In our current day-to-day life, we live and literally breathe contagion! We live within proscriptions of closed proximity and requirements of social distancing and sanitation practices intending to ‘flatten the curve’ of the COVID19 pandemic that is spreading exponentially. The difficulty in staying the course of social distancing and its effects have other risks and costs as well; the emotional and psychological cost in the distancing from close proximity with elderly loved ones who are compromised; the risk of economic viability in our family, local, state and national realms; the risk for those prone to addictions and psychological impingement that can be exacerbated by the stress of isolation. Yet, because we are compelled to keep ourselves and each other alive, we do what we must do. In some ways, our resoluteness is itself a parallel to the intractable course of the virus itself.
Today’s Easter scriptures describe something very similar (ACTS 4: 13-21). The story of Peter’s healing of a man crippled from birth at the Beautiful Gate continues. Numbers of people have begun to believe the good news, the Gospel, this New Way, on account of having witnessed this healing and/or heard Peter preaching. This of course is a threat to the religious leaders, who bring Peter and John before the Sanhedrin. The leaders are flabbergasted at the powerful spreading of the Jesus story and the Gospel message:
Observing the boldness of Peter and John
and perceiving them to be uneducated, ordinary men,
the leaders, elders, and scribes were amazed,
and they recognized them as the companions of Jesus.
Then when they saw the man who had been cured standing there with them,
they could say nothing in reply.
So they ordered them to leave the Sanhedrin,
and conferred with one another, saying,
“What are we to do with these men?
Everyone living in Jerusalem knows that a remarkable sign
was done through them, and we cannot deny it.
But so that it may not be spread any further among the people,
let us give them a stern warning
never again to speak to anyone in this name.”
It seems unheard of that uneducated, ordinary men could have such boldness. However, the growing numbers are undeniable and all attempts made by the religious leaders to stem the tide or flatten the curve of this highly contagious Gospel seem to fall flat. After being warned not to speak about Jesus and this New Way again, Peter and John confess the extent of this virus of NEW LIFE…
“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.”
The reality of the situation is that it’s not just that there were growing numbers of followers of the New Way (or the Way as it was to called), but along with the convergence and unifying of the followers, there is also a growing quality, a deepening magnetism that was undeniable, a quality of moreness so to speak. It’s not just that what the disciples were preaching and what the people were experiencing was a new life, but this new life itself was MORE Life. This is a quality of Life that interpenetrates, collects and vivifies everything already. The Newness is More Life, in the sense that Life does not stop and cannot be halted, even in death – all deaths – and more so this new life heals and creates at the same time. It’s a life in wholeness, where all that is broken finds its saving place and is supported by the whole. In this dynamic and contagious wholeness, Life is MORE and more NEW. It is perhaps the greatest contagion of all.
The French priest and mystic, Teilhard de Chardin, describes this magnetic attraction of the whole as responsible for setting everything in motion. And this whole-making movement, he calls creative union, where to be more is to be more fully united with more…For both to receive or to communicate union is to undergo the creative influence of God…who creates by uniting.[i] Isn’t this the indefatigable boldness and power that we see in the Acts of the Apostles, where there seems to be no way to stop this creative union, which brings people together in a new way of life that heals and creates at the same time. What is this contagious divinity that has immunized humanity?
Life is changing for all of us right now and this change perhaps seems forced upon us. Much of the change involves death, real death. There is grief and confusion and anxiety over whether or not life as we have known it and experienced it will ever return. In all of this, Life is still there – still HERE! It is the great ground force that cannot be stopped. It is the magnetic more that draws us forward and yes downward too but always into something new. It’s that newness element that perhaps frightens us the most, because it is unknown and uncertain, disruptive and painful, and sometimes seeming just too good to be true.
Today’s Gospel passage from Mark (MK 16:9-15) remarks twice how the disciples failed to believe that Jesus had risen, despite the constant testimony by others.
When Jesus had risen, early on the first day of the week,
he appeared first to Mary Magdalene…
She went and told his companions who were mourning and weeping.
When they heard that he was alive
and had been seen by her, they did not believe.
After this he appeared in another form
to two of them walking along on their way to the country.
They returned and told the others;
but they did not believe them either.
As we attempt to patiently await whatever Life is to bring us, I wonder how we can open ourselves into the creative and contagious union that the Easter story offers. How can we let the wonder of life lure us into real belief that is infectious? How can we dare embrace and trust that the Divine Life of Love contagion that sustains us even in our sicknesses and deaths will not – indeed cannot – abandon us (the empty tomb). Can we allow ourselves to hold on to the extreme uncomfortableness of not knowing but believing that the Divine Life always will catch us and carry us and inject us with the boldly creative and contagious Word, which is always compellingly fresh!
“Go into the whole world
and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”
[i] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, My Universe in SCIENCE AND CHRIST (Harper and Row: 1965), 44-45.