Download 5 Easter (Apr. 28) — Rev. Karen Barfield

5 Easter, Yr C (2013)
Acts 11:1-18
John 13:31-35
The Rev. Karen C Barfield
St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in
your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
Alleluia. Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Today we find ourselves on the 5th Sunday of Easter….
still celebrating the great 50 days of Easter!
Still celebrating the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Our Gospel text today harkens back to Maundy Thursday when Jesus washes the
disciples feet. After Judas leaves the meal, Jesus says, “I give you a new
commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should
love one another.” (Jn 13:34)
What does this mean – to love one another?
What I’m asking here is: what does it really mean to love one another?
I think we take as our starting point the part of Jesus’ command that says, “Just as I
have loved you.” Just as Jesus loved his disciples….that is how we are to love one
another.
John Main, a Benedictine monk, says this:
“This is the intoxicating foundation of the whole Christian mystery – that the
passover is accomplished. It is achieved in Jesus and it is his courage, his
faithfulness and his love that take us into the infinite expansion that is God. So there
is no essential ground for our fear, for our postponement, for our holding back….
“We have to remember that the axis of Christian life is death and resurrection. The
resurrection is to new life, limitless life, eternal life. Jesus tells us that if we are open
to him, if we have the courage to listen to him, to hear what he says, then eternal life,
infinite life and the infinite expansion of life is ours. That is the mystery. That is
what we are invited to be open to. That is what we are invited to proclaim to the
world.
“The Way is the way of daily fidelity, a daily aligning and realigning of our lives on
the mystery that is simplicity, that is love, that is unity.” (Main, Moment of Christ, p.
119)
Now let me try to put a little flesh to what Main describes as the aligning of our lives
to the mystery that is simplicity, love and unity.
Jean Vanier started the L’Arche community in a small village north of Paris. His
purpose in founding the community was to provide a family for those who felt weak
and poor because of a mental handicap.
He began this community by inviting Raphael and Philippe to live in his home. He
says of them, “They of course wanted me to do things for them, but more deeply
they wanted a true love; a love that sees their beauty, the light shining within them;
a love that reveals to them their value and importance in the universe.” (Vanier,
Community and Growth, p. 97)
Vanier tells the story of a woman named Innocente: “She has a severe mental
handicap. She will never be able to speak or walk or grow very much. She remains
in many ways like a child only a few months old. But her eyes and whole body
quiver with love whenever she is held in love; a beautiful smile unfolds in her face
and her whole being radiates peace and joy. Innocente is not helped by ideas, no
matter how deep or beautiful they may be; she does not need money or power or a
job; she does not want to prove herself; all she wants is loving touch and
communion. When she receives the gift of love, she quivers in ecstasy; if she feels
abandoned, she closes herself up in inner pain – the poorer a person is, old or sick or
with a severe mental handicap or close to death, the more the cry is solely for
communion and for friendship. The more then the heart of the person who hears
the cry, and responds to it, is awoken.” (ibid, pp 97-8).
As he relates this story of Innocente, it strikes me that perhaps because of her
mental handicap she is not as capable of creating the defenses that the rest of us are,
so that her great joy as well as her great pain are so obvious. How often do we hide
our great pain or shelter our joy?
It seems to me that all of us have the same need for love and communion that she
has.
In today’s reading from Revelation the one seated on the throne said, “See, I am
making all things new….” I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.” (Rev
21:5-6)
This new creation has begun in and through Christ…in and through the life, death
and resurrection of Jesus. We are invited to drink from the spring of the water of
life, and it is our task to invite others to drink from this same spring! As we love one
another, we invite each other to drink deeply of life abundant.
But, loving one another is not easy.
It involves risk.
It involves our own vulnerability to not only admit our need for communion and
love but to risk offering that love and communion to others through our own lives.
Jesus said, “just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”
Jesus emptied himself, even to the point of giving up his life for others.
Perhaps this is why we often keep Jesus “out there” as the Son of God…
to accept his full humanity is frightening in its implication for our lives.
To accept his full humanity means that we, too, are called to enter into real
relationship with one another, to share in the suffering of others as we dare to love
them.
Vanier continues:
“The cry for love and communion and for recognition that rises from the hearts of
people in need reveals the fountain of love in us and our capacity to give life. At the
same time, it can reveal our hardness of heart and our fears. Their cry is so
demanding, and we are frequently seduced by wealth, power and the values of our
societies. We want to climb the ladder of human promotion; we want to be
recognized for our efficiency, power and virtue.
“The cry of the poor is threatening to the rich person within us. We are sometimes
prepared to give money and a little time, but we are frightened to give our hearts, to
enter into a personal relationship of love and communion with them. For if we do
so, we shall have to die to all our selfishness and to all the hardness of our heart.”
(Ibid, p. 98)
As we engage the needs and pains of others, we are then confronted with our own
needs and pain, and that is difficult. And, we realize that we are just as in need of
communion and love as our neighbors.
The good news, however, is that as we love one another and enter into each other’s
lives in a deep and real way, we are able to offer one another forgiveness, healing
and hope.
I want to look briefly at today’s story in Acts because this story gives flesh to what it
means to love and be open to the work of the Spirit in our own lives.
Peter, who has spent his whole life as a faithful Jew, receives a vision from God that
tells him to act contrary to the traditions of his faith. He is told by God to eat
animals that are forbidden by the Law to eat. As Peter objects, the Lord then says,
“What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”
At that moment three men arrived, and the Spirit told Peter to go with them, not
making any distinction between them and himself. When he arrived at the house
and began to speak, Peter related “the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon
us at the beginning.”
As Peter relayed this story to the circumcised – that is, to those who faithfully
followed the Law of their tradition and who were objecting to Peter’s having eaten
with Gentiles – he said, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when
we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”
In other words Peter was relaying his own experience of witnessing to the work of
the Spirit in the act of doing a new thing….making all creation new.
Jesus, in loving his disciples and all those who had ears to hear, dared to enter into
their lives – into their sources of pain and guilt and fear – and invited them to drink
from the well of life.
He emptied himself by setting aside any need for affirmation or place of honor or
adherence to the Law simply because it was the Law.
In loving, he offered Life; and in the course of his emptying himself completely on
the cross invites us to drink deeply of this same spring.
As Paul said, “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (I Cor 1:18)
God is making all things new and invites us to participate in this new creation as we
dare to love one another.
Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or
imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ
Jesus for ever and ever. Amen. (Eph 3:21-21)