04-10-24

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
April 10, 2024
Later this month, it will have been 15 years since I went to Italy on a Lily Grant with four other Disciple clergy. My primary purpose was to visit catacombs in and around Rome to specifically look at the symbols of the early Christians. It was an amazing experience, and even all these years later, I am still processing everything I saw. The two main takeaways for me were the women who were depicted in frescoes as either preaching or presiding at the communion table. And then the very common image of resurrection, the peacock, was found at every turn.

The Vatican restored some of these images because, sadly, people throughout the centuries attempted to hide the women who were included by drawing beards on them. Though even after the restoration, the Catholic Church’s explanation was that the woman was presiding at a funeral banquet, not the Eucharist (Communion). Of course, in the ancient world, the church would have celebrated the Lord’s Supper at a funeral banquet, so that sort of undermines their argument. And what is even funnier for me was the nun who took us down into Priscilla’s catacombs, and upon asking her if that was a woman presiding at the Eucharist, she smiled and said, “It sure looks that way.”

There are Christians today who would argue that we need to return to the good old days, but of course, their skewed expectation is that certain people, including women, should return to their proper roles. Well, if we are going to be honest about history, then returning to the good old days would require a revolution of inclusion, where all the barriers of division fabricated out of elements of human insecurity and fear would crumble. In the end, people would be celebrated for who they were and invited to bring whatever gifts they had to the work of building God’s Kin(g)dom here on earth. 

Below, you will see a couple of images from Priscilla’s catacombs.

Continue to bring me alongside the Jesus I meet in the Gospels, O Lord of Light and Love. Allow me to journey alongside him and to see how he broke barriers at every turn, not simply to upset people but to provide a glimpse of who you are and what your dream for this world might look like. Allow for that glorious image to reside deeply within me. Amen.