Easter 2

Readings: Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31

We hear in our second reading today,
from the First Letter of John,
that anyone who truly has faith
that Jesus is God’s Son
not only believes, but also loves.
And he or she loves not only God the Father,
but also the child who is begotten by God.
And the child begotten by God is not only Jesus,
who is, as the Creed says,
“born of the Father before all ages,”
but also includes all those
who have been reborn in Christ
and become children of God.

St. Augustine, in a sermon on this passage,
says that one who truly believes loves not just Jesus
but all those who are members of his body.
Augustine speaks of loving “the whole Christ”—
Jesus the head,
but also we who are his body,
his limbs, his hands and feet.
Indeed, Augustine says that
the whole Christ includes also
those who are not yet visibly
members of Christ’s body
but who are destined by God
to one day be united with him.
Claiming to love Jesus the head,
Augustine says,
while not loving our brothers and sisters
who make up Christ’s body
is like kissing someone on their lips
while stepping on their toes (Homily 10 on 1 John).
We only have true faith
if we love the whole Christ,
both the head and the members.

Then John says something
that may at first surprise and puzzle us:
“the victory that conquers the world
is our faith.”
This statement might conjure for us
troubling images
of crusaders or conquistadors
who bear the cross in one hand
and a sword in the other,
spreading Christianity around the world by force.

Perhaps it goes without saying
that I think this misunderstands
what John’s letter means
when it speaks of victory
and conquest over the world.
“The world” that faith conquers
doesn’t mean the globe,
and the world-conquest spoken of
is not a matter of seizing territory.
Rather, “the world” is John’s coded language
for all of those powers
of hatred and greed and self-seeking
that are opposed to the light and love of God
revealed in Jesus Christ.
Faith’s victory over the world
is the triumph of self-sacrificing love
over our sinful human tendency
to pursue only our own good.

Faith conquers the world
not by occupying territory
but by occupying hearts.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus,
eating his final meal with his disciples,
knowing that he is going to face death
for those he loves,
says to them,
“Have courage;
I have conquered the world” (John 16:33).
If we believe that he has conquered
through his love,
if we believe that his cross is more powerful
than any sword,
if we believe that death had
no power to hold him,
then his Spirit has taken hold of our hearts.
In our love for the whole Christ
we say “no” to the forces
of hatred and self-interest
that would seek to convince us
that self-sacrificial love
is a loser’s game.
In our love for the whole Christ
we proclaim that true victory
belongs to those who love
to the point of laying down their lives.

We catch a glimpse of this victory
in the Book of Acts’ depiction
of the earliest Christian community.
Living in the immediate afterglow of the resurrection
and the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost,
“there was no needy person among them”
because all their resources were pooled together
“and they were distributed to each according to need.”
There was no needy person among them
because self-giving love
was victorious over self-interest.
Through this faith suffused with love
for the whole Christ,
the first Christians
conquered the world.

This image of the earliest Church
may sound suspiciously socialist to some,
but it has inspired Christians
from St. Benedict to St. Francis to Dorothy Day.
And it should inspire and challenge us today.
At the very least,
it should prompt us to ask
how our own life together as a parish
might more clearly manifest
the faith that conquers the world,
might more clearly show
our love for the whole Christ,
head and members.

Maybe it begins with something as simple
as remembering each other in prayer on a daily basis,
or volunteering to teach in our faith formation program,
or even coming to our parish open house next Saturday.
These are small things,
but by God’s grace
they are the seeds of self-giving love,
the love-infused faith that we must have
if we are to be a life-filled
and life-giving Christian community,
a community in which
the risen Christ is present
saying to us
and saying through us,
“Have courage;
I have conquered the world”—
“Do not be unbelieving,
but believe.”

Holy Thursday

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-5

It is often said that John’s Gospel is the one
that presents most clearly Jesus’ divine glory.
After all, John begins his Gospel
by speaking of Jesus as the Word
who is in the beginning with God and who is God.
In John’s Gospel Jesus speaks at great length
about his relationship as Son
to the one he calls “Father,”
whose glory he shares and reveals.
And even as John begins his account
of Jesus’ final meal with his disciples
he tells us that Jesus was,
“fully aware that the Father
had put everything into his power
and that he had come from God
and was returning to God.”
As his hour drew near, Jesus knew
that God the Father was his origin and his destiny
and, as the eternal Son of the Father,
God had put everything in his power.
Surely, this was greatness and power and glory
such as the world had never seen.

But John’s Jesus is also a strikingly human figure.
He is someone who celebrates at a wedding reception
and weeps at the tomb of his friend Lazarus.
He is someone whose spirit is “troubled”
when he predicts his own death
and when he predicts Judas’ betrayal.
He is not just strikingly human,
but he makes himself into
a particular kind of human being:
he takes up the position of the lowliest,
the most menial of human beings:
At the last supper, before his farewell discourse
at which he would reveal his intimacy
with God the Father,
“he rose from supper
and took off his outer garments.
He took a towel and tied it around his waist…
and began to wash the disciples’ feet.”
Jesus the master becomes a servant to his disciples.

St. Augustine saw in these actions
not simply an act of service
but an enacted parable of the meaning
of Jesus’s whole existence:
Jesus removes his outer garment
to symbolized his emptying himself of his divine glory,
and ties the towel around his waist
to symbolize his taking
the form of a servant (Tractate 55.7).
At the last supper the exalted Word of God,
in whose hands the Father has placed divine power,
uses those hands to wash his follower’s feet,
the most humble of tasks.

This humility that Jesus shows at the Last Supper
is a foreshadowing of the humility
to the point of humiliation
that he will show on the cross.
But for John, the humiliation of the cross
is paradoxically Jesus’ supreme glorification—
it is the point at which supreme divine power
is revealed in the weakness of a love
that is willing to die for the truth.

The 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote,
“We do not show greatness by being at one extreme,
but rather by touching both at once
and filling all the space in between” (Pascal, Pensées 560).
John’s Gospel is a gospel of extremes.
Jesus is the exalted, all-powerful, all-knowing God made flesh
and he is the servant who performs the most lowly of tasks.
Touching at the same time the highest divine glory
and the deepest human humility,
Jesus fills all the space in between,
revealing his glory in his supreme act of humility.
You do not understand the true greatness of Jesus Christ
until you know both his glory and his humility.

But knowing this, we are freed
to be honest with ourselves about ourselves—
that is to say, to be both humble and glorious ourselves.
When we discover the glorious humility of God
we no longer have to try to convince ourselves
either that we are too good to wash the feet of others,
or that our feet are too dirty to let others wash.
To quote Pascal again:
“Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride,
and before whom we humble ourselves
without despair” (Pascal, Pensées 245).
Because Christ reveals to us a God
who stoops to wash our feet,
filling all the space in between humility and glory,
as we share tonight in his act of humility,
freed from both pride and despair
we can touch his glory,
the glory that is revealed
in these days of cross and resurrection,
the glory that we share in mystery even now,
the glory with which we too
will one day shine in God’s kingdom.