the Gospel writers themselves have a deeper purpose.  They didn’t write biographies of Jesus – they wrote instruction manuals for forming an organized force for God’s work.  (Scholars believe the Gospels were written down from thirty to perhaps sixty years after Jesus’ death, only as the people with a personal memory of Him were dying off.  The church needed a way to stay in touch with the animating force of Jesus’ ministry, and the Gospels were the result.)  So why is this text toward the beginning?  Because, the Gospel implies, the Work of God requires an organized group.  Jesus calls disciples so He can train them for the work that needs to be done.  (To “attain salvation” is to commit oneself to doing Jesus’ work as the most important thing in the world – thus the leaving of nets, boats, family, etc. by those called.)  Throughout the New Testament and the history of the Church, we’ll continue to see this theme: the group of believers is not simply a community of the like-minded, of those who have “found Jesus”: It is an organization with a mission, and that requires internal orderliness so that efforts are not wasted.

It is exactly the waste of effort that results from internal division that Paul addresses today.  It appears that different factions in the church at Corinth had loyalties to different individuals.  Paul calls them to task – quite literally.  They have forgotten their task of bringing the Gospel to others and deepening their own commitment to it, and put that energy into squabbling instead.  And Paul’s fury comes across in his words: “I urge you…in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree in what you say, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.”  Note that he ends on, “same purpose”: He recalls them to the work that the community was founded for.

These days not a few people treat church membership rather like membership in a social club.  But nothing could be further from the New Testament, and Ordinary Time begins by reminding us of that.  Church membership is rather more like membership on a sports team, or a dance-troupe, or even a band of freedom-fighters: It’s for a purpose outside oneself, and there’s no place for mere passive attendance.  Just as athletes and dancers and warriors train, just as their movements are choreographed so that each individual can have maximum impact – that’s the New Testament image of church membership: training and organization for maximum impact.

Part of the genius of our Church is that it makes a place for the contributions of everyone.  Even people whom the world might think of only as “burdens,” or as “receivers of care who can’t do much” are understood by our church to be “part of the team.”  If they can only pray at home, it values that prayer as vital.  If they can only suffer their infirmity, it sees value in that suffering as an imitation of Christ.  The one thing our church can’t make a place for is chosen passivity – refusing to be a part of the team by refusing to do one’s part in moving toward the goal.  It recognizes that a part of each of us does want to go off on our own, or to sit back and let others do the work; that’s why it offers the sacrament of confession. 

So as you listen to the Scriptures of this Ordinary Time, think of them as the “marching orders” for this organization.  At the end of Mass we’re sent out to do different jobs; but we’re not sent out to do “our own thing.” It always has to be “Christ’s thing, with one another.”  Until next week, peace.

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