First Reading: Acts 5:17-26
Psalm 34
Gospel: John 3: 16-21
Today’s readings invite us to reflect on the transparency of our lives of faith. The first reading from Acts is about the apostles jailed for speaking the truth about Jesus, being released by God’s power with instructions that they are to “
Go and stand in the temple area, and tell the people the whole message about this life (Christian life)".
It sounds like transparency, doesn’t it? – a word we hear a lot today: Corporations talk about it; educator, too; newspapers demand it of politicians.
The need for so much discussion about transparency hints that the opposite is probably true: ambiguity is the reality. Gospel transparency is living in the light: living and speaking the truth.
In Acts, the apostles do as they are told. In the morning the authorities order the jailers to bring the prisoners to try to intimidate them but the jail is empty. Someone arrives and says that the apostles are teaching in the temple, happily telling the people everything about this life as instructed. instructed. They to the temple to round them up. They hear the message that God wants the truth told and known, that those who hide behind rules and power are not on God’s, not on the side of the Resurrection.
This is the Easter theme, the heart of the Gospel message in one sentence – the famous John 3.16,
“God so loved the world . . .” Then he tells us that we have to live in the light – not hide in the darkness, but become transparent, to be seen for what we are, and proclaim what we believe and live our life as Jesus did:
what you see is what you get. We are called to look at the world with the eyes of faith, no longer living in darkness, with our secrets – but telling the world everything about this Christian life in the public and private places. – practicing, transparently.
Fr. Brian