Adjusting the early ideas

The texts today in the Roman Catholic Lectionary are from the last half of the 1^st century. The author of the letter to the Ephesians, according to Friar Jude Winkler, is using different ideas than Paul. Jews and Gentiles were not seen as disappearing into one people by Paul. The reference to the Church resting on the Apostles refers to an earlier generation. Paul thought of himself as an Apostle. In the text from the Gospel of Luke the faithful are urged to be watchful because, at the time of the writing of this Gospel, the expected return of Jesus to signal the end of the world has not yet occurred. Our time is still one of waiting for the return of Jesus, but the Church as an institution is built and protected for the long haul. The protection of the Institution is, at times, in tension with the sensibility of the Christians of the first century who may have lived with less attachment to temporal and material. The mindset of the watchful servant of the Gospel of Luke may not have concentrated on institutional policy and doctrine. The establishment of a proper apostolic link or the acceptance of “seamless garment” of uniformity among believers seems to be superfluous to servants anticipating Jesus commencing the resurrection of the dead for the last days. The Church resident in the Body of Christ is the living witness of the Kingdom. The early decisions to solidify the institution may produce great fruit in our time if they can be revisited and the faithful returned to living in a sense of anticipation of great change led by the action of God.