Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 2, 2010
Solemn Mass
By the Reverend Stephen Gerth
Year C: Acts 13:44-52; Psalm 145:1-9; Revelation 19:1,4-9; John 13:31-35

As much as I love John’s gospel, I’ve been waiting for us to get back to Luke’s on Sundays. But we won’t get there until the Season after Pentecost. That said, these last two weeks a couple of liturgical questions I have had for some time were answered. Last Sunday, I was able to see that some of Jesus’ words in John about him being the Good Shepherd were not an explanation of his ministry to the man born blind, but his introduction to the raising of Lazarus – thus, I think this is one major reason we read the Good Shepherd passages in Easter.

Something of the same kind of thing clicked in for me this week with this Sunday’s gospel. I’ve never really been clear about why we should be reading from John’s account of the supper before the Passover, the Maundy Thursday account, in the middle of the Easter Season. But, despite seminary and more than a few years in the pulpit, I still think of the gospels as I was brought up to think about them – as historic narratives. It requires a discipline of mind and heart for me to remember that the gospels are, as Raymond Brown wrote, “developed reflections on the significance of Jesus.”[1] John the Evangelist across his entire gospel gives us a developed reflection of the meaning of God’s presence among us in the person of the Word made flesh.

In his book Sacrifice Unveiled, Jesuit scholar Robert Daly wrote about the inner life of the Trinity.[2] After more than forty years of academic study and work, he came to the straightforward insight that it is the inner life of the Holy Trinity defines the nature of Christian sacrifice for humankind – and not the other way around. For Daly, sacrifice is not about the cross – a human idea of sacrifice – but love, the “self-giving love” between the Father and the Son.”[3]

There are many possible objections to Daly’s position. Not every New Testament author thinks of sacrifice and love in this way. Paul wrote to the Romans, “[God] did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all.”[4] But after surveying the theological and biblical field, Daly insists that what is truly Christian sacrifice, like life itself, is “gift” and cannot be required. If it is required, it may be in some aspects a morally generous act, but it is not, in Daly’s view, Christian sacrifice, which is about self-giving love.

Stay with me.

Today’s gospel lesson consists of a very few verses from what is by far the longest narrative in the New Testament, John’s account of the supper before the Passover. No one was there that night taking notes, of course. Especially in John, it is easy to see the gospels are not newspaper accounts of Jesus words and deeds.

In this the long passage, Jesus’ words are mostly about the relationship of the men and women who would come to elieve had with Jesus and with each other. In John, the sign of the believer is the love she or he has for other believers. By this love for each other, Jesus says, all people will know those who believe, those who love each other, are Jesus’ disciples.[5]

Looking back to 1983 when I was ordained, and continuing through the first couple of years here at Saint Mary’s, nothing has changed my work as a pastor more than the changes in the way medicine is practiced. Many treatments, especially surgical procedures, have changed radically. In 1983, people used to stay in the hospital to heal, often for a week or more, after the need for continuous medical care had ended. Now, many surgeries are simpler. People go home or to some other kind of nursing center for care. When people are in the hospital, they are usually pretty sick. Visits are necessarily short. As a young priest I used to look forward to the conversation, the sharing, that usually took place. These changes have also affected some this parish’s common life.

In February 1999, on my first weekend as rector of Saint Mary’s, a teenager then in the parish had major heart surgery. Over the course of the weekend and the days that followed, every day I and the other members of the clergy arrived to find different members of the parish there at the hospital, sitting with the boy or his family.

If I recall correctly, the fourteen year-old had a heart condition that was discovered only because he was being adopted and the adoption process required a very thorough medical evaluation. He was a lucky young man. Not many teenagers are adopted. Some young men die every year from unusual and undiagnosed heart disease.

As much as anything else, the kind of care parishioners were able to give and gave to each other in those days marked Saint Mary’s as a healthy Christian community for me.

We don’t know whether John the evangelist knew the teachings of Jesus found in Matthew, Mark and Luke about loving one’s neighbors and one’s enemies as oneself. It’s easy to conflate all four gospels. But the words of a song familiar to many of my age bracket, “They will know we are Christians by our love,” are from John. They are speaking of believers, not others.

Raymond Brown wrote that, “The command to love . . . is Jesus’ way of ensuring the continuance of his spirit among his disciples.”[6] Love is Jesus’ gift.[7] Love is not a Christian duty, but love flows from and creates the community of believers.[8] It is never easy to be in relationship with anyone. But we are made to enter relationship with God.

I know it’s a minority opinion, but I’ve never been really liked most of the T.S. Elliot poetry I’ve read. But the last of The Four Quartets, touches something about our journey in Christ.  

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning.[9]

 For Christians, for John the Evangelist, the end of our journey is God, is love, is life.

 + In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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