This blog follows the daily bible readings of the Catholic Church

 Reading 1, Acts 4:23-31

23 As soon as they were released they went to the community and told them everything the chief priests and elders had said to them.

24 When they heard it they lifted up their voice to God with one heart. ‘Master,’ they prayed, ‘it is you who made sky and earth and sea, and everything in them;

25 it is you who said through the Holy Spirit and speaking through our ancestor David, your servant: Why this uproar among the nations, this impotent muttering of the peoples?

26 Kings on earth take up position, princes plot together against the Lord and his Anointed.

27 ‘This is what has come true: in this very city Herod and Pontius Pilate plotted together with the gentile nations and the peoples of Israel, against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed,

28 to bring about the very thing that you in your strength and your wisdom had predetermined should happen.

29 And now, Lord, take note of their threats and help your servants to proclaim your message with all fearlessness,

30 by stretching out your hand to heal and to work miracles and marvels through the name of your holy servant Jesus.’

 31 As they prayed, the house where they were assembled rocked. From this time they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to proclaim the word of God fearlessly.

 The use of this Psalm, as part of the prayer Luke writes for the apostolic community, gives us a clue as to the way his faith worked. What “worldly” people saw, was the collaboration between two powerful politicians to get rid of Jesus. What people of faith saw, was God creating a new people through the cross and resurrection of Jesus. As the stories are careful to admit, the resurrection of Jesus leaves no worldly mark, except the question mark of a vacant grave. For people of faith, the resurrection is God’s lifting up of his son Jesus, to life and victory.

 What I am I saying? Before our texts leave the story of the resurrection behind, I want to record my own resurrection faith:

1. I believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus
2. I think the bones of Jesus are in Palestine.

 But isn’t that a contradiction?

 No, I believe in the bodily resurrection of my grandfather and his bones are in a grave in Portknockie, Banff.

The worldly reality is the dead bones in the grave. The fuller truth, accessible to faith alone, is the person alive in God. What worldly people saw was a small group of deluded Jews meeting together, after the death of their leader. People of faith experienced their gathering as the birth of a new world.

Gospel, John 3:1-8

1 There was one of the Pharisees called Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews,

 2 who came to Jesus by night and said, ‘Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher; for no one could perform the signs that you do unless God were with him.’

 3 Jesus answered: In all truth I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.

 4 Nicodemus said, ‘How can anyone who is already old be born? Is it possible to go back into the womb again and be born?’

 5 Jesus replied: In all truth I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born through water and the Spirit;

 6 what is born of human nature is human; what is born of the Spirit is spirit.

 7 Do not be surprised when I say: You must be born from above.

 8 The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

the love that moves the stars

 In the light of the commentary on the first passage for today we can see more clearly the meaning of this famous text. Nicodemus could only see things in a human, worldly, way. For Jesus, however, the world is open to the creator, the son is open to the father, the flesh is open to the spirit. To open oneself, requires trust that even the most terrible of earthly realities, death, is open to God. That’s why the change is terrifying, like a new birth. Jesus will go to the cross, in order to convince Nicodemus that he can trust the wind of the spirit.

 Modern notions of spirituality can be very shallow. Nicodemus’ Jewish faith was already much deeper than these-he would have rejected crystals and angelology as trash. But he needed to know that human life, the personal, social and moral life he valued, could be broken open by the love that moves the stars. That is new birth from above; that is true spirituality; that is resurrection faith.