Losing Popularity But Gaining Christ Series

Saturday of the Fifth Week in Easter 2024

Today’s Scriptures give one of the best examples of stating a principle of evangelization in the Gospel and giving an example of application in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Jesus had given his farewell sermon and prayers during the Last Supper, before He and the disciples went into the Garden for prayer and His arrest. It’s likely that during the forty days after the Resurrection, Jesus also returned to that sermon as He taught the apostles how to use the coming gift of the Holy Spirit.

First Jesus tells them that their work to bring the Gospel to the world would not be well received, any more from them than it had from Jesus directly. We know it’s true today: those preachers who tell their listeners that God, being all-good, wants only good for Christ’s disciples. Therefore their Gospel, which is not Christ’s, emphasizes placing trust in Jesus and expecting Him to give great success, especially financial success. I suppose that’s so they can peel off a tithe and give it to the preacher. But Jesus says we are not of this world, this secular society, and so those who hear us and see us will at first despise us and everything we do and say. Why? Because if they believe, they’ll need to act on the Word and lose their popularity, maybe even their property, and possibly their lives.

But if they keep the Word that they hear and see in action, then they will themselves act on it and spread the fire of the Holy Spirit beyond themselves. Now the Holy Spirit manifests Himself in many ways, through gifts like teaching and exhortation and prophecy, and healing. If you’ve been listening to the Acts of the Apostles lately, you know that is how Paul and Barnabas and Timothy attracted attention. Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they taught and healed and listened to God’s direction.

We don’t know exactly how the Holy Spirit prevented them from carrying the Gospel beyond Phrygia and Galatia or into Bithynia, but we do know why. God wanted them in Macedonia and Greece. So they listened, and obeyed, and opened up a whole new field of evangelization, as well as new churches in Thessalonika and Athens and Corinth. So let’s all listen every day to the many ways the Spirit speaks to us, in the Scriptures and sacraments and sermons and documents so that we can always be ready to respond to God’s call to bring His Word to the entire world, beginning with the city we live in.