Homily: Fifth Sunday in Easter

Readings: Acts of the Apostles 8:26-40; 1 John 3:18-24; Gospel of John 15:1-8

Some of you may have heard me tell of this incident before. I was a victim, when I was studying philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx as a Jesuit, of a bike accident which although the physical scars have long since healed, the emotional ones, I must admit, remain. I used to love to ride my bike! When I was at Fordham, I would quite often ride from the Bronx down through the heart of the busy congested streets of Manhattan, through Central Park and end up at the tip of Manhattan in Battery Park. I was in good shape, at least 50 pounds lighter than I am now, and enjoyed the freedom and the peace of sailing down the streets or through the greenery of the parks, finding the life-blood pulsing through my veins.

My last semester there, on a warm spring afternoon I felt the itch to take a break from studies and go for a ride. I made it all the way down to the tip of Manhattan and noticed the time was getting late and that I needed to head back for we had a meeting in the Jesuit community where I lived. Day was turning to dusk and so I was riding quickly in order to return home. In the darkness and because of my exertion I was not really aware of my surroundings when all of the sudden my body connected with a wire that someone had strung across the bike bath cutting into my arms and chest and throwing me off my bike onto the hard asphalt below.

Two security guards from a nearby construction site saw what happened, called an ambulance, and rushed to my aid. Ultimately, the physical result of this prank was major scrapes all over my body, two broken ribs and a collapsed lung. However, emotionally, this incident left me with a fear of getting back on that bike and riding like I used to and each spring when the weather warms up I resolve to as the Nike ad would say "Just do it".

The world can be a fearful place. We all have our own fears or face fearful things every day. So much of our world and our lives can be confusing that it is easy to stay detached, disconnected, diminished. The violence in our streets makes us weary to go out at night. Harsh words from family and friends may damage our worth so that in our interactions with others and in our very self we are fearful of being judged as never good enough, smart enough, pretty enough.

We can fear life and the outside world so much, like an aunt of mine, that we never go outside at all. Fear may diminish the life we once had like a good friend of mine back from Iraq, who was injured when his troop was bombed, who as a result suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and who now jumps out of his skin whenever a car backfires. Yes, we all have our fears, and I bet every person here this evening has some worry or fear that they alone know, a fear that holds them back, a fear that keeps them from producing good fruit and from living life to the full.

So we find then in our own fears and confusion a worthy companion in this Eunuch in our reading this evening from the Acts of the Apostles. Most of us know physically what a Eunuch is but we forget that the reason they were made eunuchs in the first place was to keep them under the emotional control and so in fear of powerful nobles to live as indentured servants and slaves. So this Eunuch, living out of his fear, reads the words of the prophet Isaiah and is confused as to what he is reading. He is confused for the passage that he is reading is all about fear, about a man who is so fearful that he ‘opens not his mouth’, and from that ‘fear and humiliation’, that lack of finding his voice, of standing up for himself and his life, finds that his ‘very life and mercy are denied him’, destroyed – ‘for his life is taken from the earth’.

The first letter of John also speaks of this fear, of how our own hearts condemn us and that too often we let fear abide in us, we let our fears find a home in us. Finally, in our Gospel from John we hear Jesus urge us to understand through imagery of vine, branches, and fruit, that it is fear in our life, that it is when we are filled with fear, that our lives will bear no fruit. So, it is by and through our fears then that our life withers and wilts – that life is somehow diminished and not lived to the full.

So if fear is pervasive and problematic then where do we find the answer? Where does grace abide? We return now to our Eunuch. Philip, as apostle of Christ, cannot leave this man in doubt and fear. Philip guides him, reassures him, helps him understand, alleviates his fears, breaks open the good news of who Jesus is, and helps this Eunuch to see that in a lot of ways his life is no different than the man that Isaiah is speaking of in that passage. Yet Philip reassures this Eunuch, that in Christ, a voiceless and unjust existence is not his, nor humankind’s, true inheritance.

Reassured and with eyes open to a different state of being, one radically and fundamentally filled now with power and life, he throws off the shackles of his subservient submission and leaps up from that place of transformation and so changed shouts ‘Baptize Me now’! So transformed is the man by Philip’s guidance and reassurance and his new life in Christ, that this Eunuch finds his voice, he understands, he sees life now where there once was no life, he proverbially as the saying goes ‘gets a pair’, and his life finds justice and meaning. Healed he lives, no not in fear, but goes on his way rejoicing, sent himself on a mission, to share the goodness, the good news, of what has happened to him. And so, dear sisters and brothers, in the hearing of this story cannot we too see ourselves.

Our letter from John, as well as Jesus’ own words and imagery from the Gospel, also speaks of the reassurance of love and life found in our faith in Jesus Christ. Yes our hearts of fear can condemn us but God is greater than our hearts. The love of God abides in us as Jesus Christ and when we let that love find home in us than fear has no place to stay. In Christ, we find then a confidence that helps us to endure all things, to keep us strong in faith, to be there and love and care for one another through trials and adversity, through bike accidents, and verbal, physical or sexual abuse, through the violence in our community, and war bombs detonating. Perfect love casts out all fear.

For isn’t that the way, whenever we let the love of God find home in our hearts, whenever we let Christ in our hearts and in our world, we supplant those things like war, violence, injustice, those things that breed fear, and by so doing we then give life to something radically and fundamentally different. As the sap that flows through vine and branches, when Christ is in our hearts, when we truly believe and own the good news and the power that, that resurrected love is, then fear has no place to grow. As we live on in Christ’s love and love in deeds not just words than fear withers away and our lives and our world indeed will bear much fruit.

Wonderful people of Bellarmine Parish know that we bear much good fruit already. Yet, we are also called and challenged to examine those areas of our life where fear remains strong and our life because of it remains withered and diminished. Our hope is in Christ and here in Christ present in each one of us, here in this place, here in word and sacrament, we stand renewed and reassured and this is good news of a love so strong that all our fears have the power to be cast out if only we believe.

And finally, as a footnote, people quite often complain and rightfully so sometimes that preachers so often do not practice what they preach. The readings today hit me hard. They challenge me. The Spirit prods me, – ‘How then can you, you who profess belief in Jesus Christ, who claims that the Christ abides in you, push aside love and the things you love to do? Why are you letting the fear of that fate-filled day back on that bike-trail win’? And the only response I can give this community whom I love so dear, and the only response available, one that comes from the depths of faith is, the summer sun is here, the bike trail is calling, life is meant to be lived, the bike is waiting, and so, if you have some free time this summer, give me a call, let’s find a trail and ride – it’s time once again for love.