Homily for the 5th Sunday of Easter, C

While the story of the Bible begins with a garden, it ends in a city. The new Jerusalem is the fulfillment of all human dreams for the community. This is not a vision of individuals communing one-on-one with God or Jesus, but rather an interdependent community, a city, living out the essential nature of human life.

I have Mass on Sunday at St. Isidore @ 7:30/9:30 am

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Transcript

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. 

"When Judas had left them, Jesus said, 'Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.' If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and God will glorify him at once. My children, I will be with you only a little while longer. I give you a new commandment. Love one another, as I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." 

The Gospel of the Lord 

As the Easter season continues to unfold, we are revisiting earlier scenes in the Gospel of John through the light of Easter. In today's Gospel, Jesus has finished washing his disciples' feet at the Last Supper, and Judas has just left the dinner party, ominously disappearing into the night. We might expect Jesus to condemn him, or at least to say, "Now the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners." But Jesus announces the opposite. "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him." 

Now. Not at the moment of crucifixion, or resurrection, or ascension, but here at the outset of this ordeal, the moment the betrayer slips away into the shadows. God's redemption is so complete that even the Night of Shame is transformed into a Night of Glory. 

We see a similar moment in the story of the Church in the Acts of the Apostles. Last Sunday, Paul and Barnabas suffered persecution and were driven out of Antioch. They went on to Iconium, where the mission was much more fruitful. Rather than shutting down the mission, persecution becomes an engine of the mission. Luke is careful to insist that mission is a matter both of getting doors slammed in your face and of finding doors mysteriously opened. In the midst of much slamming, God is the Great Opener. 

Whether we are welcomed or rejected, Jesus commands us to love one another with the same love that loves us. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples. So God is not an object of our love, but rather the very source and ground of our ability to love one another. When we love one another, we are experiencing the presence of God. That's the deepest reason for the existence of the Church. We cannot possibly love God without loving one another because it's only in loving one another that we find out what the word "God" means. 

While the story of the Bible begins in a garden, it ends in a city. The New Jerusalem is the fulfillment of all human dreams for the community. This is not a vision of individuals communing one-on-one with God or Jesus, but rather an interdependent community, a city living out the essential nature of human life. It's the African notion of Ubuntu, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu explains it, "My well-being is wrapped up in your well-being." 

Our new pope will be officially installed on Sunday. Leo the 14th chose the name Leo in part because Leo the 13th wrote an encyclical called Rerum de Varum, which is Latin for "new things." In the Book of Revelation, we heard, "The one who sat on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.' Here is the heart of the Christian faith. The risen, crucified Christ does not make all new things. No, he makes all things new. 

The life yet to come will not cancel what came before. Risen life redeems rather than erases what now exists. Salvation plays out in history, not apart from it. Our triumphs, individual and collective, always matter because they lay the foundations of what is yet to come. 

In chapter 32 of the Book of Jeremiah, during a time of great national crisis, Jerusalem is under siege, its inhabitants threatened by exile, and though he was himself in prison, the prophet Jeremiah made an investment in the future. He bought a field. Such an astonishing gesture of hope. Jeremiah was so convinced that God would not abandon his people, he put his faith into action. The power of God is at work from beginning to end, the Alpha and Omega, God with us in our midst, in our neighborhood. 

Christ does not even cancel our failures. He redeems them in a way we can only imagine when we ponder the wounds which the crucified one still bears in eternity. Most importantly, Christ comes to claim the best of us. He returned from the tomb to re-establish relationships, to reclaim the loves that he had enkindled on earth. 

God is in the midst of humanity.  We are not heaven bound, heaven is bound for us. We are in God and God is in us.  “Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race.

 Jerusalem was where the story of God's dwelling with humanity took place, and there is continuity. This is the New Jerusalem. This is a world in which nothing human is lost. Salvation is beyond, but not without this world. This world, right now, in the present moment, is where salvation begins. The new heaven and new earth are coming and already are in our midst. 

Spring is in full bloom; the maple tree down the street has already started carpeting the neighborhood with seeds. Here is a short poem by Colleen Briggs: "Unless a Grain of wheat falls…"

All around me the earth flutters, dreaming of the future. It sends messages like little notes for tomorrow, twirling in gray dawned sky like rain. The tree is determined to hope. How does the tree know it is time? How am I here at just this moment to witness its innermost thoughts? No one tells the tree it must die to arise. No one cuts loose its dreams. All on its own it sends them whirling through the air in one last wild bid for life.