First Christians - An Assembly

This week Rome’s Vatican announced that God’s name will no longer be spoken out in liturgy. Like “YHWH”, the tetragrammaton of four consonants, no vowels, favored by Orthodox Jews, because God’s name is too holy to be uttered. God is, after all, ineffable. Zenit’s headline was:

Vatican Says "Yahweh" Not to Be Pronounced.
Calls on Practice Used by 1st Christians

The subhead made me recall a piece about early Christians, written last year, when a group of early Christians met me in the woods behind our home in Standish, Maine.

May I share it with you now?

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An Assembly In Maine Woods
Standish, Maine
January 13, 2007

The voice at dawning was not so loud, as it was just simply everywhere, like surround sound, outside the house, throughout the first floor, inside my head, feet and ears, and within my soul, deep, not just scratching the surface.

I heard, "Hey, Paul, come on out. We're here."

"Who that? What? What? Where are you?"

"It's me, Paul. Peter." Interrupting himself, "My Lord, don't those two names together sound like the old days?. We're out back, at the picnic area. Just below the hump in trail going down through the woods. You know, where you spent some time the other day with your favorite six apostles. Come on."

"We?"

"You'll find out when you get here."

"OK, OK, coming…." and off I went before checking any paper in Europe or even turning on CNN to see if there were Breaking News or a Flash.

As I reached the edge of the back yard lawn, I looked up at the great trees, our "Maine Woods" in our own yard. Into the forest I went, on the worn path opening up a thick wall of tree trunks, underbrush, old leaves blown there in one cleanup or another. The warmth of the day from global warming, even though it is mid January, pleased me.

I saw them straight ahead, over on the left side of the trai. A fairly good sized group of people, rough-hewn people, men and women alike, in those flowing robes Middle Easterners wear to protect themselves from the sun, wearing sandals instead of shows, talking with their hands and fingers, glancing at the wall of tall trees for lurking eyes or fangs. They didn’t act like woodsmen, more like fishermen.

It was a gorgeous morning, all sun, halfway to high noon, a cloud or two in dazzling white way up there and moving on towards the east. The sky's blue was the blue of dreams, the kind you know is going to bathe you, come later, much later on, and in another world, too. I clambered down a short flight of steps hewn from logs, pushed some bushes out of my way, stepped on out to the forest floor and waved at the crowd, now intently, quietly, watching me make my way toward them.

Saint Peter left his group of women and headed toward me, beaming, "Took you long enough. Good thing I didn't say this was urgent."

"Saint Peter. Good to see you again. Who are all these people? Must be a hundred of them," was my natural question.

His answer wasn't natural, "I want you to meet some of Jesus' Apostles and Disciples, Paul. Time we talked Church. We heard a lot about you from the six Apostles who dropped in on you last fall when you and Jean lived on the beach at Pine Point."

My guess was right. They must have left their boats at Pine Point on the Atlantic a few miles to the east and walked here to Standish.

“I remember that well. We had to move out after living there since 1940 and are out here in the country for a little while before joining our sons out West in Colorado. Enough. How can I help you, Saint Peter, and all these people?”

“Other way ‘round, Paul. We’re here to help you and your friends.” And he began introducing me to one small group of people after another, some my age, a lot much younger, a healthy looking bunch, not one fat one in the crowd. And every single one of them looked me directly in my eyes as they spoke my name. Some held both my hands when they did that. Others just gave a little bow, or a nod of the head. But, it was their eyes I’ll not forget.

And a flash of a news story came to me that Pope John Paul II never looked anybody in the eye at all, when he spoke with them, a trait, the reporter commented, that was common among Polish priests. I thought it a lame excuse at the time, and remembered it from news accounts of a Polis hierarch who resigned his brand new cardinalate due to charges that he had been an agent of the Communist Secret Police. His eyes in news photos avoided the death trap of the exact center of the camera lens, just as if he were aware the world was watching his shame. Here, in my own back yard, the eye contact was fierce, constant, uplifting, human, oh! so very, very human, because these simple common folk were taking me in, just as if they had known me all their lives. Come to think of it, they probably did.

When Peter took my hand to lead me over to a beautiful woman and introduced her as Mary Magdalen, my knees buckled. And she laughed a laugh I would die for . . . Embarrassed, face flushed as scarlet as a cardinal's robes, I tried a chuckle, but it came out a feeble gurgle. Even so, she took my hand and said, "Come with me, dear old Paul, I want you to meet the rest of the apostles."

I looked back towards Saint Peter, who just smiled and nodded his head, "It's OK, she's one of us, she's an apostle, always was, you know." So, off I went with Mary Magdalen, and it was not reluctantly either. It was great meeting the apostles. I knew their names, some better than others – still have to go look some of them up from time to time when I can't get to the full count of Twelve minus one – but putting faces to names was like, like – well there is no like, because even I knew this was as mysterious as the Mystical Body. The six who met me before hung back, just winked at me.

Unlike the Paul who was a Saul, -- Jesus really liked to change names when people changed, ever notice that? -- I've never been knocked down by a lightning bolt. There I stood, as if it were a common occurrence where my back yard slopes down some 800 feet through the woods to a wildlife preserve, on a miraculously sunny day in January, to chat with a group of new friends and think and talk church.

A big man thrust his hand towards me, "James of Jerusalem, brother of Jesus. You a Gentile?"

When I told him I was, he asked, "How many of you, now?"

"A lot, really, Sir. Almost one billion plus a million or so. Over the whole world."

All he could say was , "Jeeeeze." I took it as a prayer.

And then, I grabbed his hand tightly, looked him right in the eye as he had into my own, and said thanks this way, "I don't think a Gentile has ever had the chance to thank you, for the way you listened to Peter and Paul in that first council of Jerusalem, gave up your own deep, personal views about a Jewish Assembly, and let them go west, even to Rome. So, we thank you, Saint James, we thank you."

He was embarrassed, then winked at me, drew me closer to his great beard and said, "You had better keep a close eye on that gang of cuckoo birds in that so-called secret gang of hierarchs hanging out around Saint Peter’s basilica. Some of the act like loony tunes, they do. That German gentile, I think he’s pope now, could be a Docetist, you know. They taught that Jesus was not human, and we knocked that one down real early in the second century. Means the Church isn't human, too, just as some of them are acting like, now."

Before I could agree with him, another hand tugged me away, "I'm Phoebe, and those women over there want a word with you." She pointed to a large group of women arguing loudly with three men, one of them was Peter. "The men are Peter, Paul and Thomas, in case you were wondering."

"Phoebe? The deacon in Cenchreae?"

"The same. You know your Epistles of Paul, don't you, Paul. Figures."

"Look, Ma’am… "

"It's Phoebe, fella. P-h-o-e-b-e. Phoebe."

"Look, Phoebe, before I get thrown into a heated discussion, can you tell me why I'm here? I'm a nobody, just an old guy from a small country town in Maine."

"Well, don't be so modest. That's what's wrong with you so-called 'people of God', you're all so super, super humble, waiting for the bishop or the pastor to tell you what to do. You people are locked into a mindset of humble obedience. Far deeper and far more difficult to overcome, than the one the bishops are stuck in, arrogant superiority and absolute power. Neither one of you can budge. You spout off a lot, both of you, but your ways are frozen solid. We're here to break that ice-jam."

Whew! No meek and mild blushing violet she, I thought. And off we went to the small group, deep into arguing with each other. I could hear Peter before we got halfway, "Apphia, stop interrupting Junia, she's an apostle."

The one called Apphia turned to the little guy beside Peter, a bow-legged, tough-looking rooster, and complained, "Paul, when you sent me that letter to Philemon and called me 'Sister', you weren't putting Junia ahead of me, were you? You even went out of your way to show us that we’re all equals, right? Men and women alike. When Chloe's people told you about the rivalries in Corinth. Remember?"

Then Saint Paul spoke, "Then why, Apphia, in the name of Christ, are you arguing so shrilly now? Like a shrew. Didn’t we come here to show the church? Its earliest days? Be an example for these people here in Maine? We came to show this Paul, named after me I hope, how to think church. Not keep arguments going forever.”

Before she could defend herself, I butted in, “Sorry, Saint Paul. Not after you but after Saint Paul the Hermit. Born near his feast day. “ With that, I bowed to Apphia and told her to keep on standing up for herself.

"I'm sorry, Paul, I just get so tired of that Junia lording it over me because she's an apostle and I'm only a sister," Apphia said softly.

She looked so forlorn, I thought wildly that, as a total stranger, maybe, must maybe I could step into the middle of this one, being from away, as they say in Maine, and gave it a try, "Apphia, by the powers invested in me, I hereby consecrate you Apostle of Standish. " I thought she grew about a foot and a half before my very eyes.

She beamed, really beamed, then bowed low with a long curving sweep of her right arm, from shoulder to finger tips, just kissing the one lone leaf left from the fall’s shedding, "Thank you, Paul, I will remember you."

Junia, smiling as well, was no retiring feminine, though, "What powers, Paul, may I ask?"

Liking her hands on hips stance and that smile that promised so much understanding, I dared a step further, "Me own, Apostle Junia, me own. I make ‘em up, as I go along. Quicker and easier than trying to figure out what’s an official teaching from the magisterium or get in touch with the bishop."

And, honest to God, she took a quick step closer, gave me a hug, whispering in my ear, "That's exactly what we all did, to get started. Welcome to the club of Catholics."

For once, I was without words. A stupid grin on my face, and a real bright light shining in my eyes, I let myself be seated by Nympha of Laodicea, who had a church in her own house, and Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth in Thyatira, who listened to and was baptized by Saint Paul, then opened up her home to Paul's friends. They held my hands as they talked on and on about keeping it simple, avoiding conflict with authority figures, doing things by themselves, picking out presbyters to make the bread and wine holy in memory of the Last Supper, as Jesus had told them to do.

What struck me as being so simple was their quiet trust in the Lord, as each of them set out to do what he would have wanted them to do in setting up a church. As I listened, I felt like Nicodemus who had first gone to Jesus in the night time, and then, Apphia, reading my mind? said, "Nicodemus is here today. He'd like to meet you later on."

As they went on about how they ignored the laws and codes and canons and scriptures and speeches of all the authorities around them, high priests of the Jews, temple hangers-on from the Greek cities and towns, Roman soldiers and their pantheon of gods and laws and laws and laws, I thought long and hard about Nicodemus who had been a Pharisee and a Sanhedrist.

Then, he came over, waved on by Apphia, "Just to say 'hello' and pick a bone with you."

Baffled by his sense of familiarity, all I could do was repeat his word, "Bone?"

"Yes. But an old bone for you. You played me in a Passion Play in Dorchester's part of Boston back in the 1940s, and you didn't catch my character at all. In fact, you were lousy." He smiled as he got that one off his chest.

"I remember that!" I exclaimed, jumping to my feet. "That was the night the brace broke on the Sanhedrin's Jury Box, and I was trying to hold it upright with my hands and forgot my lines. They made me a stagehand the next year."

"Well," he said, as he turned to leave, "as Junia says, welcome to the club. Good luck in engaging the future. It's no play, you know. It's for real, this time."

I left the group of women priests and drifted in and out of one small group after the other. It was good to stop and listen to Priscilla and her husband Aquila, from Ephesus, who reminded me of how they listened to the eloquent Apollos of Alexandria, and how he spoke to them of Jesus in such learned and scholarly tones -- he was a noted authority on the scriptures – until they took him off to one side and told him to cool it, keep it simple, and to stop looking for a confrontation. Apollos listened well and did much better when he crossed over to Achaia. He was such a hunk, a lot of the women missed him. The men didn’t. Just like us, they kept their hunks in the gym.

In another group, I listened closely as they shared their stories of doubt and anxiety, even fear of the unknown future, and the great gifts of faith that were granted to all of them. The more stories they told, the more I realized how hard the first few years must have been in those home churches. Saint Paul was watching and asked me a funny question, "Do you know why our assemblies, churches, were in homes?"

"No, I never really thought about it."

"There weren't any Catholic Church buildings around. Kind of simple isn't it? Plenty of synagogues, but they weren't renting space on the Sabbath. Roman Shrines and Greek Temples were off-limits. We were pretty poor, too. We really didn't get buildings until Emperor Constantine made us his state religion. We got church buildings then, big ones, and promptly began to lose our Church.”

He was off somewhere, in a reverie, musing. I tried to bring him back, “Do you miss the excitement of those days, Saint Paul? The comings and goings, the shipwrecks, the escapes from the Romans?”

”No. Not really miss them. They were different times. A lot slower, but then again so much faster. We grew from a handful of Galileans and Nazarenes into the biggest religion in the Roman Empire in just over three hundred years. And talking to you here in the woods of Maine, I can see that you and your people talk to each other instantly from oposite sides of the earth. on that internet. “

I laughed and told him that I’d be lost without my computer, where my whole life is stored on a hard drive. “It would be a nightmare for me, Saint Paul, if that thing crashed and there was no backup.”

He didn’t seem to understand, of course, and kept right on going, “And yet, I don’t see much Catholic faith in any of those huge buildings you have all over the place. Great looking things you can’t use, like paintings you can’t take down off the walls and carry around with you wherever you go.” He looked so sad, when he said that.

Trying to cheer him up a little, I said, Well, from where I look and see, you had real churches in those homes, real servants of the servants of God. You didn't need an ecumenical council to tell you that you were the people of God, and your bishops didn't ignore you and lock you out. You were church."

“Paul, the way you use that word ‘church’! No. Worse. The way you toss it around. That’s scary. ‘Church’ doesn’t mean ‘church’ to us. Certainly not what it means to you, where it’s your own parish church or the Roman Catholic Church with nothing in between,” he poured out in tumbling words.

“You’re confusing me, like you do in some of those passages in your epistles. I’m remembering Corinth, Ephesus, Galatia, even Rome itself.”

“No. No. No. Paul. A thousand times no. Those places weren’t what you think of today as ‘churches.’ They were assemblies, gatherings, from the Greek word Ekklesia. Your word ‘church’ stands for Institution . . . Hierarchically Governed Eurocentric Institution With a Capitol in Rome,. Italy.” He stopped, took a breath, “We never thought that way, Paul. We always thought of the people in assembly, getting together with each other to remember the Lord. You people are set up like an old European empire.”

“Then, what happened? How did we grow so big we don’t recognize ourselves? We’re not assemblies now, except maybe in Bingo, or a banquet or something. Like a committee we might like to go to work on, just to go to the parish church on an evening rather than Sunday morning or Saturday afternoon for confession.”

"That's why we're here, Paul," he said, "to show you the way. Looks to us like you’ve lost the way and you're waiting for high priests to bail you out. First thing we did was get as far away from our Jewish religion as we could. It was throttling us to death with rules, punishments, decrees, taxes, more and more fine-tuned organization run by little martinets. We had to get away from our , as far as we could. They were drunk with power. And we were their patsies, the only ones in sight they could kick around. “

“OK. OK. We know all that stuff,” I interrupted, a bit peeved at what was so elementary if we read any church history at all.

“You say you do. But from the way you talk, you don’t. I doubt if you have ever read the Acts of the Apostles from cover to cover,” shot back the real Paul. He went on, voice lowered, an apostle in sure command of what he knew from personal experience, as well as from the faith burning so deeply within his soul. “We got together the ones who were close to Jesus and watched him carefully. We picked out the few who could write a little bit and they came up with Four Gospels. I tossed in a few of my letters and they got collected with some others. We called them Epistles. “

“How’d you do that, if you were traveling all around the Mediterranean and were in Rome so long?” an innocent question I thought.

“Why you so picky, picky? You a lawyer or something?” blasted Saint Paul. “Whose side you on, anyway? Make up your mind, son. Do you want to object or do you want to learn?”

I tried to say I was sorry, but he brushed it off and went on, “Later on, really a couple of hundred years later, because we just never thought of it actually, they made the whole bundle into The New Testament. Canons and all! We got by with copies on parchment. And we just kept passing them on and on. From one small group to another. You can do the same thing now, you know, but for goodness sake, you’ve got to keep it simple.”

He bent way over to loosen his back, raised his arms way up in the air, did a little tap dance, and smiled, “Well, enough for me. Go mingle. And listen more. If you can.”

And he limped off to join the women, in whose hands he had so willingly, so freely, entrusted the assemblies he was gathering during Christianity’s early years. “Primitive years,” some modern scholars call them now.

And we were back at the picnic area with the main group of people. Judging from the sun in the sky, it was some time after the noon hour. I was getting hungry, wondering whether these people ever ate. Or needed to.

Now, I know you won't believe this, but all of a sudden a meal was prepared in front of all of us. Yes! Yes! Loaves of bread and lots of fish, and round baked unleavened bread with toppings. Like pizza. Startled, I looked around to see if Jesus himself was there in the small crowd. Moved beyond any religious feeling I ever felt before, I stammered at Peter, "Did, d - d - did you d - do this?"

"Heavens, Paul, no. Nicodemus sent some boys down to the Subway and Domino’s Pizza at the village stores for a take-out. He picked up the tab for all of us. We always make sure to invite him along on trips like these.”

Then, in the quiet, when they all stopped laughing at my blushing scarlet hue, Peter stood and called for silence, "We are here to share our past with a modern church in the country. The poor people here have had a tough time of it, watching their church dwindle down into clusters not parishes, because of the shortage of priests. They seem to rely so much on their own caste system, when we didn’t.”

The doubting Thomas roared, “What the hell’s a cluster? That’s a new one. Can I hold one in my hand? Touch it with my finger?” And laughing at himself real loud, he sidled over to me and sat down next to me. “You know, Paul, we just picked out men and women who liked to serve and let them do it. Called them presbyters and when they got good at, nicknamed them elders. They did OK, that is until they got organized and started writing employee manuals, passing out titles, setting up a ladder of promotions. Then, if you know your ecclesiastical history, the whole thing just grew and grew into what you people have today. A polarized mess of people.”

“Are we that bad, Thomas?” I asked

“You sure aren’t a church. You’re like people going to the movies once a week. You even pay admission. You get entertained. You then go home and forget all about it, until next Sunday. And you complain a lot, because there’s nothing to do.” Saint Thomas was more than a doubter in my eyes. He could see through fallacies better than most lawyers I know.

When Peter finished talking to the group, he looked straight at me and asked if I had any questions. I did, "Just one. Where'd you get the presbyters?"

"From the people, of course."

"Who ordained them?"

"What's 'ordained' mean? In our times? Or do you mean later, when the Sacraments were put together by a bunch of learned people, like theologians and those Johnny come latelies, the bishops?"

"I mean 'ordained' as in the Sacrament of Holy Orders. Hey, you're Saint Peter, the Rock, the first Pope, you trying to kid with me?" I was flustered and a bit impatient. Being a Catholic in this diocese has a way of getting to you. Frustrating.

"Yes, dear Paul, yes, I was teasing you, hoping you would see your own blindness and sheeplike nature. We ordained our own presbyters just by picking out the best ones, whether men or women, the ones who were obviously people for others and not just for themselves. Why are you always waiting for a bishop to give you people permission to breath? Act! Be! Do! We did."

"Easy enough to say that. You didn't have any bishops anyway. No popes either. You were never ordained at all, were you?"

"No, I was not. So what? Well, Sir, I was crucified. Downwards. That make you feel better?" Peter drove home hard lessons. He was, and is after all, a Stone, another translation for the Greek “Cephas."

"Sorry, Peter," I apologized and cooled my Irish temper.

He went on, as the leader of fishermen that he was, "You and your friends are hung up on two thousand years of Church History which was based on Roman Law and Greek Philosophy, both of which are so foreign to the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament that most of us here are sorry we went West via Greece and Rome, rather than East through India, South East Asia and the Far East. “

"I see that, but what do we do now? We are westerners. And we are trying to reform our Church, but the bishops won’t let us.”

"You need permission, do you?" was Thomas' very, very quiet question. "Why? You never bothered before. And you didn’t have much to say about church except snide remarks about fish on Fridays and dancing so close the Holy Ghost couldn’t get through.”

I just stared at him, the doubting one, always I confess, my favorite Apostle. History knocked him around a bit, but he was, and now is, my kind of man. Why, indeed, so much fuss about an institution that seems to be fading away so surely and so quickly?

"We need to believe in something.” I refused to back down.

"Do you?” He wasn’t backing down, either.

Then the bandy legged one shrugged, "Well, I used to write a lot of stuff, too, but it's personal contact that counts. Why do battle with a bishop day in, day out? You can't win. Neither can he. He's too scared. More scared of Rome than of you. He knows that people are leaving the church every week. And many of your bishops are pretty stubborn and dense human beings. Like those Roman jailers who always went by the book, but forgot to lock the window bars, so I escaped in a basket. Leave the hierarchs be. Look into your own soul. What do you believe? Think assembly. Talk assembly. Be assembly. It will happen for you, just as it did for us.” He stopped, still breathing heavily, but oddly tranquil.

“Be your own Catholic,” he continued, quieter now. “Ordain your own priests. Go tap that pool of married priests. Invite all those women who want to serve to come in and share. Then, ordain them, too. “

“Hold it, Saint Pau. Hold it. You never had to put up with a Roman institutional church. It was a lot easier for you and your friends when you stop to think about it.” I was feeling bolder.

He ignored me. “Actually, all you need is the New Testament. That’s all. It’s all in there. Take it from one who wrote part of it. And listen to yourself. I haven’t heard you say “Jesus Christ, my Lord and my God” once, just once, ever since we waited here for you to show up. How can you think assembly without him?

I was dumbfounded. It hit me like a thunderbolt. I was wrestling with Rome, whether the real one or the one I built up in my ,mind as the adversary. And I was ignoring my own faith, hope and love. Locked in my own boots, welded in my own past, unable. to move.

A hundred or so people were looking at me, quietly, with smiles of understanding as they saw enlightenment flow from them into me. I took the book of the New Testament from Saint Peter’s hands, stood and joined in the Our Father. I wanted to and did hold hands with Saint Thomas, and with Apphia. Saint Paul grinned and patted me on the back, “Keep writing, friend, somebody’s reading the stuff.”

St. Peter had to give me his bear hug, before he left the woods in my back yard. At least he didn't try to show off and fly through the trees.

Then, I watched the rest of them get pick up, group together in small bunches and start walking out of the forest. They slowly began to disappear. I prayed that they were heading to another group of people who want to be the people of God, but were stuck in a soundless duel with a tough bishop.

As I went back up the path to the house, I knew what I wanted to write about in future attempts, especially in concentrating on engaging the future of the Catholic Church in the 21st century.

Who knows, these people from the first century might just be moving around with all of us in this one, helping us see and believe in the real substance of assembly rather than just in its frills. Maybe, just maybe, we can really believe that we are the people of God and act that way.