A Homily for Easter 5C
April 28, 2013
From the words of the Gospel for today: "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."✠ ✠ ✠
On Easter this year everyone wrote a question on a card that they would ask God, and which I said I would talk about during the homily time. Thirty one really good questions were turned in. The question for this week is:
Dear God, will all people, regardless of faith and beliefs, or lack thereof, be re-united with you when our lives on earth end?
So, what do you think?
I think it’s an excellent question that a lot of people would like to ask God. I think that different churches, different people, and even different clergy, are going to have different expectations about how God might answer that question. But I think it is a great question. Will all people, regardless of faith and beliefs, or lack thereof, be re-united with you when our lives on earth end?
So how about you? What do you think?
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This homily is also about prayer. I have my Daughters of the King on my mind. One of the vows of the Daughters of the King is prayer, and next weekend the Daughters have an assembly where the focus will be on prayer. As their chaplain, I will open the weekend with a Eucharist based on these scriptures. So what clues do you think these scriptures can give us about prayer?
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A question for God, and a lesson about prayer. Is that asking too much of this week’s scriptures at once? Maybe. But maybe not. Let’s listen and see.
The First Reading, from Acts, is the story about a very Jewish leader of the Jesus movement who had a vision that God was bigger than Judaism. That God outside of the box that Peter had put Him in.
Remember that not only was Peter a Jew, but Jesus himself was a Jew. That the original Jesus movement was a Jewish movement, and that all of the early writings were written by Jews, to Jews, and for the Jews.
Could non-Jews belong to the Jesus movement? Could non-Jews belong to the Jesus movement if they didn’t follow the Torah? If they weren’t circumcised? If they ate food that wasn’t kosher? If they Jewish festivals and traditions? Could non-Jews be on the same path to God as the Jews?
Remember, this was a big deal, which created huge arguments and painful dissension.
The Psalm is an absolutely astonishing song of praise that the psalmist imagines as a choir of everyone and everything in heaven and on earth. First the heavenly choir. Then the celestial objects - sun, moon, stars. Then the natural enemies - monsters, hail, stormy winds. Then the rest of creation mountains, trees, animals. Then all the people of the earth including the foreign rulers and enemies of Israel. Israel - the Jews - come at the very end.
The concept of this psalm is a final reconciliation of all things. Not salvation by conquest, but by restoration and reconciliation - an all inclusive reconciliation of heaven and earth, and of all people and creation together!
The Second Reading, from John’s vision on the island of Patmos, is a similar vision of reconciliation. The writer of this vision, however, goes a step further in imagining that the path to reconciliation will be transformative. The final reconciliation of all things happens, not through destroying anything, but by transforming everything - a new heaven and a new earth.
“See, I am making all things new.” All things have come from the Alpha, the sacred beginning, and are moving to the Omega point, the sacred destiny of reunion with God.
In the Gospel for today, from John, Jesus gives a new commandment - “As I have loved you, you also should love one another.”
This isn’t a vision of the destiny of all things. But is isn’t simply a command to love each other. It’s a command to love one another AS CHRIST HAS LOVED US. In other words, it is a command for us to see Christ in, be Christ to, and receive Christ from one another. To become little Christs ourselves. Or to become our Christ selves.
As Paul would say later, “The mystery of the ages is CHRIST IN YOU,” and “It is no longer I who live, but CHRIST WHO LIVES IN ME.” The operating assumption of this Gospel is that destiny of humanity is Christhood. Christ is telling is to take up our cross and follow him to Christhood.
But Christhood is nothing more or less than the reconciliation of the divine and the human. Jesus was fully divine and fully human. We too are being told to marry the divine nature and human nature in our own souls, to become Christ selves.
This is where the reconciliation of all things begins - with you and me becoming our Christ selves. In this Gospel, the circle of love is somewhat small - love “one another.”
But remember other stories, about loving our neighbor - which includes people we despise, like those Samaritans. And remember the sayings about loving our enemies. When you put it all together, the circle gets bigger and bigger.
But where does the reconciliation of all things begin? With seeing Christ in, being Christ to, and receiving Christ from those who are right next to us. As the Gospel of John implies, sometimes those who are right next to us are the most difficult to see as Christ, and to love as Christ. Yet this is where it begins.
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Well, there are the scriptures for this week. So what do you think? Will all people, regardless of faith and beliefs, or lack thereof, be re-united with you when our lives on earth end?
Not everyone would answer Yes to that question. Most religions, in fact, have trouble believing that other religions are on the path to God. Or at least most people in most religions have trouble believing that other religions are on the path to God.
*I* think most people in most religions underestimate God. I’m not saying that all paths are as direct or as transformative as all other paths, necessarily. Or that it doesn’t make a difference which path you are on, or that it works to try to be on all paths at once, or that is advisable to be switching paths.
Or that the reconciliation of all things doesn’t come without a cost - to us and to God. The early church fathers were immersed in the biblical cosmology of “ages” - this age and the age to come, the ages of ages, and so on. Reconciliation is a process that gets worked out through many ages, within and beyond this world. Not by God simply ignoring those things that are defective, but by a process of transformation - of making all things new, which can be painful as well as awesome.
But I think most people in most religions underestimate God. Will all people, regardless of faith and beliefs, or lack thereof, be re-united with you when our lives on earth end? What do you think?
[DISCUSSION]
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I said that this homily is also about prayer. So what does this say to us about prayer?
For me, these scriptures define the ultimate work of prayer. For me, these scriptures say that prayer is not just us giving God our agenda, but opening ourselves to God’s agenda, which is always larger than the immediate needs and concerns that are on my list.
This doesn’t diminish my list, it just puts it into a larger perspective. It puts things like, “give us this day our daily bread,” and “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us,” in the context of “Your Kingdom come - on earth as in heaven.” And what is the Kingdom but that Commonwealth, that Domain, where all people, creatures, and things are reconciled, healed, and restored to God and one another. THAT is the ultimate work of all prayer and the vocation of all God's people - to realize the Kingdom of God, whose seed is already within us.
These scriptures suggest to me the immense value of saying prayers we find in our prayer book like these.
Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Last Sunday After Pentecost)
and
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were being cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (In the services of Ordination for all deacons, priests, and bishops)
They also suggest to me a way of praying that brings my heart and mind even deeper into the process of transformation and reconciliation. One of my favorites is this one, with which we will close.
So close your eyes and allow yourself to “do” this prayer.
First, see yourself surrounded and held by the arms of the divine embrace: fully accepted and totally loved. Stay in that embrace for awhile, knowing that it holds you completely.
Then, draw into that embrace your loved ones: family and friends. Feel that these too are held firmly there, that like you, they live, move, and have their being within the divine compassion.
Then, follow that embrace out into the human families all around you, including those who are unknown t you, and those who are alien to you as strangers or as perceived enemies.
Then, follow that embrace out into the human families all around you, including those who are unknown t you, and those who are alien to you as strangers or as perceived enemies.
Then, allow that circle of loving embrace to extend in growing rings to the entire creation: the animal world, the plant world, the forests, trees, rivers, mountains, oceans, earth and sky, and finally the starry universe.
Then, allow that embrace to draw all creation to the divine Center: the heart of God. See everything being attracted back to its Source, knowingly or unknowingly.
Finally, open your own arms to embrace each circle, each ring of existence, for you stand encircled and held there. It is safe for you to embrace all.
May this kind of prayer participate with God in the great work of reconciling all things.
Unto him be worship and praise, dominion and splendor, forever and ever. Amen.
