Sixth Sunday of Easter 9th May 2021

Acts 10: 44–48                                    

 While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, ‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.

 1 John 5: 1–12                                     

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 

This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth. There are three that testify: 8the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree. 9If we receive human testimony; the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son. Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. Those who do not believe in God have made him a liar by not believing in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son. And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. 

John 15: 9–17

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. 

 ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants* any longer, because the servant* does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. 

Reflection: Today our gospel reading is following directly on from last week’s theme of abiding in him and he in us. As we abide in Him, God’s love makes a generous dwelling place. The author of John writes of Jesus’ love as a reality in which we abide, even as we provide this abode for others. This abode of love is a place of joy as well as of obedience given willingly—not given out of the fear that separates servant from master, but out of the understanding that grows between friends. When we love someone and they love us, it is a natural response. The word ‘obey’ here is not used in an overtly authoritarian way but to indicate how we naturally respond and behave or should behave as friends and family, not taking advantage of another but as equals, friends, Jesus and his disciples. 

1 John describes an even closer relationship: believers are born to God. Linked to this theme, the story from the book of Acts shows God’s Spirit pours out on all who hear the word (even the Gentiles) and that baptism is available to all who believe in the Son. Thus, adds to our understanding of the enormousness of God’s love that welcomes all peoples. It cannot be contained by our judgements or boundaries. 

Jesus says, ‘As the Father has loved me,…’

Jesus states to his disciples, ‘As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.’

Sometimes I wonder if we should imagine God differently. Imagining is not the same as just thinking about something. What I mean is this: I wonder how many of us have our image of God shaped by things from our past (or the present) for example when things go wrong – I wonder if for many Covid has flavoured how they see the image of God. Perhaps our imagining of God is shaped by popular theology: or shaped by teaching or experiences that we received in our younger days? Is God a just judge that needs to be appeased, a stern parent who sets rules that must be obeyed, the clockmaker that sets things in motion and then remains at a distance, and so on.

Because God is so utterly beyond us, a mystery that we cannot fully understand, I think we are regularly shaping what we imagine God to be like, consciously or unconsciously. And I’m not sure those images are always all that helpful. In today’s passage from John, however, we get a noteworthy, quite magnificent picture: ‘As the Father has loved me,’ Jesus says, ‘so I have loved you.’ Keep in mind that Jesus says this on the eve of his crucifixion. He is about to embody the love he describes when he says this, ‘No one has greater love than this, that you lay down your life for your friends.’ And as we know that’s exactly what Jesus does.

So, I wonder what does God look like for you? How do we imagine God? Martin Luther is said to have responded to that very question by saying, ‘When I think of God, I think of a man hanging on a tree.’ Not to keep a gruesome image of pain and suffering before us, but rather to remind us that there is no length to which God would not go to embrace us in love. There is nothing that God wouldn’t do to save us through love. As Paul reminds us in the book of Romans - there is nothing, nothing in all creation, nothing in life or in death that will keep us from God’s love. Love conquers. Love prevails. Love wins.

Mystics throughout the ages have struggled to express their sense of God in more abstract ways including St Ignatius who speaks of finding God in all things. (M. Silf, Simple Faith, P.3)

Jesuit Priest Anthony de Mello tells the story of the fish that was searching for the mystery he called Ocean. ’Where is Ocean?’ he asked every other fish, he met. Nobody could tell him. ‘What does Ocean look like?’ Nobody could say. Nobody had ever seen it. 

Perhaps the fish went on his way, dismissing the idea of Ocean as a figment of the collective imagination.

Or perhaps he realised that Ocean was the fullness of the mystery in which he and all the creatures of the deep live and move and have their being. (M. Silf, Simple Faith, P.3)

The love of God is part of the fullness of the mystery of God. That his love is not only all consuming of us but available for all people is too much for our understanding. And of course, sadly many reject God and so the fullness of what may be is still not revealed. 

And as Paul prays in his letter to the Ephesians, may we each know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Amen.

Scripture recalls the story of Jesus, it is sometimes called the ‘greatest love story of all time’. Jesus came to bear our lot and our life, who enjoyed and endured all that we did, who left the riches of heaven behind in order to identify fully with us…and then who was willing to be tried and crucified unjustly simply to tell us how much God loves us. There are many ways the story of the cross is interpreted, however above all I suggest it is the story of the divine heavenly Father who was willing to give up his Son. It’s the story of the Son who was willing to give up everything for those he loved. And it’s the story of the Son who left us the Holy Spirit to empower, strengthen and equip his people to continue this love story that the world might know and in knowing come to eternal life.

So as we ponder these things may we imagine God differently, as love divine, all loves excelling. May we know deep in our very being that God’s love – parental, sacrificial love that will not stop at anything until God’s beloved children have been saved by that love. The world so desperately needs a new and better picture of both who God is and what is possible through the power of love. Perhaps like that little fish we can give up because we have not personally seen God or perhaps we can in faith be filled by the fullness of God’s abiding presence and share his love and forgiveness with all.