Homily for The Sixth Sunday of Easter/
Mother's Day/Rogation Sunday
by Rebecca M. Taylor,
Director of Children's, Youth & Family Ministries
All Saints Parish, Brookline, MA
May 13, 2007
Lectionary:
Acts 14:8-18
Revelation 21:22-22:5
John 14:23-29
Psalm 67
Jesus said, "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them." (John 14:23)
At the end of June, I will be traveling to Nicaragua with 10 people from our parish. We are going to Quetzalguaque, Brookline's "Sister City" located 60 miles northwest of the capital city of Managua. We will be in Quetzalguaque for a week. Our task while we are there is to install a garden in a cloistered area behind the town's new library. As a group, we have been preparing for our trip since last fall. Last night's successful Mission & Outreach fundraiser assures us that we now have the money we need to get to and from Nicaragua, thanks be to God - and to all who attended that event.
For me, this trip is both an exciting prospect and one that makes me a little anxious. On the one hand, I am really looking forward to seeing what life is like in a small town in Nicaragua. I also like to garden, so I am happy about the type of work project we have been given, and I am glad that we can create something beautiful that the residents of Quetzalguaque will enjoy for years to come. But most of all, I am really, really looking forward to deepening my friendship with the people who will be on the trip with me. I am praying that we all get a new appreciation of ourselves as brothers and sisters in Christ, his disciples engaged with God's mission in the world.
On the other hand, I am anxious about this trip. Knowing that others in our group are, too, helps a little, I have to admit, but I am still nervous. I worry about the garden project itself. A number of things have to happen in order for us to actually accomplish our task, and so I have been doing my best to make those arrangements before we arrive and trust that people at the other end will pull through as well. I am anxious also about getting sick, and so while I am there I will be diligent about only drinking bottled water, putting on insect repellent, taking my malaria medicine, and not eating any raw fruits or vegetables that can't be peeled.
But what I am most anxious about is the fact that I speak very little - and I mean very little - Spanish. What I do know, I am learning from language tapes as I drive to and from work each day. I anticipate that this language deficit will be a problem, especially while I am a guest in my host family's home. It's going to be hard feeling at home with people with whom I cannot communicate.
I think that is why the first sentence of today's gospel reading catches my attention:
Jesus said, "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them." (John 14:23)
As I anticipate the challenge of making a home with a Nicaraguan family for a week, I am drawn to the image of God and Jesus "making their home" with me - of God and Jesus "making their home" with us. I admit, I am a real home-body, and the idea that God and Jesus are, too, is pretty interesting to me. I want to explore this a bit with you this morning.
Today's gospel reading, along with the one we heard last week, are part of Jesus' "farewell discourse" in the Gospel of John. In that gospel account, on the night before he died, Jesus and his closest friends gathered together in Jerusalem on the eve of Passover. He knew that it would be the last time they would all be together. All the disciples knew was that both he and they were in a lot of trouble with both the civil and the religious leaders in Jerusalem. It was just a matter of time before someone with sanctioned authority would try to silence their group.
Jesus begins the evening by washing his friends' feet, teaching them by his example the supreme importance of being servant ministers. Then Judas gets up and leaves the room. Soon he will deliver Jesus into the hands of the authorities. Finally, Jesus turns to the disciples and says, "Little children, I am with you only a little longer." (John 13:33)
There it is. The words the disciples have all been dreading. The possibility they haven't dared admit to one another. Jesus is going to die and they are going to be all alone.
For the next two chapters in John's Gospel, in one long discourse interrupted only a very few times by his disciples' questions, Jesus speaks to his beloved friends about his death and his departure from them. Jesus' farewell discourse basically answers their unspoken question, "How are we supposed to go on with our lives after you are no longer physically with us, Jesus?"
It's a question we disciples of Christ still ask, 2000 years later. How are we supposed to carry on with our lives when we can't see or touch Jesus?
"Those who love me," Jesus says, "will keep my word…"
Keeping Jesus' "word" means living according to his command, the "new" commandment offered in last week's gospel reading - the instruction to "love one another just as I have loved you." (John 13:34)
"Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
What Jesus tells his disciples in today's reading is this: "If you love me, you will show that love by loving my way - generously, steadfastly, and unconditionally - and in the process of doing that, you will experience God's love for you, a love so real that it will feel like God and I have found our dwelling place with you."
What a reassuring message that must have been for the disciples to hear. All of them had walked away from their families, their homes, and their jobs in order to devote themselves to Jesus. And that decision had changed them. With Jesus, they had made a new home together: they were living as God's beloved community on earth. And in that community with Jesus, they had been called to new work: to teach others that God's love has the power to change people's lives. They couldn't go back to their old lives because now they had new ones with Jesus.
Could the disciples continue to live together as God's beloved community without Jesus? Could they continue God's work without him? I'm sure they worried that relying only on each other wouldn't necessarily ensure their success.
But Jesus tells his friends - and he tells us - that they do not have to rely solely on the talents and convictions of one another. The Holy Spirit will help them. The Holy Spirit will help us. By God's grace, the Holy Spirit will enable the post-resurrection community to keep Jesus' teachings and ministry vibrant and tangibly alive in the world. Listen to what he says this morning:
"The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything. The Holy Spirit will remind you of all that I have said to you."
The Holy Spirit affirms Jesus' teachings. To those who love Jesus, the Holy Spirit gives the confidence they need to carry on his work in his physical absence.
So if we really look closely at this morning's gospel, we discover that God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit dwells with the post-resurrection community of believers! What good news! There's no need to be troubled. There's no need to be afraid. What wonderful reassurance from our Lord! The triune God makes a holy dwelling place with us. God is in the midst of God's beloved community now and forever. And with that truth, we can rest assured. We can feel at peace. We can do amazing things, as last night's Mission fundraising event proves.
Last week, as I was preparing this sermon, one commentary that I read offered an important reminder for me, and I want to share it with you:
"Jesus lived out God's love of him by keeping God's commandments, by making God known to the world, by offering God's promise of salvation to the world, by loving fully, even to the extent of laying down his life. Jesus' union with God was not a private, mystical union, in which their love for one another was only self-beneficial. On the contrary, the love of God and Jesus was a public love, first revealed to the world in the incarnation and repeatedly revealed in Jesus' words and works throughout his ministry." (The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. IX, p. 749)
"The love of God and Jesus was a public love." The home that God makes with us has no walls. We may sit in this beautiful space each week and think that, but we would be mistaken. This home that we share with God - this mutual indwelling of God in us and us in God - is meant to be visible to everyone! It is meant to be accessible to everyone!
So next month, when I head off to Nicaragua and am welcomed into a town and into a home where I can communicate only minimally, I will have to let my actions speak for me. I hope my actions will communicate my love for Christ and Christ's love for me. Thankfully, I will have the support of this community that also loves Jesus, and by the small portion of this community with whom I will be traveling.
As Jesus' disciples, we are called to keep Jesus' word - to live into his commandment to love as he loves - in Brookline and in Nicaragua and everywhere else. Together we are being called to put flesh onto Jesus' message of love in every corner of the world. And when we do that - whenever we make Christ's love known in this broken and needy world, there we will find our true home, whether we can speak Spanish or not.
And for that we give God thanks and praise!