Homily for the Sixth Sunday Of Easter
21 May 2006, Mikell Chapel
The Cathedral Church of St. Philip
The Rev. Canon Todd Smelser, Preacher
Last Sunday was of course Mother’s Day, and I trust that all of us good sons and daughters remembered our mother’s in some special way. Even when our mothers have died, there can still be those sacred moments when we can hear her voice, or see her face or almost feel her embrace. Rather than paying a visit to the cemetery, sometimes the best way of remembering is by doing the things that were important to a loved one, be that a walk in the garden or re-reading a favorite book, or listening to a special piece of music.
The observance of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day next month remind us of our indebtedness to others for most everything that is important to us: our lives, our looks, our values, our tuition for college and perhaps even our inheritance. None of us are really self-made, and it is a pretty large collection of family and friends, teachers and pastors, scout leaders and piano instructors who help make us who we are. The selfless gifts that we have received can best be thanked in the quality of our lives, and in our capacity to love others.
Both the epistle and Gospel lesson today are about the great commandment that God gives “to love one another as I have loved you.” Of course Jesus knew well the core of Jewish theology and practice in what is called the Shema. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. The second is like unto it. Love your neighbor as yourself.” When Jesus quotes this passage to his disciples he reminds us that the love of God and love of neighbor can never be separated.
In addition to being the Sixth Sunday of Easter this is also Rogation Sunday, when some parishes process outside to bless their gardens. God has already blessed our gardens with ample water and good sunlight this spring, so we will just reflect on that other reference in this chapter of John in which Jesus invites us to “bear much fruit” as evidence of our discipleship with him. The crucifixion is the example of love and is the standard by which, as a Christian, our love is to be judged.
The laying down of one’s life shifts the image of the relationship between Jesus and the community. Through the love of Christ we are called to be friends with God, and spiritual friends with one another. Marcus Borg, in THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY, says that by Christian friendship I do not mean simply having friends that are Christian, but the more specific practice of “Christian companionship”—having one or more friends with whom one can share intimately about one’s Christian journey.
Friendship with God means following the cross wherever it leads, and not the shiny brass cross of church design, but the old rugged cross, the one which bears the scars and wounds of a lifetime. As Frederick Buechner writes in THE MAGNIFICENT DEFEAT “What we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but there is a God right here in the thick of our day-to-day lives who may not be writing messages about the deity in the stars, but who is one or another trying to get messages through our blindness as we around down here in the knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world.”
In today’s Gospel Jesus tells his disciples “I no longer call your servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead I have called you friends.” “I am the true vine and you are the branches….Apart from me you can do nothing…Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you…You did not choose me, but I chose you.” Friendship with God is the work of the Holy Spirit, which is our life, flowing from the vine to the branches.
We are also invited to abide in Jesus. This abiding friendship is the foundation of all ministry in the church and in the world. We more we abide in Jesus the less we need to follow our own way. And every day we need to practice the art of loving, the grace of forgiving, the outstretched hand of compassion.
The love that Jesus speaks about finds people together in very relational and spiritual ways. It is a love that thinks of the other before the self. It is the love that is willing to lay down one’s life for a friend. Love and action are interconnected, bound up together. When we begin to love like Jesus then we will want to follow the command of God, we will want to show up, we will want to reach out to others.
Loving our neighbor, our brothers and sisters, is a long-term commitment. It requires us to take one step at a time. It brings us to the foot of the cross, and then sends us on our way again, transformed and renewed. For Good Friday always brings us to Easter, and then beyond to Pentecost, which allows us to express through our gifts of the Holy Spirit the love of God for each of us.
The theologian Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love: and then for the second time in the history of the world we will have discovered fire.”
Friends in Christ, let us continue to practice the art of loving, of forgiving, and of acts of compassion, so that one day we might harness for God the energies of love. Let us rediscover the fire of the Gospel and the Good News that Jesus brings to each of us, seeking to become spiritual friends with one another.
Beloved, love one another.
Comments? Contact The Rev. Todd Smelser: tsmelser@stphilipscathedral.org