Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35
Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The
Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
On this Day 29 of the Great Fifty Days of Easter, it is a happy thing that our waning emotional fervor has not tempered in the least the church’s bold Easter proclamation this morning: Jesus is risen from the dead and that changes everything.
We see this in the four visions that the church gives us in this morning’s lessons, three that are straightforward and obvious and one that, while more obscure, has within it the very key to resurrection and its transformation of everything.
Our lessons reveal that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead was not only something that happened about two thousand years ago but has ongoing consequences for us and for the whole world. What we once may have imagined as being not only impossible but even undesirable or unacceptable has come to us with the unqualified stamp of God’s acceptance, God’s approval.
What we thought had been written in stone and unalterable has been utterly transformed by the one who never ceases to make all things new. And that all of these amazing, wondrous and transformative things happen through the one thing that you and I arrogantly thought we knew so much about, only to discover we might have been as tone-deaf as those first disciples who heard, who even saw and touched for themselves, and yet had no understanding at all, but, thankfully, it is not that we love God but that God loves us.
The first three visions.
Peter’s vision challenges deep-seated convictions about race (some which no doubt have been reinforced by the very words of scripture), about what is clean and unclean, what is chosen and maybe not so chosen. Seized by the Spirit, Peter gets it (at least for the moment).
What and whom God has made clean, we may not call profane. If God gave them the same gift he gave us, who am I to hinder God? Peter acts upon the vision with good result but will later falls back, perhaps in fear, and needs Paul’s timely reminder that in Jesus Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female (Galatians 3). In Jesus Christ, there can be no preferred class, no division.And we see that the Gentiles get a vision that may be no less challenging. I wonder if we might imagine the resentment we can feel for others who think they are a little better than we are by virtue of their education, their job, or, worse, by the accident of their birth. To these very people whom we know think of us as being less than they we are told to go, seek them out, for they have the message of salvation. Is it possible that our resentment of their racism, classicism, sexism, whatever-else ism, would prevent us from accepting even “salvation” from them?
But these two visions come with the full force and power of God’s Spirit to slice right through all that could divide and separate. If God gives them the same gift he gives us, who are we to hinder God? Who are we indeed? In Christ we are one body.The third vision is that given to John. Here we are given the cosmic consequences of our Easter proclamation, “Jesus is risen from the dead.” Death is utterly defeated. Mourning and crying and pain are no more, for there is a new heaven and a new earth, as God dwells with humankind, wiping away our tears, and indeed making all things new.
Three visions. Peter. The Gentiles. John. And then in the gospel, Jesus gives us a fourth vision. True, we are not told that this is a vision per se, but what else could this be but a vision, a vision for how we are to live as people who are made alive through Jesus’ resurrection from the dead?
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another,” Jesus tells us (John 13.34-35).
The vision of the church as a community of love is something that is pretty easy to get on board with, isn’t it? Who among us in our right mind would be opposed to love?
The challenge of course comes in grasping just what kind of love Jesus is commanding us to have, getting a glimpse of the strange nature of that “love” with which he loves us.
A love that is not even understood, let alone deserved or returned but freely accepts betrayal, abandonment, rejection, and mockery. A love that gives its back to whipping and scourging, its hands and feet to searing pain and ripping flesh. A love that forgives those who murder. A love that stretches out arms to embrace humiliation and death, which is understood as “being glorified at once.”
Such love not only slices through our perverse notions and prejudice, but also cannot be held by the grave for it rises to life again and makes all things new.
This is the vision we receive from John’s Gospel today and from the very lips of Jesus. It is this vision for our life together that is the key to unlocking all other visions and insights of the life of faith.
And what a vision it is, to love with love, that love which is the very heart of God, in whose image and likeness all people are created.
Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. John 13.34b
God is love. 1 John 4.8b
God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that all who believe in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3.16.
In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 1 John 4.10
Our relationships. Our understandings. Our church. Our hopes and dreams. Our lives. Our whole world.
Its very existence. Its recreation. Its life. In that love.
See, I am making all things new. Revelation 21.5b
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.