Fifth Sunday of Easter
2007

One of the great Tina Turner hits of some years ago is What’s Love Got to Do With It? According to today’s Gospel love has everything to do with it! Love is the answer to virtually every question where God is concerned. God speaks only the language of love; it is God’s vernacular.

A passage well marked in my Bible as a result of reading it at so many celebrations of holy matrimony is our Gospel for today. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

I was reading an article the other day that affirmed something that all of us know as a reality. It’s very difficult to sustain the joyful atmosphere of Easter Sunday morning for all the fifty days of Easter! The “alleluias” get a little less boisterous and we sometimes treat “Christ is Risen” as though it were old news. The “love passage” for John’s Gospel is a little like that as well, especially where it concerns its use as a marriage text. The Pennsylvania Dutch have a wonderful saying: “Kiss’en wears out; cook’en don’t!”

We get this romantic notion about love on a day replete with candles, flowers, and romantic organ music without being keenly aware of the implications of love. Just as we have to work ever harder at sustaining Easter joy, married life implies working at keeping promises that two people, one man and one woman have made to one another in the presence of God and God’s people. In sickness as well as health speaks to me as the vow that requires some of the most resolution and courage!

The love that Jesus spoke to his disciples about led him to the cross and was at the same time the means by which they held one another together in witness and community. The same thing speaks to us today. Our love for one another is the strongest “selling point” if you will, of our holy faith. “See how they love another!”

Imagine Jesus speaking of being glorified knowing full well what was ahead of him. At the same time, he knew that the disciples must face life without his physical presence. The whole future of what he came to accomplish rested on the love that the Father had for the Son being continued in those whom the Father had given the Son as a gift, the flock that we talked about last week: Those who know the Shepherd’s voice and follow him.

When people see love among members, when people see legitimate community, they can’t help but be attracted to look deeper into this most eloquent sign to the world that the movement initiated by Jesus continues in authentic ways.

We are the Easter people; we are the people of God.

We now approach the Eucharistic table with praise of alleluias in our hearts.

We try to realize what it means when, together, we share this meal that Jesus is truly in our midst and that we are becoming what is our highest goal, to be the Body of Christ.

Alleluia, Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Amen

--KTS, III
May 6, 2007

First Reading: Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Second Reading: Revelation 21:1-6
Gospel: John 13:31-35

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