5th Sunday of Easter: B 23-24
5th Sunday of Easter
Acts 9:26-31 | 1 John 3:18-24 | John 15:1-8
Almighty, everliving God, constantly accomplish the Paschal mystery within us that those you are pleased to make new in holy baptism may, under your protective care, bear much fruit and come to the joys of life eternal. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.
Nothing is clearer to me, after I’ve been doing this work of preaching and teaching from this one source, scripture, that the ultimate goal of this entire story of God working with human beings has the motive, has the intention of moving us to a place where we never would have imagined that god is calling us into, and that’s intimacy with him. This whole story of God revealing himself throughout history is more than just God showing us who he is in scripture, but we also learn a great deal about who we are. So imagine that this story that I’ve been working from for 53 years as a priest is so clearly destined for a purpose. It has a focus, and the focus is to bring into reality a relationship with God that he has planned from the very beginning but something that human beings have had a hard time accepting, surrendering to. How do you learn to move from simply somebody who is told what to do by an authority greater than them to an experience of a God who says, “I want to live inside of you. I want to be a part of you”? It’s not easy, but I want to see maybe if I can give you an image of this whole story.
It’s like we have this incredible gift of wisdom in this recorded story of salvation history, started 4,000-plus years ago. And let’s look at it from a kind of objective perspective, like we’ve never, ever heard it before, and here’s a story about this God. And so if you were going to write a review, say, of scripture, what might you say to somebody who has never read it, never heard of it? Well, one way you could do it is to start with focusing on how it began and how it ended. What’s fascinating about the beginning of the story, it’s a story of creation. God, this mystical figure that exists for all time, decided in some mysterious way to create a world. He existed before the world, and so when he created this, we have a story of seven days when he created all the elements of this universe that we live in. At the special moment that is so crucial to the whole story, he decided, “I am also going to create human beings.” So he created the universe, all the animals, all the insects, everything, and then finally the crown of his creation is human beings.
And you might say, “Well, why did he create human beings?” Well, it strikes me, and this is something I’ve played with for a long time, and it’s also rooted in St. Bonaventure, who is one of the great doctors of the church that lived in the 13th century. In his mind — Bonaventure was a mystic and a doctor of the church, but he had this sense that, in God, there was some longing for something more than just the creation that he made. He wanted something more like him, something he could connect with and be in love with and have a relationship with. So he created these beings that were actually part of the whole evolution of creation, and they evolved. Of course you could say, “Isn’t there a story in the scriptures where he just, puff, made them out of just — I don't know — breathing into some mud figure?” Yes, there’s that story, but the story is not so much about how it happened but what happened. And what happened is God created creatures that were different than everything else he created, and the most interesting thing about them that was different is that they had freedom to make choices, to choose. He gave them a gift he didn’t give to the rest of creation, freedom, freedom to choose. So it’s obvious that he’s going to have a different relationship with these creatures called humans than with the rest of creation. So the story begins with that relationship. God created human beings. He found them very, very good, and he created a garden for them. And he revealed to human beings for the first time who he was and who they were.
So imagine that, if you can follow this, let’s say, in the evolution of human beings, growing naturally through a process that I think is more complex and more amazing than just poof, if he made them in seven — just in one day. But no, his plan was everything evolves in a natural way. So human beings are the crown of his creation, and they are constantly in a state of evolution, changing, growing, becoming more conscious, becoming more of who God intended them to be. So imagine — the story of scripture is primarily both theological and anthropological. It’s a story where we learn who God is and how he reveals himself to us, and we also learn who we are and how we are here to develop and grow. So we learn about God; we learn about humans.
So in this first story — it’s very interesting. The first story reveals the nature of both. God is a lover. He created this beautiful world. He loves these human beings. He created a garden for them. It’s an almost idyllic life. It was an idyllic life. They didn’t have to work. They didn’t have to do anything. They could just sit back and enjoy the garden, as if that’s who human beings are. They’re not creatures that want to be simply cared for in a garden like children for the rest of eternity. The story of Adam and Eve reveals not only a God who creates these creatures and wants to please them. It’s also about human beings who have their own desires and their own longings, and the thing that’s so fascinating about this story is it’s often been, I think, somewhat limited in its interpretation by focusing on it as if this action of disobedience on the part of Adam and Eve determines the fact that the human beings that God created are somehow evil. And I don't know that that’s really the heart of the story. It seems to me the heart of the story is human beings reveal in this story who they are, and they aren’t people who want to just lay around and be served. Human beings like to do things, to make things, to be engaged in things. It’s almost like, if you can imagine the story of Adam and Eve being two children of the richest man in the world and they say, “You don’t have to work. You don’t have to do anything. Just enjoy the house. Here’s the gym. Here’s the pool. Invite your friends over.” And they’d say, “I want to do more than that. I want to be more than that. I want to create. I want to do something, make something.” That’s just a part of human nature. But the scary part of human nature is also what’s revealed in this story, and that is they do like to do things on their own. So I want you to imagine that the story of Adam and Eve in the garden is a story about human beings revealing to all of us that we have something in us that I would say is a longing for autonomy. We like to do things on our own. We like to achieve things. “I’ll do it. Let me make it.” It’s like the people in the world like me who want read instructions when they get something, or when they go to the store, they can’t find something. They’re not going to ask somebody. They’re going to find it on their own. There’s something in us that has that longing for autonomy, and there’s something in God that is a longing for unity. And that’s the way the story starts: a God who wants a relationship and human beings who want to prove to themselves, and maybe indirectly to God in their mind, that they can handle things on their own. And that’s the beginning of the relationship, human beings off on their own and God longing for a relationship with them.
Now, what’s interesting is, if you look at the story as it continues from that point on, we see in the story of Adam and Eve that they are wanting autonomy. And then the next story in scripture is about Cain and Abel, and there’s a story about this figure, Cain, the oldest son, wanting to be the best, so autonomy, wanting to be the best. Now, there’s the story of the Tower of Babel where these human beings decided they could do anything they wanted. They could build anything they want, and that hubris in human beings that we can accomplish anything — those three things set the stage for what God has an agenda to wean human beings off of that disposition and to get them into a position where they are ready to surrender and open themselves to an extraordinary mystery. That’s the mystery of the incarnation.
So go back to the story at the beginning. Adam and Eve reveal to us that part of human nature. When God sent them out of the garden, was he punishing them and kicking them out, or was he saying, “Okay, I understand. You want to make it on your own. Tell you what. You go down. It’s going to be hard. You’re going to have this difficulty. It’s going to be not an easy life, but if that’s what you want to do. Let’s go do it. You go do it, and I’ll make some clothes for you in the meantime and send you off.” So it’s hard for me to imagine in that story that God is condemning Adam and Eve for being human. No, he’s giving them an opportunity to experience humanity and to recognize that humanity was never made to be autonomous. It was made to be in union and communion with divinity, and that’s the way the story ends.
The story ends with this incredible revelation finally, after 4,000 years, of who God really is, a God who longs for intimacy with his people. And then we see the story of human beings evolving over this long period of time where they finally see something, and they’re converted to a new understanding, radically different than what was in Adam and Eve at the beginning. It’s in a way summarized in the story of Paul. In Paul’s experience, what he’s done is he’s moved from an image of religion, let’s say, that is based in law, performance, reward, punishment, the temple, and then the fullness of the revelation of who God is, is in Jesus, and Jesus is God fully revealed. And who he is, is the same God that was in the Garden of Eden, and basically he still wants and now can achieve the thing he wanted then. It was union and communion with humans, and so we see then, in Paul, an image of the conversion that is to happen to the human race. Instead of religion being something that’s an obligation to fulfill, it’s an experience to have, and what Paul experienced is the presence of God, in the form of Jesus, coming to him and saying, “Hey, I need you. I want you. I will enable you to be the best preacher in the world, and I don’t have any judgment against you for the fact that you were really trying to destroy my people. I love you as you are. I see gifts in you. They exist, and I want you to allow me to remain in you, and you remain in me, and together we’ll do this incredible work.” And that’s the end of the story.
From isolation and separation from God to complete intimacy and union with God, that’s the goal, and so what we see then in the life of Jesus is this incredible, full unfolding of the plan of God. And then you listen to Jesus talking to his disciples after his resurrection, and he’s saying so clearly the same thing. “Look, from the beginning — from the beginning, God has always had this intention that you would realize you were never made to operate on your own. You were always made to create and to do and to accomplish but never on your own. I have to be in you for you to achieve the goal that I’ve placed in your hearts, but you thought I was placing it there with you in control of it. And it’s not that.” Human beings in their core nature have this big issue of autonomy and wanting to use and abuse and be in control and all those things. Well, yes, in a way we’re in control but not fully, and what we need to recognize is this incredible image that Jesus is working with that we are branches of this incredible core vine that is God. The branch can’t exist without the vine. The vine can exist without the branch, but the vine that is God desires not just to be the vine but to be fruitful in the world. And the fruitfulness is to transform human beings, and so we connected finally to the core of who we are, knowing we have this longing and this deep connection with God that was won for us in some mysterious way by the new Adam and that what we’re experiencing is this new potential union that creates the most effective way in which human beings have been destined to live. And we can ask for anything, and we get it. That’s a weird, wonderful thing to think about, but what it means is, when you have God in you, living in you, your desire is to love, and you believe in love. And you believe in the power of that. So when you’re asking God, “Help me to be a more interesting and powerful of bringing life to the world,” he will do it, and that’s what I count on every time I walk into this station.
God, the plan that you’ve had from the very beginning has unfolded, and it’s important that we grasp the fullness of this revelation that is our gift from you. Bless us with readiness to receive the truth and to surrender to the things that we have to let go of so that we can enter into this incredible indwelling presence with you, you remaining in us, we remain in you. It’s hard for us to do this work without the grace that is our inheritance. So awaken us to the power that is within us that sometimes lays unawakened and awaken it and bring us to the peace and the joy of the kingdom where we know we are cared for and have the capacity to give life and care for each other. And we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.