Easter 6

Readings: Acts 15:1-2, 22-29; Rev 21:10-14, 22-23; Jn 14:23-29

In today’s gospel, 
Jesus tells his disciples to “keep his word”
as a sign of the love that they have for him,
and he promises to send the Holy Spirit,
who “will teach you everything
and remind you of all that I told you.”
To keep Jesus’ word means not simply 
to remember what he said,
or even to follow his instructions,
but it is to have Jesus, 
who is God’s eternal Word,
come and make his dwelling in us,
giving us his peace,
the peace that the world cannot give.
That is what the Holy Spirit does
in teaching and reminding us:
it makes Jesus and his peace abide in us.

This sounds all very pious,
but what does this look like in practice?
What does it look like for the followers of Jesus
to embody the peace that the world cannot give? 
Well, it might look pretty mundane—
even legalistic and bureaucratic. 
In our first reading, from the book of Acts,
we hear recounted a meeting called
among the apostles, 
along with Paul and Barnabas,
to address a legalistic question:
namely, which parts of the Law of Moses
did non-Jewish converts to Christ have to obey?
It results it what is essentially an HR memo
to the Gentile converts in Antioch
telling them which parts of the Law 
applies to them—
those concerning idolatry,
certain foods,
and whom you can and cannot marry—
and, by implication, which did not—
namely, the practice of circumcision. 

The apostles describe this as 
“the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us,” 
which is a pretty grand claim
for an HR memo—

what might sound to us more like 
a legalistic, bureaucratic compromise
than the workings of the Spirit 
who blows where it will.
But who’s to say that the Spirit cannot be at work 
in legalistic bureaucratic compromises?
After all, Jesus calls the Spirit an “advocate,”
which is how we translate the Greek parakletos,
the term for a legal counsel,
one who stands beside you in a court 
to advise you and represent your interests.

As strange as it may seen,

as hard as it is for me to believe,

the Holy Spirit is a lawyer.
So it seems that the Spirit 
not only can be at work within processes 
of legalistic bureaucratic compromise,
but this is actually the Spirit’s special skill set.

Still, to fully appreciate 
how the Spirit works in the Church,
we also need to pay attention
to what is left out of the account
as we have just heard it.
Our reading omits the process by which
the apostles, counseled by the Spirit, 
arrive at this compromise.
First, Peter tells the story of his experience
with the Gentile Cornelius and his family,
how God “who knows the heart, 
bore witness by granting them the Holy Spirit 
just as he did us… 
[and] made no distinction
between us and them, 
for by faith he purified their hearts.”
His testimony is strengthened by Paul and Barnabas,
who speak of “the signs and wonders 
God had worked among the Gentiles.” 

Then, James, who is chairing the meeting,
speaks up to note how what 
Peter, Paul, and Barnabas are describing
fits with the words of the Lord
as recorded in the prophet Amos,
showing how their experience 
sheds new light on Scripture
and Scripture confirms their experience:
“I shall return and rebuild the fallen hut of David;
from its ruins I shall rebuild it and raise it up again,
so that the rest of humanity may seek out the Lord,
even all the Gentiles on whom my name is invoked.”
The words of Amos show how this story
fits into the wider story of salvation:
the family of Israel is called by God
and given the Law of Moses
so that through it all of families of peoples
might be freed from the curse of sin
and regain God’s primordial blessing.
God’s will is that Jew and Gentile 
be brought together in one body,
the ancient dividing wall of hostility between them
broken down by Christ’s cross and resurrection.
This legalistic and bureaucratic HR memo
is a key moment in God bestowing
the peace that the world cannot give.

God does not act in this way
because God is legalistic or bureaucratic,
but because we are.
We exist in time and space,
we are beings with histories and institutions,
we require meetings and memos 
to make and communicate judgments.
We needs synods and conclaves
and planning processes.
God accommodates our human condition
by the gift of the Spirit who stands with us
as we listen to people’s experiences,
as we read the Scriptures together,
as we sift and negotiate and compromise
and try to find our way to something
that looks a little more like that peace 
that the world cannot give.

Of course, our listening and reading and negotiating
will never on their own lead us to the fullness that peace.
In the vision of John recorded in Revelation,
the heavenly Jerusalem descends from heaven.
We do not build that glorious city 
that gleams with the splendor of God;
we receive it as a gift.
This heavenly city that comes to dwell on earth,
this city that is the peace the world cannot give,
requires no meetings or memos or institutions—
it doesn’t even need a temple 
to mark God’s presence,
for the crucified and risen Lamb is there,
from whom shines forth the light of God 
by which all judgements are just,
in which all our stories are honored,
through which all divisions are healed.

But until that day,
as we make our pilgrimage through time,
holding our meetings,
writing our memos,
making our judgments as best we can,
we trust that the Spirit stands beside us,
walking with us as our advocate and guide,
making God’s Word dwell somehow
within our human words.
And we pray on our pilgrimage
that God would give us 
the peace that the world cannot give,
that God in his mercy
would have mercy on us all.

 

Easter 5

Readings: Acts 14:21-27; Rev 21:1-5a; Jn 13:31-33a, 34-35

Christianity did not arrive in the world
as a philosophy or an ethical code, 
but as a community that grew up
around a person: Jesus of Nazareth.
Of course, we Christians do 
have beliefs and rules
but, at the heart of it, 
Christianity is a way 
of being with one another
by being with Jesus.
The Church is not an optional support group
for Christians who need that sort of thing.
To be Christian is to belong to a tribe—
a tribe not defined 
by land or ideology or bloodline,
but by abiding in Christ’s love
as we abide in love for each other:
“As I have loved you, so you also 
should love one another.”
To be a Christian is to belong
to the community of those
who love one another as he has loved us.

And how has he loved us?
He has loved us with a love 
both divine and human:
divine in its inexhaustible power
and human in its form of appearing.
Love mighty enough to call a universe into being
and yet emptying itself to become
the infant entrusted to our human care,
the teacher speaking our human language,
the victim receiving our human wrath,
the risen one revealing our human destiny.
Above all, he has loved us without reserve,
without holding anything back;
he has, as John’s Gospel says,
loved us to the end.
And we in turn 
should love one another in this way:
we should love each other to the end.

Easier said than done, right?
Loving as he loved is difficult 
because people can be pretty unlovable:
petty, stubborn, willfully blind,
self-involved, thin-skinned, and so forth.
This is as true today as it has always been.
But it also seems to be difficult in new ways.
We live in a culture that has long valued
independence and individualism
but our society is now said to be suffering
from an “epidemic of loneliness”:
over 50% of people say that they have
fewer social connections than they would like.
Some of this might be the long-term effect
of our individualism and independence,
and some may be fallout from the pandemic:
“social distancing” has become a habit.
Whatever the cause, medical professionals note 
numerous threats to human flourishing
associated with loneliness: 
impaired cognitive function, 
depression, anxiety, increased risk of suicide, 
cardiovascular disease, diabetes, infection.

But for those of us 
who belong to the tribe of Christ
there is a more profound threat 
in this epidemic of loneliness,
for we cannot be Christian alone.
To be a Christian is to be part of a tribe,
part of a body that gathers.
It’s not enough to claim 
membership in the Church 
in the abstract way one claims membership
in a political party or an honor society.
The Catholic tradition expects the tribe
to gather weekly, 
on the day of Christ’s resurrection,
to celebrate the Eucharist—
not simply to recall Christ sacrifice
and receive his body and blood,
but also to be confronted with the concrete reality
of the brothers and sisters for whom Christ died;
to bear with our unbearable neighbor 
for at least one hour;
to try to love those who are 
petty, stubborn, willfully blind,
self-involved, thin-skinned—
those who, in short, 
are as bad as we are.

And maybe this hour is all we can manage.
Maybe rituals of shared listening and singing,
of wishing peace to our neighbor,
of eating and drinking
the one bread and one cup
are as much love as we can handle.
But these are not mere ritual gestures;
these are sacred signs that make present to us
the love that loves us to the end,
and calls us more deeply into itself
by calling us into love for one another,
a love that shows itself to the world
in concrete acts of service and fellowship,
love leavening loneliness.
In the midst of our loneliness
this hour opens a door into loving as he loves,
and to step through that door 
is to begin here and now 
a shared journey to the heavenly Jerusalem,
where God will dwell with us 
and we will be God’s people together, 
where God will wipe every tear from our eyes—
no more death or mourning or wailing or pain—
where the old order of isolation 
will have passed away
and we will know and love each other
even as we are each known and loved by God.

The servant of God Dorothy Day,
who devoted her life 
to living with the poor,
to feeding the hungry
and sheltering the outcast, wrote:
“We cannot love God unless we love each other,
and to love we must know each other.
We know Him in the breaking of bread,
and we know each other in the breaking of bread,
and we are not alone anymore.
Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too,
even with a crust, where there is companionship.
We have all known the long loneliness
and we have learned that the only solution is love
and that love comes with community.”

Or, as another American Catholic, Pope Leo,
said this morning in his inaugural homily: 
“With the light and the strength of the Holy Spirit, 
let us build a Church founded on God’s love, 
a sign of unity, 
a missionary Church that 
opens its arms to the world, 
proclaims the word, 
allows itself to be 
made ‘restless’ by history, 
and becomes a leaven 
of harmony for humanity.”

Let us pray that the one we know 
in the breaking of bread
will call us out of our isolation
and into journeying together to our true home,
drawing us ever deeper into loving as he loves,
and that God in his mercy
might have mercy on us all.