5th Sunday of Easter C

See Commentary on John 13:31-35 in John 13:31-38

Homily 1 - 2016

During the week, I was up country for the funeral of the sister of a good friend of mine. With all the travel involved, and with driving becoming an increasing chore as I grow older, I decided to stay on for a few extra days with a family whom I have come to know well and enjoy over the years. One evening, the three 20+ year-old children came over for a meal together with mum and dad and a lucky little girl whom the family recently adopted as their child. It was a wonderful experience. Everyone in the family was so much at home with each other, enjoying each other’s presence. They filled the house with warmth, mutual respect and sheer joy. For me it was sacramental; it was Eucharistic. 

What is Eucharist about, after all? It is the celebration of unity and harmony, achieved once and for all by the crucified and risen Jesus. That is what he wanted our Eucharists to lead to. That is what he wanted them to start with. It disappoints me that we have allowed ourselves to lose touch with the experience-dimension of all sacraments and have settled instead on heady definitions and explanations – most of them disappointingly out of touch. As a consequence, I believe, our religion as a whole has moved further and further away from its proper community focus and become concerned with individual salvation, exclusively "me-God" rather than inclusively "we-God" – as though salvation could be experienced in isolation.

Why did Jesus insist so clearly on the importance of loving each other? And why was it particularly on his mind as he celebrated his Last Supper? Why did he insist so much: I give you a new commandment. Love one another! Just as I have loved you, you also must love one another. By this love you have for one another, everyone will know that you are my disciples. He called it a new commandment, because it is now a possibility And that is the wonderful thing. The experience of loving and being loved is not simply the way to salvation. It is the very experience of salvation. What is more - it is the joyful illustration of Jesus’ defeat of sin. After all, the destructive sin of the world consists precisely in our innate tendency to mutual hostility, to competitiveness, to power and ultimately to violence of some kind or other – and so to joylessness. Just watch the nightly news to see sin at its destructive worst! We need more family celebrations; more encounters with true friends. And we need time to savour them, and to let them be genuinely sacramental for us: samples sharpening our appetites for the God who is the mystery behind our life, our loves and our joys.

Once we get our heads away from the self-centred, individualistic sense of heaven as something earned and merited, we can come to terms with the fact that heaven is essentially the experience of people enjoying relating to everyone in love. Then we can begin to appreciate what the author of the Book of the Apocalypse was up to with his riot of images in today’s Second Reading. He saw our future destiny as a holy city. Cities are people in relationships, dependent on each other, but not like the impersonal cities to which we are accustomed. In this city people will relate inter-dependently in love, and in the midst of them all will be God – God enjoying! Here God lives among people. He will make his home among them; they shall be his people; and he will be their God; his name is God-with-them.

It won’t be “business as usual”, or simply “more of the same”. Rather, God assures us, Now I am making the whole of creation new. The process is under way. That could be what we are celebrating here this morning. But perhaps Eucharist will never be Eucharist until we have learnt to allow our whole world to be sacramental – tempting previews of the God of life and love, already present and thoroughly at home among us.

Homily 2 - 2019

Most of us can make sense of the second part of today’s Gospel passage about Jesus’ command that we love one another. But what did the first part of the passage mean with all its talk about glorifying? and how on earth do the two sections connect? More importantly, how might they connect with our lives today?

In the Jewish mind, “glorify” had a very special meaning. Jews had a wonderful sense of the utter uniqueness of God, of God’s difference from us. They would not even pronounce aloud the name of God, Yahweh. It was too sacred for human lips. Essentially, God was far above or beyond our capacity to understand. But God was able to reveal to us something of his beauty. It was that revelation of God, visible and understandable to humans, that was referred to as God’s “glory”. The primary humanly accessible revelation of God was Jesus himself; and God’s “glory” was particularly visible through his integrity, his inner authority and strength.

The Gospel passage this morning began with the ominous observation, “When Judas had gone out”. What it did not clarify was that he went out from the Upper Room in the middle of the Last Supper. The Jewish priests, the legal eagles and the aristocrats had already decided to get Jesus out of the way once and for all. But it had to be done with as least fuss as possible – the last thing they wanted was that his volatile Galilean followers thronging Jerusalem for the Passover feast create a riot. By a stroke of luck, Judas had approached them and provided them a where and when they could get Jesus: late Thursday night, when people were asleep, out on the Mount of Olives.

The wheels began to turn. Judas left the group celebrating the Last Supper and went out into the night. The moment that Jesus had anticipated months earlier had come: “Now has the Son of Man been glorified and in him God has been glorified” – the moment he had simultaneously dreaded and longed for. Within hours, Jesus would be hanging on a cross, tortured, dehumanized, through the blind, brutal violence of the Jewish establishment and their Roman occupiers.

This would be the context through which the inner beauty, the “glory”, of Jesus would become perfect. To those with eyes to see, he would make dazzlingly obvious his unshakeable commitment to God’s way of gratuitous love and forgiveness; and make evident at the same time, the inner beauty, the inspiring strength, the “glory”, of God empowering him. At that moment he set a new benchmark for human love. He had shown the possibilities of human hearts and wills. He had raised the bar – above the reasonable to the possible, perhaps even to the irresistible.

After Judas’ exit into the night, Jesus had addressed the remaining disciples, “Just as I have loved you, you also must love one another”. Of course! It’s logical. It is also frightening. Jesus showed it is possible for human hearts enabled by God’s love. If only we would recognize and live our capacity – loved, forgiven, trusted, commissioned and empowered sinners that we are – at least we could aim higher. It would become a different world.

The current situation of the Church worries and distresses most of us. For too long, we have wanted to be a Church of power and influence, seeking to impose on others how they must live. Could it be that many of those who have walked away, or are hanging in by the skin of their teeth, have been unconsciously scandalised by a Church that has forgotten to prioritise the message of love? Do we no longer stand out as disciples of Jesus by the love we have, even for one another?

The disciples abandoned the tortured, crucified Jesus. Once risen, with absolutely no fuss, Jesus forgave them, and commissioned them to make a resolute attempt to love as he had loved them.

There is always hope.

Homily 3 - 2022

We gather here this evening and celebrate this Eucharist together against the backdrop, still, of the War in Ukraine. War is such a desecration of so much of what our faith is about.

Last Sunday was the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. Not surprisingly, Pope Francis wrote a special message for the Day, inviting us, among other things, to enlarge our vision — like Paul and Barnabas, whom we read about in today’s First Reading and who, according to the Reading, “put fresh heart into the disciples” . They were so clearly persons of vision. I would like to quote this evening some of the passages from Francis’ message to stimulate our further pondering. I hope they strike you as much as they strike me.

He began his message by addressing us as “Dear brothers and sisters” — and that seems to be the way that he does see everyone. He really does seem to have taken to heart Jesus’ message from today’s Gospel: “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also must love one another”. It is that vision that permeates the whole message.

Right from the start, he made clear that “…the word ‘vocation’ should not be understood restrictively, as referring simply to [priests, nuns and brothers]…” Rather, he insisted, “… all of us are called to share in Christ’s mission to reunite a fragmented humanity and to reconcile it with God…

“… Each man and woman, even before encountering Christ and embracing the Christian faith, receives with the gift of life a fundamental calling: each of us is a creature willed and loved by God; each of us has a unique and special place in the mind of God. At every moment of our lives, we are called to foster this divine spark, present in the heart of every man and woman, and thus contribute to the growth of a humanity inspired by love and mutual acceptance. We are called to be guardians of one another, to strengthen the bonds of harmony and sharing… [We are also called] to heal the wounds of creation lest its beauty be destroyed. In a word, we are called to become a single family in the marvellous common home of creation.”

A little bit further on he wrote: “Within this great common vocation, God addresses a particular call to each of us…”, which he specified as, “..[to] go forth from ourselves and become the masterpiece that we are called to be.”

So, here we are, not just “brothers and sisters”, but each of us called and equipped to be a unique “masterpiece”. If only we would choose to see ourselves and each other that way. At least, let us try.

Francis sees the framework for all this happening within what he calls “synodality”. The word is unfamiliar —it means “journeying together”. It is a process that is learnt and can become more perfect over time. Ultimately it inspires communities, whatever their size, whether parish community or family community, to reach decisions together — after careful listening to as many voices as possible and searching out the most suitable outcome that all involved can accept freely and willingly. Francis expressed the vision generally in these terms: “This is the mystery of the Church: a celebration of differences, a sign and instrument of all that humanity is called to be. For this reason, the Church must become increasingly synodal: capable of walking together, united in harmonious diversity, where everyone can actively participate and where everyone has something to contribute.”

He concluded his message, tying all things together, in these words: “Priests, consecrated men and women, lay faithful: let us journey and work together in bearing witness to the truth that one great human family united in love is no utopian vision, but the very purpose for which God created us.”

If only we had listened, Christians would not today be killing Christians in Ukraine.