6th Sunday of Easter
Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48 | 1 John 4:7-10 | John 15:9-17

Grant, almighty God, that we may celebrate with heartfelt devotion these days of joy, which we keep in honor of the risen Lord and that what we believe in remembrance we may always hold to in what we do 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 in the scriptures than the focus on love.  Love, what is it?  It’s interesting that the Greeks had different words for love: eros, agape, philia.  When I listen to  those descriptions of love, it doesn’t sound like it describes love as much as it describes what love might be drawn to, what its function is.  It’s there to give life to friends, to the world, love of God, and it has also that image of — there’s a love that is eros, which is drawn to physical connection and intimacy and celebration of that.  What I’m saying is those don’t give me much of an insight into what love is, but I want to see if I can try to touch into this mystery, because I want you to think of love as the life force — the life force, that thing that we’re here to engage in, to be a part of, to allow it to flow from us to another, to allow another to be filling us with this life force.  So it’s this dynamic thing that we call life, and it’s clear that, in this world that God has created, it’s intimately tied into relationships.  In fact, it’s the one thing we take with us when we leave this world: relationships.  And what are relationships?  Those connections that we have with people in our life, and everyone has a certain circle of relationships.  Some of them are with family, and some of them are with the people that we choose to be with.  Some are created for us by where we work or where we live or who lives next to us.  But whatever the context is, there is this sense there is something we are called to do in this world if we are believers in the God who created us, and we want to be who he’s calling us to be, like him.  Then we have to enter into, seriously into this work of love, and it’s so much more than just liking something.  I love it, because I like it.  I enjoy it.  No, it’s deeper.  It’s more powerful.  It’s more mysterious.

So let’s imagine it as the thing that God shares with us that is best described as his presence in the world, because God is love, and we have the option of choosing to be engaged in this gift called love or not.  So that’s our responsibility whether we are lovers or not, and the lover we’re called to be is this figure that is engaged in this powerful thing that is called the life force, that’s called God.  So it’s — the incarnation is at the heart of our whole understanding of what it means to be a follower of this God.  So what we have to understand is that we have been empowered with this love force inside of us, and we call it God, God dwelling in us.  And we have been focusing on that in the scriptures these last couple of weeks since Easter, God remaining in us, God living in us, God wanting to marry us, wanting to be a part of us.  And that desire that he has to be a part of us is not just for us, but it’s for our role in the world, which is to give this gift that has been given us to others. 

We receive it first inside of us, and then once it becomes a part of us, we’re able to give it to someone else.  And it’s all wrapped around this mysterious thing as presence, God’s presence in you.  So how do you receive God’s presence?  Allow him to love you.  What does that mean?  It means to let go of all those things that we might create inside of us to think of what makes us lovable, what makes us pleasing to God.  We should earn it, right?  We should work for it.  We’re told that indirectly by a lot of religious figures in our life.  God doesn’t want to be a part of somebody who isn’t pure, isn’t perfect.  What a misconception, as if love is something we earn, love is something we create a space within us by our own energy so that God will come into us.  There’s nothing that’s further from the truth.  God comes into us in our messiness.  He wants to have an impact on us.  And what does love do to someone who receives it?  It changes them.  How does it change them?  Well, it changes them in the sense that there is a way in which we are made up of — as our humanity, we have this thing called our ego, our sense of self, and then we have this God that comes along and tells us, “Listen, I created this thing called you.  It has a dimension to autonomy.”  We find that in the story of Adam and Eve.  Human beings like to be on their own.  They have a sense of themselves, and then God created a way in which he said, “I want you to allow me to get into you by allowing me to enter into you by loving you.” 

So how do we work with that?  Well, it takes this, I guess you might call it, a disposition of neediness.  When we’re in our egos, when we’re in that autonomous state and we’re doing well, nobody needs to be told that they need some support from something outside of themselves.  They’re filled with themselves.  That’s one of the great weaknesses of human beings.  We tend to be too closely identified with our effectiveness by saying we are the ones that create this person that we present to someone else.  We’re responsible for it.  We’re responsible.  If it’s received well, that means we deserve some kind of honor for that.  That egocentric world is the hook that we’ve got to be careful of, because it blocks this one mysterious process, God loving us, entering into us, being the source of life in us that he’s asking us to share with other people.  And you know what?  When you’re in that role of being a lover because you’ve been loved by God, you are giving something to them that you’re not responsible for.  You’re not the cause of it.  You can’t take credit for it, and you can’t take blame if it doesn’t work. 

Think of it.  A life force is given to you and to me to dwell inside of us.  How do we allow it in?  We allow it in by allowing God to be a source of that which we know we need that we can’t create on our own, and if you have a desire to be effective in the world, which is a gift from God, we need a powerful source to be able to do it.    And we tend to go to our ego.  We tend to say, “I will make this person in my life a better person.  I will decide for them what they need.  I will make sure they do it.  I will manipulate them.”  That’s working out of the ego.  You become the work.  But the real work is this mysterious thing called love, and it comes into us by our allowing it to come in by simply saying to God, “I’m not enough.  I can’t do this work.  I need something to affirm me so that I can be more than my ego, more than this controlling factor that I have inside of me that, when I use it on people, they resent it.  They feel used or abused.”  But love never abuses.  It has this deep powerful respect for the work, and what is the work?  A lover works with a power that is not their ego but something that God gives them, and they know that, when they use it, it is effective.  It changes people.

Look at Peter in the first reading.  Look at what he was doing.  Well, it doesn’t really talk about it in that reading, but if you look at the life of Peter — most people don’t realize that Peter raised a person from the dead.  Peter would heal crippled people, just like Jesus.  So you’re seeing in Peter a powerful force that changes people, radically changes them.  Dorcas, a woman who was a follower and caretaker for the early church and, with Jesus, she was one of those women that always cared for him in a sense.  And one of the things that happened when she died, they called Peter, and Peter uses a similar two-word statement.  He says to her, “Get up.”  And she rises from the dead.  Just like Jesus said to Lazarus, “Come out.”  Here’s a human being bringing people back to life.  Well, wow, well done, Peter.  How did you do that?”  That’s why Cornelius falls at his feet and says, “You’re this divine, powerful force.”  No, he said, “No, I’m just a human being,” Peter says.  “Get up.  I’m just a human being.  Please don’t act as if I am the source of that tremendous power that is called love that gives life where there is no life.”  Allow it to flow through you.  That’s Peter’s major statement to those he was preaching to, and those disciples were so unique, because they had failed so miserably in what they thought they should be.  They knew they were forgiven.  At the same time, they knew they had this power in them that they could affect these radical changes, and they didn’t let their ego get in the way and imagine that they were the source.

So how do you work with love as a gift that comes into you that is not you?  And if you use it as if it’s you, it becomes manipulative and demanding of someone else, and they don’t feel love.  They feel like they have to perform whatever you want them to do.  When real love, when it flows through you, it’s not you.  It’s the power that only God knows that a person needs, the healing that they need, and as long as you stay detached from the work of what love does, you’ll be an instrument of it.  You’ll be an instrument of it.  You’ll do miracles, because you’re not the source of the miracle, but the work is.  And what is the work?  The work is this mysterious thing that God said, “If you allow me to be in your, loving you just for who you are, and you haven’t done a thing to perform to get it, then you’re in the beginning of the right stands of being able to be a vehicle for this great life force that God puts inside of you that you have to learn how to keep your ego out of it.” 

Sometimes I want people to tell me that my work is effective.  I love when people stop me and say, “Oh, last week, what you said on the homily really helped.”  My ego gets instantly engaged in that and says, “Yeah, well, I’m pretty — I am amazing.  I am really good.  I’m better than the others that don’t do that.”  What?  Did I do it?  When I sit here and preach to you in this context of a radio station, I have earphones on, and a microphone is picking up my words.  If I’m sitting here thinking that I am the source of whatever is coming through to you, that I, Don Fischer, I’m responsible for it, which leads me to two deadly dead-ends — one is, if it’s not working, then there’s something wrong with me, and if it is working, then it’s all about me.  How do you get out of that and stay in the reality of this work?  This dwelling, in-dwelling power of God called love operates through us and not — it’s not us.  That’s so hard for me.  I get so caught up in my own performance, and it’s deadly.  If I can give this gift away to people without feeling responsible, then I can be a vehicle, I think, of what love really means, because love is the life force that dwells in anyone who receives it, and it can flow out of them so perfectly and so beautifully, as long as they don’t get it confused with their own egocentricity, their need to be great, their need to be wonderful and need feedback. 

So that’s why I think Peter could be a person who lifted people from the dead and healed cripples and still walk around and not feel that he was special.  “I’m just like you.  I’m just a human being.”  What a gift.  What a gift to be able to do that, and what does it bring?  This mysterious thing called joy.  Jesus said, “If you will allow me to love you and be in you and love others through you, let me use you as my conduit for my love of another person, you’re going to feel so exalted at your position.   You’re going to be filled with joy, and nothing will rob you of this feeling that all is well and all will be well.  And that my value is grounded in a work that’s not me means that you don’t have to go and work to make something to bring it to someone to say, “Here, this is what you need.”  That’s a lot of work, and that’s a lot of responsibility, and then you’re well-being might depend on whether they like it or not.  Think of it as being able to know exactly what someone needs, not because you’ve figured it out but because God knows it, and you’re offering it to people without any sense of responsibility for them to respond to it, because it’s not about their response to God’s power.  It’s their allowing it to be there, allowing it.  If you allow God’s love to pass through you to another person and that person allows that love there, it’s the life force that does the healing, that strengthens your crippled body, that brings you out of a place of death into life.  What a joy to be able to do that when it’s nothing more than receiving a gift and giving it away.  Other than working really hard to make it happen and you’re the source of it, and they’d better like it, because if they don’t, your value is at stake.  That just ruins everything, and I know what it’s like to be ruined that way, and I don’t want to be anymore.

Father, your gift to us is you, you living in us, remaining in us, and you are love, this mysterious life force that, when it touches the hearts of those who are capable of receiving it, free enough to receive it, resistant to all of those things that keep it away, we become this life source. Thank you. What a gift it is and what a privilege it is to be an instrument of your work, not our work, your work, saving and healing and transforming the world, and we ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.