Sixth Sunday in Easter – May 17, 2009
In a moment or two we are going to hear our scripture speak to us about the word love. The word love or some form of it is used twenty-four times in both our second reading from the First Letter of John and from the gospel of John this morning. The intent of this seemingly overuse of the word is not to desensitize us into thinking that love is just some meaningless and random word; but quite the opposite. The word is used so much this morning I believe to hammer home the point that love is the foundational element that gives, life, peace, joy, and ultimately harmony, to not only our very being, but harmony to all of our relationships, and harmony to our world as well.
In the gospel of John, written some 100 years after Jesus’ resurrection, the fabric of that communal love is beginning to break down, and so the evangelist’s message for them, and for us, is filled then with urgency. It is only the love of God in Christ, as it abides in us, that keeps that love alive and abiding in community. Human beings did not create the reality of love. God did. The underlying mystery is that divinity created the universe and the world and everything in it for not other reason but out of love, for love. So our first letter from John affirms that God is love, that God loves us first, and from that love, we, creator and created, are bound together in this loving dance of covenant fidelity. Deep down belief in that divine love for us, in our minds and in our hearts, transforms us, helps us to live fuller lives, lives that are capable in truth, to humbly, and finally and forever, embrace our worth, our dignity as human beings, and live in peace, joy, and harmony with ourselves and with our God.
This coming to believe in Christ’s love for all humanity then finds itself played out in the story of Peter and Cornelius in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Peter, as we shall soon hear, exclaims to Cornelius ‘stand up, I too am a human being’. As human beings we come to know things, like love, through our minds as well as our hearts. In a very oversimplified manner, if we understand Peter’s first-hand experience of Christ’s love as an apostle, and the feelings he has of God’s love, born of centuries of heartfelt relational understanding coming from his background as a Jewish man, of what it means to be loved by God as a people of the covenant, and then contrast that with Cornelius’s Roman and pagan influence, stoic, logical, and philosophical virtue ethics way of being and relating, perhaps we cannot only see the humor present in our story from Acts but learn as well what the love of Christ means for all humankind.
For here, in a role reversal, Peter uses logic, and not his heart, to rationally articulate that God show’s no partiality, that divine love in Christ is for all, Jew and Gentile alike. And Cornelius, his family, and the community of Roman Gentiles, in their connection for the first time with this Christian community, again in a role reversal. Throw logic and reason aside, and emotionally fall down in worship, speak in tongues, and ‘extol’ God, as the Holy Spirit fell down on all of them – hardly rational behavior. In the coming together of these two men, in the coming together of these two cultures, each learned from the other, what it truly means to be human, what it truly means, through Christ, to be loved, and how important love is for forming a harmonious and just community – communion.
As God’s beloved Children, let us listen with joy to God’s Word.
Homily
Call me a geek, a nerd if you will, but I am a big fan of science fiction, HUGE" and I make no apologies for being one. Last week, I rushed out to see the new Star Trek movie. I will not give away the plot, and even if you have not seen this movie, most of us know enough about Star Trek from the television show or from reading about it, that we are familiar with two of its main archetypal characters – Spock and Captain James T. Kirk.
In some ways, like Cornelius, Spock was formed and educated all of his life to be ‘logical’ to pursue rationally ideal virtues and truth. Born of an earth mother and a Vulcan father however, he had to suppress the human emotional side of himself and embrace the purely logical as his culture and race required. And Kirk, represents the heart, just as Peter did in our story from Acts, and so is in contrast to Spock a man of pure emotion, brash - a person who leads through feeling, intuition, and from the gut. Kirk, as a character, mistrusts logic and rational thought for it was logic and the logistical planning of others in a space battle that resulted in the death of his father when he was just a boy.
We can, as human beings and as Christians, so often be like Spock and Kirk, like Peter or Cornelius, and that is why these character types, all head or all heart, are prominent in the narrative stories we tell and tell again. They act then as cautionary beings for us this morning urging us to see that quite often we fail either in our head, but more often than not fail in our heart, to believe in the power of divine love, of Christ’s love, for us and for our world and so to be fully human as God intended.
So that is the driving force behind our scripture passages this morning for here we are presented once again with love’s reality in Jesus Christ, the role this love plays in all of our relationships, with others, with God, with our very selves. As such we are challenged by the Word of God, as human beings, whenever we fail to believe both logically in our head, and emotionally in our heart, the depth of God’s love and how that love can, if we, individually and communally truly believe, bring healing and wholeness to our lives and to our communities.
In this movie, in order to resolve the conflict, and save the ship from self-destruction, and ultimately rescue the universe from annihilation, both men separately had to learn to work together, to appreciate the gifts of the other, come to embrace their need for each other and in so doing, they grew in those areas, either logic or feeling, where they had lack. In their process of discovery they grew to love and respect the other and become friends. No longer at odds with one another and putting ego aside, they were better able to care for the crew, the community on that ship, and unified in love and common purpose the community in turn was strengthened and rallied together to vanquish evil in the world and make it a more peaceful and just place.
HURRAY!
Yet, sadly too often, love does not find a home in our hearts nor in our world. And recently, this lack of love hit close to our home in Bellarmine Parish, as a staff member here (name omitted for publication), faced the reality of love’s lack when a family member was brutally murdered two days ago. The world gives us numerous stories of lack of love, from torture, and war, starvation, to abuse, lies, deception and countless other injustices. As Christians then, we look out to our world and see the fabric of communal love, torn and in tatters. We cry out, from that place of brokenness and wound, ‘what then must we do to make God’s love alive in the world’?
God’s love for us is not science, it is mystery - we stand transfixed and look out from the horizon of our being and ask ourselves, ‘how could this creator of the universe desire to be so intimately involved in humanity, care so much for us and our world, that this God became human for me, for you, (and you, and you, and you), in order that we all can have life to the full, that we can be forgiven and healed, that we can be saved’? This infinite God embraces the finite us and in the mystery of that love then how can our hearts not be moved. God’s love for us is also not fiction, it is fact, it is something that through scripture, and years of tradition, and teaching and preaching, we have come to know logically as true. We need to let that love then truly find a home in our hearts and well as our heads.
We need to turn first to ourselves. We must first make that divine love come alive in us – for the love of God that rests in our hearts and at the center or our being will make that love a reality in our communities and our world. If we don’t believe with all of our hearts, with all of our minds, in the power of divine love’s capacity to heal and transform our very lives than how can we ever expect peace, harmony, justice, and mercy to find a home here on this spaceship we call earth? God’s word this morning is very clear, let my love abide in you, let it find home in your head and heart, dear humans, so that your life may bear fruit in your love for one another, and so that my love may be complete. ‘Hurry now’, the Lord calls, ‘my healing love is here for your wounded hearts and this broken world, make my joy for you full alive and fully real - believe, for its only love after all’.
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Kent Beausoleil, S.J.
(513) 745-3005 (Office)