17 January 2024 Mark 3:1-6
Julian the Apostate (AD 331-363), nephew of Constantine the Great, was the first Roman Emperor who was raised as a Christian.
He was also the first Christian Emperor who publicly abandoned his faith. He rejected Christianity in favor of Neoplatonic Hellenism, but it never caught on. Julian was frustrated that Christians really did seem to love one another, and their works of charity were widely admired. He tried to fashion a kind of pagan charity, but that didn’t catch on either.
Julian’s last words are reputed to have been, “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean.”
True enough, but it was Jesus’ charity that had conquered. Christians really did love one another.
That’s what caught on.
The Pharisees claimed that Jesus had rejected the Sabbath, and wanted to kill Him for it. He had done no such thing – Jesus went to synagogue on the Sabbath, He taught on the Sabbath. He taught with such unique power on the Sabbath that huge crowds began to follow him. Jesus had no problem with the Sabbath as an indelible mark of Jewish identity.
He merely wanted charity to be as indelible a mark of Jewishness as the Sabbath was: “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath?” It should have been a no-brainer.
As it turned out, it was Christian charity that overcame the Roman world. In the second and third centuries there were two waves of epidemic disease in the Roman Empire – the Antonine Plague (AD 165-180) and the Decian Plague (often called the Plague of Cyprian, AD 251-270). It is unclear what the disease actually was, but it was horrifically destructive – in every place it turned up, a quarter to a third of the people died, causing widespread depopulation and critical food shortages. Archaeologists have found that death rates were much lower in areas where there were Christian communities. Whatever the disease was, it responded to basic nursing care, and far fewer people died. It was Christians doing the nursing, and it wasn’t just Christians who were receiving their care – healing the sick didn’t mean just healing sick Christians, but anyone who was ill. This wasn’t lost on the pagans in the neighborhood, who appear to have said something like, “We don’t understand these Christians. We don’t know what they mean by Trinity, and we don’t know what they mean when they talk about the ‘real presence of Jesus’ in their Eucharist. But these Christians are alright.”
Not surprisingly, in the century of plague from Ad 165-270 membership in Christian churches spiked sharply upward. There were so many Christians that the Roman government thought it needed to intervene to stop them.
That didn’t catch on either.
Almost all the charity in America today is driven by people of faith. Almost all the charity in the world today is driven by people of faith. There is no organization in the world that feeds more people, clothes more people, heals more people, educates more people, builds more homes, digs more wells, gives away more food, visits more prisoners, and comforts more of the afflicted than the Catholic Church.
Christians really do love one another. That’s what catches on.
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