Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

In today’s first reading, Paul and Barnabas are horrified that the people of Lycaonia are treating them as gods. The gospel preached by Paul and Barnabas sought to turn people away from ‘empty idols’ towards the ‘living God’ who had been made known through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Yet, some of these people were turning Paul and Barnabas into such empty idols, addressing Barnabas as Zeus and Paul as Jupiter and arranging to offer animal sacrifices to them. Paul and Barnabas understood that their mission was to lead people to the risen Lord, not to themselves. It is clear from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that he was facing a similar problem in that church. No one was suggesting in the church of Corinth that Paul was God, but Paul was concerned that some members of the church were announcing to all, ‘I belong to Paul’, when it was Christ who was crucified for them and Christ into whom they were baptized. There will always be a tendency in the church for attention to be focused more on some human leader than on the Lord himself. The gospel reading makes clear that the Holy Spirit, whom the risen Lord sent into the world, will always be working to remind believers of all that the Lord has said to us. The Spirit’s role is to teach us everything, in the sense of opening us up ever more fully to the riches of the Lord’s word. Yes, we need Spirit-filled human agents to bring the Lord’s word alive for us but we need to keep on repeating the words of Peter in this gospel of John, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life’ – the Lord and no one else, no matter how powerful their preaching or teaching.