“I’ve become the bionic padre”

Father Esequiel Sanchez is Rector of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Des Plaines, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. He was one of 103 survivors of an Aeromexico plane crash outside Durango, Mexico, on July 31, 2018.

Father Sanchez suffered multiple fractures to his left arm, requiring surgery and the insertion of a metal plate. He said in response, “I’ve become the bionic padre.”

In his sermon last Sunday, Father Sanchez declared that the real miracle was not that everyone survived the plane crash, but that so many went back into the burning plane to rescue others.

A powerful metaphor

Survivors helping others survive is a powerful metaphor for the work of Christians in a post-Christian culture.

Jesus called his first disciples to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, where they would confront the very authorities who executed him (Acts 1:8). They were to bring his message to “all Judea and Samaria,” where they would encounter Jews who opposed them and Samaritans who rejected them.

They were ultimately to go to “the end of the earth,” probably a reference to Rome, the capital of the pagan Empire. Along the way, they learned to relate their message to their culture so effectively that they “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).

How can we follow their example?

The “love and teach” circle

In the context of Western Christianity, we can think of culture as three circles.

The first can be called the “love and teach” circle. Here we find the biblical worldview with all its precepts and principles. In essence, we are to love our Lord and our neighbor (Matthew 22:37-39), and we are to teach the world to obey all that Jesus commanded us (Matthew 28:20).

Of course, to teach the world to obey Jesus’ commands, we must first obey them ourselves.

The “reject and replace” circle

The second can be called the “reject and replace” circle. Here we find truth claims and practices we must reject if we are to live in the first…