Wednesday in the 4th Week of Easter
Learning to Read and Write

Readings: Acts 12:24—13:5a; Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6 and 8; John 12:44-50
Picture: CC cambodia4kidsorg

Do you remember when you first started learning to read and write? Delving back into the mists of time, I recall that fateful day – my first in the neighborhood kindergarten – when I was asked to go to the blackboard and write my name in Chinese. I couldn’t, of course, so the teacher taught me how. We all probably have our own memories of how or when we started. But perhaps the more important question is whether or not we’re still learning. Or have we already stopped? Have we already learnt all there is to know about reading and writing?

The question is not as ridiculous as it may sound at first. For aren’t there various levels to these very basic skills? Don’t reading and writing involve more than just being able to recognize letters of the alphabet and then to reproduce and rearrange them in an orderly and intelligible fashion? Consider those Harry Potter books and films for example. At one level, they’re all about wizards and witches and magic. But on another level, aren’t they also about courage and love and friendship? Perhaps there are also things in them that are worthy of critique, but then, we’ll only know if we are able to read them, right? And, of course, it’s not just books and movies. Don’t we also read people and events? Even more important, as Christians, don’t we also have to learn to recognize the signs of the times, and what these are saying to the churches (see, e.g., Revelations 2:7)? Furthermore, when it comes to writing, don’t we require skills that go far beyond our dexterity with pen and PC? Consciously or not, don’t we write also with our daily actions and our very lives?

Which is why it’s important to pay attention to what Jesus continues to do in the gospel today. Faced with people who remain caught up in the superficial and the obvious, Jesus continues to point them beyond. He continues to teach them to read between the lines, as it were, to see beyond the thought-provoking and wonder-working prophet, to the Eternal One who sent him. Anyone who believes in me believes not in me but also in the one who sent me, and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me… It’s only when the people are able to read this deeper reality, it’s only when they are able to recognize and accept the extraordinary divine presence and action in that ordinary human life that they will then be able to write, with their own lives, a fitting response to God in the sight of the world.

And isn’t this dynamic also operative in the first reading? At one level, what we have is an account of how Barnabas and Saul return to Antioch after completing their task of fundraising in Jerusalem, after which they are both numbered among the teachers in the Antiochene church. But the reading also renders explicit something that would not otherwise be so obvious. For beyond the details regarding tasks and teachers, there broods the invisible influence of the Holy Spirit, who both calls and missions, who both assigns tasks and inspires teaching. And it is only because the church is learning to read this deeper reality that it is also growing in its ability to respond by writing, with the very lives of its members, a living testimony of praise to God. O God, let all the nations praise you!

How well, then, do we read and write? And how is the Lord helping to improve these skills of ours today?