We’re not in Kansas anymore
The Council of Jerusalem some 25 years after Jesus Ascension changed the Church! Yesterday I stumbled on a reflection by Chuck Tanzola, Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. It helped me better understand its significance.
In the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy said to her dog at one point, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
It’s a phrase that has come to mean that we have stepped outside of what is considered normal; we have entered a place or circumstance that is unfamiliar and uncomfortable; we have found ourselves in a strange situation. (That sounds like life in 2020 in the era of Covid.)
Unlike in the movie, however, we cannot close our eyes, click our heels three times, think, “there’s no place like home,” and return to the normal, familiar and comfortable.
We’re not in Jerusalem anymore
The Jerusalem temple would not be destroyed until a few decades later. The question that confronted the early Church was, did a non-Jew Christian have to adhere to the practices of Judaism? In a sense, Paul was the first leader to realize that figuratively they were not in Jerusalem any more.
Before we go any further it is important to point out that Saul prided himself on being one of the strictest Pharisees. But on the road to Damascus Jesus challenged him to think beyond Jerusalem. Then Paul gradually realized the meaning of so many of Jesus’ sayings that the kingdom of God was within and not limited to life centered in the temple of Jerusalem and the 613 commandments.
Peter was slower to grasp that. Even when he did, he did not always realize the implications in terms of table fellowship. Paul raised the question of an old approach but got nowhere until Peter had a vision. Then, Peter understood what Paul was saying.
It took another century for people in the streets of “Jerusalem” to realize they were no longer in “Kansas”. Over the centuries there have been similar turning points. St. Thomas Aquinas was censured for grappling with the questions raised by the discovery of Arab philosophers. We are still unpacking Pope Leo XIII’s response to “the new things’ (Rerum Novarum) and Vatican II’s “reading the signs of the times”.
The common thread
The common thread that runs through all this is that each generation struggles with its concepts of a God that is too small. Whenever we think we have God figured out we come face to face with our limitations.
In the garden we thought eating of the tree of life would answer everything. At other times we worshipped a variety of the golden calf. We multiplied commandments, thought God judged us primarily by dietary laws or temple practices.
Jesus came along as the Word made flesh to show us that our god was too small, modeled after powerful rulers who demanded sacrifices.
We know from the Acts of the Apostles that even though God’s Spirit was poured into their hearts they struggled to change their way of thinking about God and community, to wake up to the implications of being a community of God’s children, sisters and brothers of one another.
Pope Francis remind us in “Laudato Si’’ that everything is connected and in “Fratelli Tutti’” that everyone is connected. God dreamed that we would wake up and grow up to love every one and everything as God loves.
That means recognizing we are not in Kansas anymore. We are in God’s grand kingdom.
How am I doing with the challenge to recognize how my God is too small?
Click below for an audio version of the Vincentian Mindwalk
The new is a relationship. We are to do the will of God which admittedly will challenge us all. Synodality is an interesting concept but we have the tendency to move toward a political understanding rather than a discernment understanding. In the Early Church there were over 180 defined heresies. This means that people did not hear well what the Spirit was saying. Were they bad people? I do not know about you but I have misunderstood some things enormously. I do not know about you but I find some levels of conflict silence my heart and hence disrupt the discernment process because my part is not said. I do not know about you, but sin is real in my life. I encourage us all to work on conversion in ourselves so that we can hear and speak the truth.
I too am disheartened by the polarization we see in so many areas.
My point was that we have a history of not hearing well… and …must include ourselves among those who hear but do not hear in so many arenas.
I am struck by the fact that Pope Francis so often underlines the need for personal conversion in his major writings and more informal communication.
True, we are not in Jerusalem anymore. But does not the need to think beyond Jerusalem mean that we have to know Jerusalem and the events there? That we need to meet the Jesus not just of Jerusalem but also of Galilee, just as we need to know the rules before we can change them? Can we readily assume that Christians by and large are not ignorant of Scripture and hence, not ignorant of Christ and able to meet his challenge to think beyond Jerusalem?
So, allow me to submit that we have to meet in person the Jesus of the gospels and the law and the prophets. May we we heed the apostle Philip’s invitation. In the words of today’s antiphon for the Canticle of Zechariah: “Philip found Nathanael and said to him: We have found the man Moses wrote of in the law and of whom the prophets spoke. He is Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth, alleluia.”
I certainly agree…and have written a reflection to that effect.