THE recent visit to Australia of controversial American Bishop John Shelby Spong certainly raised more than a few hackles amongst orthodox Christian believers.
Indeed, as Catholic Christians, if we wish to remain part of the Church, we cannot accept many of the core theological concepts he proposes.
However, I believe that his call for a return to the original basic Christian understanding of Jesus and his message bears a deal of merit.
Spong argues that the real Jesus and his original message has became clouded and obscured from successive Christian interpreters down the centuries.
He further argues that, with the spread of the new faith among non-Jews, the early Greek philosophic influence caused the simple message of Jesus to be turned into something exceedingly complex.
Countless theological disputes throughout the Christian Church’s long history have led to an even more complicated faith championed by a Church leadership more interested in power than in truth.
After a lifetime of activity in the Church I have come to the firm conclusion that we, the people of God, are a Gospel people and therefore we should be able to live out our faith in terms of the basic principles of Jesus’ message – love of our God and love of our neighbour. It never ceases to amaze me how our enlightened leaders cannot see that the message of Jesus is not about laws but about relationships, our relationship with God and our relationship with our neighbour.
Jesus in his own time railed strongly against the excessive legalism of the Jewish Church. He was concerned with the spirit of the law rather than the letter.
Should Jesus appear again in the flesh today, I have no doubt that he would be just as forceful in his opposition to the excessive legalism of Rome. John’s Gospel tells us that God is love. It then follows that his Vicar, if he is to be God’s true representative on earth, must exercise a primacy of love rather than power.
Matthew’s Gospel 25:31-46, in my humble opinion, gets right to the heart of the message of Jesus. “A cup of cold water given in My name” surely is the type of fundamental issue we are going to be judged on.
Yes, we can give lip service to our God by our attendance at Mass, by receiving the sacraments and generally observing the laws of our faith, but these observances, pale into insignificance, if we fail to live daily a real Christian life.
We can sit up at Mass each weekend and feel all warm and fuzzy and very Christian, but if in our daily lives we cannot bring ourselves to reach out, as Jesus did, to those who are different to us or are outcasts – the homeless, prisoners, the divorced, homosexuals, AIDS sufferers, those of other races or colour, non-Christians, etc, then we are not true followers of Jesus.
We have missed the whole point of Jesus’ message of love.
I venture that we might, indeed, be shocked when we reach the Pearly Gates and find that those we looked down on in this life are now sitting at the first places at the table of the Lord.
I am assuming, of course, that we make it ourselves!
DES SKELLY Moorooka, Qld
