Fifth Sunday of Easter - Cycle A 2019-2020
Acts 6:1-7 | 1 Peter 2:4-9 | John 14:1-12
Almighty, everliving God, you constantly accomplish the Pascal 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.
There’s an image that’s very strong in the beginning of this set of readings that I’d like to begin with, and it’s the idea that, when God revealed fully who he is and who he longs to be for his people, when he’d fully shared his revelation through this God/man Jesus, there was an impact that happened to the people that believed it. The first thing that was clear is that they grew in a need for one another. They came together. There was a community, and the community grew. And one of the things about the community at the beginning was it was a very different kind of gathering, and people took all that they had and put it together. And they lived off of a common source of food. It was obviously small, but still what is clear is that this message of Jesus creates this need for and this desire and this longing for a community, a dwelling place of likeminded people who feed each other, nurture each other. And there’s something about their work, that it was there to awaken in each other this thing that is so often described as the gift that came to the world through Jesus, and that is light and life. In other words, he came to explain something, show us something that we knew deep inside of us that we still are trying to find. It’s part of who we are, but it’s our nature that he’s revealing to us. And when we say light, we mean awakening, enlightenment to see who we really are and why we’re here and what we need and what we long for and then also who God is and what his plan is for us. And it’s so clear that his plan includes two things: a community of people, and the other thing about these people is they have a dedication, a desire to take care of each other. That was the thing that they always said about the Christians. “Look at them. They’re so different. Look at how they care for each other, how they love each other.”
Another thing that struck me as I was preparing for this homily was the fact that, for the first 300 years of Christianity, these people were outcasts. They were risking their lives and living this way of life, and it’s so fascinating that the rootedness of this message got into these people, because they had to risk their life to be in this work, engaged in this new life. So there had to be something so attractive about it, so natural to them that they say, “We’re willing to risk our life to do this.” And that really does create a dedicated group of people. So we have this image of dwelling together, a community bound by a kind of awareness of each other’s needs and wants so they were there for each other. It’s a beautiful image. It’s being a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who are called out of darkness into light. That’s one of the images of the scriptures today.
The gospel in this set of readings is a treasure of insight into the things that I think we’re longing to know and to understand about ourselves, because it’s clear in the first two readings that, when the message of Jesus enters into a person, they’re called into a community of people who serve one another. So there’s something about community and service that is core, and you would think that would be something natural to human beings. And in a sense it is, but we’re a complex people. We have this three-fold thing about us. We have needs. We have wants. We have desires. You’ve heard me use these three images before, and they’re important, but it might be a good thing to go over them again now. And that is that needs are the things that are just essential, like air, water, food and shelter. We don’t have to figure out what those are. They come naturally to us. It’s not a difficult thing to realize that these are things we have to have in order to live. Then we have wants, and the wants seem to come primarily from our mind, and the mind is susceptible to a lot of influences that are not always truthful. But the mind comes up with ideas that make sense to the mind that work for the needs of the human being that the mind is in. So it has a kind of self-centered part of it, which is not necessarily bad. It means that the mind will figure out things that we want, that make our life better and richer, but the danger is that it can really turn dark, because sometimes the mind can come up with ideas that are filling needs that are not necessarily healthy within us. So we get caught in addictions and all kinds of problems, but then there’s this other thing: our desires, our longings, and that’s the place where God enters.
When I think about — the second reading talks about a building, a place where we can dwell with God, and the thing that I’ve always used in my homilies and also learned from my work with Dr. Robert Sardello in his wonderful workshops is the heart. The heart is the place that I want you to think of as the dwelling that God has created for us, and it’s the place where we dwell with him. And in that place of the heart, the heart works out of a different motive, in a sense, than, I would say, the mind. It works not so much from figuring out what is best to do. It’s going inward and trying to find the wisdom of who we are and what we really need, and it’s not something that we could say is just something that is easy or practical. But it’s wisdom. It’s like the mind comes up with ideas, and the heart surrenders to truth, truth of who we are. Let’s imagine church then as the formation of this space, this room inside of us where God is there with us, and if we are understanding the role of membership in this community of God, we are naturally drawn to other people, and we draw them into our space to dwell with us. I love the fact that in — I think we’re all so sensitive to it today, is that we can’t meet in churches anymore as groups, and it’s painful. It’s hard. As a priest, I don’t have a community around me to celebrate every Sunday, and what is interesting to me about that is there was something about coming together in a place where God dwells, which is a symbol of coming together in each other’s space where God dwells inside of us. The image of church has had to shift from the building and the more literal sense of the way we celebrate it to something much more internal. Maybe that’s what’s so hard about this time of separation. We’re being challenged to ask ourselves, “What is this longing inside of us that feels so undernourished right now?” Yeah, it is that we can’t be in groups together, but it might also underscore the fact that there is a way for us to be together that isn’t necessarily always in a physical way, but it’s a way of imagining what life is. It’s a strange, mysterious process of we being a space, a dwelling in which God lives, and when we invite people into that, and people sometimes come into it when they’re not invited, but they’re just part of it, and it’s in that dwelling place that so much happens. And what happens is we understand what God intends life to be.
That’s the essence of this set of readings, I think. God in Jesus is ministering to these disciples who are going to form the community called the church, and at this moment, they have just been told that Jesus is going to die. He’s going to leave. It’s the Last Supper. He said, “I’m going to — I have to leave, and I’m not going to leave you alone. Don’t worry. I’ll be there with you.” And they’re completely confused, and so when Jesus tries to explain the mystery of what he’s really doing by saving them, by freeing them from all their illusions and half-truths, by bringing the truth into them, the Spirit of God opening their eyes to see who they really are. What they’re looking at is this plan of God. He said, “There’s no way I’m leaving you. I’m dying, and I’m not going to be physically with you. But after I die, I’m going to come back,” which is the mindblower. There’s no spiritual leader I know of that died and came back to life and spent a long period of time talking to groups of as large as 500 people at a time. Imagine the affirmation that might come to a person who realizes, “Wait. This person was dead, and now he’s back. I think I should pay attention to him.” But what he’s really saying to these men before he leaves, he’s saying, “There’s this mystery of intimacy with you and me and the people that are in your life. That intimacy is the place I need you to be, the space inside of you.”
And what is intimacy? Intimacy is a relationship with someone where there are no secrets, where there is nothing hidden, where there is an openness to who we are and a connection to who we are and a willingness to connect to another person as they are. There’s no judgment there. There’s no condemnation. There’s nothing but radical openness to who one truly is and acceptance of that and the recognition that, in accepting it and being in an authentic relationship with God and another person, is the essence of what it means to be alive. Imagine: to be alive is to be in this space that, yes, is celebrated in churches, in synagogues, in temples, but it’s also celebrated in a very intimate, personal way with people. And maybe that’s what we’re asked to examine and look at more carefully during this time of separation, isolation where we can’t do it as literally as we always do it, but now we have to recognize our longing for it and realize what it is that we’re longing for. It’s some kind of ability to be in a relationship with another where this self-disclosure, this longing that we have to be completely transparent with someone, even though that’s terrifying for most of us in many ways, but it’s what we’re made for. And when there is that kind of honest openness, it’s like we show each other who we are, just like Jesus is saying, “Look, I’m showing you who I am.” Then what he’s saying is, “I don’t do these things that you see me do. You think I’m a great miracle worker, but I’m just like you in a sense. I’m a human being, fully human, and that’s what I want people to see me as, and yet I’m filled with this power. And I want you to know you’re filled with it too.” That last line of the gospel is the one that I think so many people are touched by. For Jesus to look at his disciples and say, “You know the things I’ve done, given sight to people that are blind, enabling people to walk who are lame, enabling people to hear that couldn’t hear, to do things with their hands that are withered —“ Everything about his presence in the lives of others is a symbol of his making them more who they are, enabling them to function fully as they were intended to function. And he’s saying to his disciples, “If you let me dwell with you and then you invite other people to come into this dwelling that is us, they’re going to be ministered to.” It means two things. There’s two things human beings long for. They really long to be who they are, and you know when you’re faking it, and you know when you’re under pressure to be somebody because that’s what other people expect. You know that feeling, and you know what it’s like to be completely transparent and be honest and be loved and be accepted. That’s what we’re made for, the latter, and when that happens, when there’s that sense of well-being, that everything is as it should be, that I’m exactly who I’m supposed to be, and there’s nothing that I have to work on to make me better, and then you realize, “I want to give that to somebody else. I want them to see it. I want them to feel it,” that’s the dynamic. That’s church. That’s religion at its best: a human being affirmed, knowing that they’re loved and then turning and offering that same gift to another person.
We’re here to serve each other. That’s it. The mind can come up with a million ideas of how we can serve ourselves. Our instincts make sure we serve our body to keep it alive, but boy, the heart, that place, God in you, you in God, you open to another person, that person open to you, that’s where it all happens. That’s the place, the dwelling that God is trying to describe to his disciples through his Son. “Don’t be afraid. I’m always there with you. You’re never going to be alone, and you’re always going to be successful.”
Father, your gift is yourself. It’s hard to fathom that. It’s hard for us to imagine that you are that concerned about each of us individually, that you want an intimate relationship with us. It goes contrary to most everything our minds tell us about our weaknesses, our shortcomings, but it’s your will. It’s your plan, and so it awakens in us our own sharing in the work of Jesus, the priest, and we are all priests to one another, servants to one another. Bless us with an awareness of this gift. Let us first generously receive it and then know we are empowered to give it, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.