Saturday of Easter Week 2024
There’s a word I see in almost daily use by our national media and politicians. When a writer or speaker wants to discredit someone else, he uses the word “extremist.” You’ve seen it used by adherents of both sides of any debate, but it seems to me more likely to be used by people on the left side of the political spectrum. As soon as we hear the word, we are expected to cringe away from anything coming from the so-called “extremists.” I’ve especially heard it used recently to vilify Christians who espouse natural marriage only between one man and one woman, acceptance of one’s biological sex, and the God-given right to life of all humans from conception to natural death. Sixty years ago, it was rare to find anyone who would dispute any of these realities. But the culture has spun completely off its moorings, such that social influencers and civic leaders are declaring, as Scripture puts it in such times, “good is evil and evil is good.” But let’s be clear: our faith and the natural moral law written on our hearts, and basic human biology all agree that natural marriage is between one man and one woman, we are born with the sexual identity God intends through our genes, and all humans have a God-given right to life. If that is “extreme,” then I am an extremist, and so is any Christian.
If you read carefully St. Luke’s account of the interaction of Peter and John with the leaders of the Jewish community in the wake of the miraculous healing of a disabled man, and the attempt of these leaders to censor Peter and John, you conclude that they would have called the apostles “extremists.” They really believed that Jesus was risen from the dead and sharing wondrous powers with His followers. Moreover, the people of Jerusalem had seen the working of that Christ-power when a man who sat at the Temple gate for decades suddenly could walk and jump and dance around. So they naturally believed Peter and John when they attributed that miracle to Jesus. And that helped them to believe He was really risen from the dead. But then, they had heard and sung for their whole lives the psalm in the Temple and synagogues: “The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.” If that was an extreme position, at least they had physical evidence it was true.
Let’s probe a little deeper into this word “extreme.” The noun, extremum, means “limit, outside.” It can also mean “end,” like a final destination or life objective. Jesus Christ was an extremist in a number of senses. Recall that every time something happened around Him, Jesus would turn it into a teachable moment. A tower fell and killed a number of people in Siloam. He made that part of a sermon. A widow deposited a couple of almost worthless coins in the Temple treasury. Christ turned that into a commentary on giving. He was painfully stretched out on a wooden cross and nailed thereto. He used that by prayer to apply the Sermon on the Mount: forgive your enemies and do good to those who persecute you. Jesus maintained His focus on His end and ours. The God-inspired objective for our life is conformity with Christ in His life, mission, suffering, death and resurrection. He never lost sight of that and neither may we.
You see, Jesus was an extremist because the Father is an extremist in His dealings with humans. St. Paul quoted an early Christian hymn as he taught the church at Philippi: “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.” And then, of course, came the resurrection. Jesus went all the way down into the depths of what it means to be human. The divine condescension. Slavery, torture, death, all the way down to the depths of hell. Why? To rescue us weak, stupid, rebellious human beings, simply because He loved us, and loves us still. Let’s spend as much time as we can being thankful for His willingness to go to extreme lengths to pull us out of the morass of sin we find ourselves in.
