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.

Easter 5

Readings: Acts 41:21-23; Revelation 21:1-5a; John 13:31-33a; 34-35

As many of you know,

the pastoral council’s survey of the parish last year

revealed that 65% of those responding

have been in the parish for fewer than ten years,

and 51% had been in the parish for fewer than five years.

(I should note that, having been in the parish twelve years,

this makes me one of the “old timers” –

something I’m not too happy about.)

And if you have been paying attention

to those who tend to stand in the back of the church

you might have noticed that in the past six months

we have had something of a baby boom.

And when you add this to the seven children

we welcomed to Christ’s altar

at last week’s first communion celebration,

one has something of a sense of what John felt in the book of Revelation

when he heard the voice form the heavenly throne say,

“Behold, I make all things new.”

He must have felt a sense of exhilaration

at the new vistas opening up before him:

the new Jerusalem descending from heaven,

the city where God will dwell with the human race,

where “there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain,

for the old order has passed away.”

At the same time, John must have felt a sense of apprehension

at the prospect of all things being made new –

the prospect of the transformation of all that is familiar

into something new and different.

How, we might ask, will we find our way

if God makes all things new,

if the old order passes away entirely?

These thoughts occur to me at this particular moment

because on Thursday we buried Ruby Strawberry,

eighty-nine years old,

a long-time and faithful parishioner

who attended the 4:00 Mass,

and because in a few minutes we will baptize

two of our newest parishioners, Theo and Mary.

Somehow, at least in my mind, these two events

keep intersecting with each other.

It is tempting at such a moment

to think of an old order of things passing away

and a new order of things beginning,

to think of the passing the torch from one generation to another

as part of the ceaseless cycle of birth and death.

But I think there is something far more mysterious going on here.

It is not that Theo and Mary are arriving just as Ruby is leaving.

This might be true in terms of the natural cycles of birth and death,

but it is not true when we take into account the mystery of God’s grace.

For our faith is that Ruby hasn’t really left us;

reborn in Christ, she is not part of the old order that has passed away,

but rather is a citizen of the new and heavenly Jerusalem

where she dwells with God.

She is not gone;

she has simply moved more deeply

into the mystery of Christ’s body,

the same body of Christ into which

Theo and Mary will soon be baptized.

By our human reckoning Ruby might belong to one generation

and Theo and Mary to another,

but in Christ’s body they share a common birth into eternal life,

and are “fellow citizens with the saints

and members of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19).

Somehow, in the mystery of the Church,

Mary and Theo will be Ruby’s friends;

they will pray for her

when our book of memory is presented each November,

and I am confident that she will pray for them

in the mysterious eternity of the Church triumphant.

This is what it means to be the Church:

to believe that we are united by God’s grace in Christ’s body.

And this is why Christ commands his disciples in today’s Gospel

to love one another with the same love with which he has loved them.

This is the love that can united us across barriers of time and distance,

and even across the barrier of death.

It is important always to keep this love that Christ commands

before our eyes

as we live our life together as a community of faith.

Given human nature, we can be tempted either to cling to the past,

to the ways that we have always done things,

or to become so enamored of the new that we dismiss our heritage

as merely part of the old order that has passed away.

Both temptations must be resisted

if we are to fulfill Christ’s command of love.

The one who says, “Behold, I make all things new”

constantly calls us into a future that requires us to change,

to think in new ways,

to venture outside the boundaries with which we are comfortable.

The large influx of new parishioners in the past decade

is a wonderful sign of life

but is also a challenge to those of us who have been around a while:

a challenge to think in new ways and to ask new questions,

to listen to new voices and consider new possibilities.

At the same time, we have a body of accumulated wisdom:

the wisdom of our long-time parishioners

and the wisdom of the tradition of the Church,

and this too must be listened to

if we are to be faithful to who we are.

What will make all of this possible is love:

the love with which Christ loves us

and with which he commands us to love each other.

Like Mary and Theo and Ruby,

we meet on the common ground of the love of Christ,

trusting that Christ crucified and risen is in our midst,

and that God’s spirit is here to guide us.

Our treasured past,

our challenging present,

and our unknown future

are all united in the God whom St. Augustine called

the “beauty so ancient and so new.”

So let us love one another:

old timers and newcomers,

children and adults,

progressive and traditional.

Let us love one another with the same love

with which Christ has loved us.

We owe it to Mary and Theo.

We owe it to Ruby Strawberry.

We owe it to ourselves.