The trouble with Christianity is that it’s never been tried. So quipped G. K. Chesterton. More precisely, he wrote, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”
Or maybe it’s that most of the time we are only trying it on – without letting the Lord really take hold of our hearts. What we need in our world and, even more in our personal lives, may be more than just a spiritual spring cleaning. Renovation is not enough when what we need is renewal.
This real change that Jesus offers us is more like a rebirth, the being “born from above” that Jesus spoke of to Nicodemus. The kind of transformation that He was talking about is visible in the activity of the early Christians following the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. Changes are visible everywhere. Most obvious are the personal transformations in the lives of so many of the disciples of Christ, like Thomas, Peter and especially Paul. Lives change radically when Christ becomes their center.
These personally changed lives and hearts, in turn, have a radically transforming effect on relationships and, ultimately, the entire social fabric. Witness how the early Christian community so fundamentally changed its attitude toward material possessions. This is perhaps the most obvious example. No longer did the disciples view their talents, gifts and treasures as their own but in terms of how they could serve the needs of others.
Other things changed, too, such as stereotypical or even prejudicial attitudes to certain classes of people. The first major change was the accommodation of the Jewish Christians to pagans. Class distinctions seemed to fall apart left and right. Although the temptation to form factions and create rivalries always arose – as much then as it does now – the Gospel which Jesus lived and the Apostles preached gradually became the way in which the Christians conducted their lives and their affairs. In a sharp break with the pagan world, it even changed their understanding of their family relationships, including their sexuality.
No longer do distinctions in terms being of male or female, slave or free person, Jew or Gentile form an obstacle. In fact, the very memory and awareness of their sins and weaknesses becomes not an invitation to denial but an occasion of grace. The Bible is not shy of relating the faults of the Apostles, notably Paul who actually boasted of his inadequacies so that the power of God’s love could be seen as the force that held him together.
The hierarchies, so to speak, within the Christian community were no longer defined by pride of power or position but by degrees of humble service to the rest of the community in which the first became the last, as Jesus had intructed. The only rivalry would be in the one seeking to outdo the other in this process of sanctification. Holiness became the goal of every individual life, and this, in turn, would sanctify all members of the Church and, ultimately, the society around them. It would not take long before Christianity itself would dethrone the pagan religion and its barbaric practices that had imbued ancient Rome.
We live in a time where people often speak of a longing for change. Change in itself is a neutral word since it can imply both improvement or deterioration. Sanctification is the change that the Gospel is all about, and that is always for the good. The change that will “set the world on fire” begins in the human heart transformed by the unconditional love of an all-forgiving God.
The headlines these days are filled with hate responding to hate in the form of threats of war, religious persecution, ethnic cleansing and acts of terrorism. But why waste time on listing all the horrors? Our mission as Christians is to lift up those who are persecuted, neglected, broken, despised and marginalized – just as Jesus was on the cross, the sign that fires up the world and not even death can quench.