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Texts :\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Acts 11:7-15\u00a0 \u00a0Luke 24:17-19\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0John 1:45-46<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I invite you to take a brief journey through and between these biblical texts.<\/p>\n In the current context of the celebrations of the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, I took interest in the transition between the Church still faithful to Judaism and the Hellenistic Church, between Messianic Judaism, Christian Judaism, Hellenistic Judaism and the first pagans converted to Christianity. It was a fairly rapid transformation, with tragic elements (the destruction of the temple in 70 CE and its consequences for Messianic Judaism and the community of Jerusalem), and spectacular, because it signified a transculturation<\/em> of Christianity from the Jewish world of thought to the Greek and the Roman world. The Council of Nicaea in 325 is the perfect embodiment of this, signifying the transition from a Hebrew theological thought open to the surrounding Greek world to a Greek thought hostile to Judaism.<\/p>\n Several texts in the New Testament bear witness to this transition. The authors of the Gospels put words in the mouths of Jesus or Peter that reflect the discussions taking place in their communities, where this transition was more or less easy. When we read the Bible, we are not reading a text that fell from heaven fully written, but we are also reading the first writers of the Bible.<\/p>\n Acts 11:7-15: And I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter, kill and eat. But I said, ‘No, Lord, for nothing unclean or impure has ever entered my mouth. And for the second time the voice came from heaven, ‘What God has declared clean, do not regard as unclean. This happened three times, and then everything was taken back into heaven. And behold, immediately three men sent from Caesarea to me appeared at the door of the house where I was staying. The Spirit told me to go with them without hesitation. The six men here accompanied me, and we entered the house of Cornelius. This man told us how he had seen the angel appear in his house and say to him, ‘Send men to Joppa and bring Simon, who is also called Peter, who will tell you things by which you and all your household will be saved. When I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them, as on us at the beginning.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>Another very famous text also refers to this, although it is not this element that has made the text so popular. It is the story of Emmaus in Luke 24. I will only mention here what is relevant to my point: verses 17-19.<\/p>\n He said to them, \u2018What are you discussing as you walk along, that you look so sad?\u2019 One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, \u2018Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?\u2019 \u2018What things?\u2019 he asked. And they replied, %22The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people<\/em>.<\/p>\n What is striking in these two stories is that in each case, it is strangers who move the plot forward. Peter is convinced by three strangers that he must follow them to Caesarea, a Greek city, where a second Pentecost is taking place, proving to him the wisdom of opening up to Hellenistic Jews and also to Greek sympathisers of the synagogue, the \u2018God-fearers\u2019. Similarly, in the story of Emmaus, Cleopas (a Greek name, mentioned only here in the New Testament, clearly suggesting that the community Luke is addressing either knew him or already included Hellenists) takes Jesus for a stranger, who begins to explain to them how to understand their own tradition in a new way.<\/p>\n And we can also add to the list Nathanael’s response to Philip (John 1:45-46) when Philip tells him that he has found the Messiah in the person of a Galilean: Philip met Nathanael and said to him, \u2018We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote\u2014Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.\u2019 Nathanael said to him, \u2018Can anything good come out of Nazareth?\u2019 Philip replied, \u2018Come and see.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>These passages are interesting to us here because of what they say about the conditions under which this transformation of the type of members of Christian communities took place, and the difficulties in explaining, understanding, discussing and ultimately justifying it. It corresponds to the victory of the Jewish diaspora, which was directly confronted with the surrounding Greek world and therefore interested in opening up to other circles, as opposed to the communities located in Palestine. But this opening up was far from self-evident! far from it!<\/p>\n This stage in Jewish theological reflection can be seen as an interreligious opening and also a missionary initiative: it was a question of proposing that beyond all the Greco-Roman deities offered to the inhabitants of the Empire, there was a supreme God, an unknown God, as Paul said in the forum of Athens (Acts 17:27-29), who alone deserves to be followed, and who, by resurrecting Jesus crucified, accomplished a revolution, for this miracle was not reserved for the officials and salaried priests of the synagogue, but for all, including women and non-Jews. And it is no longer limited to the covenant with the Jewish people and the tablets of the Law given to Moses, but to the covenant with humanity made with Noah (Genesis 9:11).<\/p>\n At the same time, if we accept that these texts were written approximately 50-60 years after Jesus’ crucifixion, we must also acknowledge that this happened rather quickly, given the conditions of the time. All the texts that mention it refer to a decisive factor in this process, to an actor, the Spirit of Jesus<\/em>. It is he who breaks down boundaries, renounces obsolete traditions, and questions dogmas that are understood too narrowly. For the mission of the Spirit has no boundaries; it is ecumenical, that is, it touches the whole inhabited earth. In the Nicene Creed, the Spirit is only mentioned in passing at the very end. Yet it was in the name of the Spirit, of the understanding of the role of the Spirit of Christ in the economy of salvation, that Nicene was written.<\/p>\n Each time in our texts, it is a stranger, someone outside the circle, outside the covenant known until then, who reveals the true interpretation to be understood. We can also think of Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian officer in Acts 8:26ff.<\/p>\n How can we apply this to ourselves today? Who is the stranger today, believer or non-believer, who teaches us to look differently in order to see the action of Christ, to hear the word that refocuses us while decentring us?<\/p>\n If I knew for sure, I would certainly be somewhere else today. But there is an interesting detail in these three stories, Simon in Caesarea, Cleopas in Emmaus and Nathanael in Galilee. There is a shift. Physical. Geographical. Simon suddenly leaves and goes from Jaffa to Caesarea; Cleopas and the other disciple leave, perhaps fleeing, for Emmaus. And Nathanael, despite his anti-Nazareth prejudices, accepts Philip’s invitation, who says to him, \u2018Come! … And see.\u2019 He went!.<\/p>\n I went to Beirut for Holy Week. On the first day, I met up with a pastor for the day, with no specific agenda other than to catch up. After receiving a phone call, she said to me: there is a new Kurdish community from Syria in a very poor neighbourhood. They are having a service tonight, and I am invited. Would you like to come, or would you prefer to go back to the hotel? I found myself in a small windowless room with a hundred women, men and children praying and singing fervently in Kurdish. All of them were illegal immigrants, even illegal refugees. Some women were semi-veiled, others wore jeans and T-shirts. There was a lectern, a projector, a screen, a pastor, a soundtrack and a choir. That was all. And the foot washing ceremony.<\/p>\n I had to say a few words, of course. So I just thought about this: Come and see! Come and see not only what I am going through, not only what I have escaped and continue to escape day after day (arrest, precariousness, hunger…), but come and see through my eyes. Put yourself in my place in my life and see what I see.<\/p>\n This experience reinforced my conviction that it is the outside that reveals the heart of the inside. And that the Church, each one of us, is called to see the world through the eyes of God: Come and see! Moltmann often said that he wanted to look at the world through the eyes of the risen one.<\/p>\n The other day, I attended a WCC conference on the 140th anniversary of the Berlin Conference, when the Western powers, at the invitation of King Leopold of Belgium and Emperor Bismarck, met in Berlin to peacefully divide up Africa rather than go to war, and to stop the transport of slaves by sea and replace it with slavery on their own territory. Several voices recalled how racism against black people is intrinsically linked to colonialism to this day, and called for a change in perspective, namely to see the world, the West, capitalism through the eyes of black people who have been exploited, massacred,\u00a0 … \u2018Come and see\u2019.<\/p>\n Come and see: the early Christians did so: The text of Acts tells us that Peter suddenly saw that these Greeks were believers as true as he was. That these Kurds, these blacks, these Orthodox Christians also had the conviction that the spirit of Jesus had guided them to us, and us to them.<\/p>\n Clearly, the word of God must come from outside traditions in order to be properly understood in a new context. Mission comes from the margins, said the WCC World Mission Conference in 2012. It is the foreigner, the outsider, the unknown who calls us to our mission and reminds us of it. God’s mission is greater than the institution of the Church. It has the Church as its instrument. But the Church has no mission.<\/p>\n The Spirit of God is Jewish, Palestinian, Black, Kurdish. It is always elsewhere. It speaks to us from Syria, from Portugal. With each inculturation, there is a leap into the foreign, the unknown, the different. It is like a leap. To learn to swim, you have to jump into the water. Or at least to enter it. Because we trust that the water will carry us.<\/p>\n To conclude this reflection, I propose another shift in perspective. Among the languages and grammars foreign to classical biblical language that often open us up to a theologically relevant discovery, without this always being intentional or explicit, is art. Painting, sculpture, music. The spiritual profile of the artist, their biography, means that they convey messages or expressions in their works that can apply as much to very human, romantic experiences as to expressions that go beyond and invoke a transcendental dimension.<\/p>\n I believe this is the case here with this song by an English folk-rock band I was unfamiliar with, Mumford and Sons. The band’s leader, Marcus Mumford, is the son of a pastor who founded the Vineyard Church in Great Britain and Ireland. And this can be heard in several of their lyrics, which can be read on multiple levels.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nMumford & Sons<\/h2>\n