Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 18, 2025: Acts 11:1-18; Revelation 21:1-6;John 13:31-35;
Psalm 148
Today’s lessons give us both a vision of life on earth in the presence of God, and instructions on how to be there. The vision helps us know why we do what we do:
See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God;
they will be his peoples,and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,for the first things have passed away.
The voice that John of Patmos hears in Revelation offers a vision of the world. In it, the new heaven is here on earth. God is among us. God will wipe away every tear, and “mourning and crying and pain” will be no more. This is not in some future after we die; it is now.
I don’t know about you, but this feels a long way away from my world. There is grief and pain all around us. So John’s gospel feels particularly challenging. “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.“
What does it mean to love one another as Jesus commanded us? It’s not the mushy hallmark card version of love, that we have for those closest to us. And it certainly doesn’t mean that we *like* everyone. But it must mean respecting and treating as a creature of God all those we encounter. Pope Francis put it this way:
Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity. Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true ordo amoris (‘order of love’) … is that which we discover….by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.
We live in times when it is sometimes hard to love one another. How, in the US, do I love people who act with deliberate cruelty, who rejoice in the suffering of others, who think it’s a good thing to round people up off the street and ship them out of the country, who do not care about the Constitution? How, in the world, do I love those who have led wars in Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar and everywhere on earth where there is war? How do I love the Taliban as they kill women who seek knowledge? I think Francis’ formulation, where we “affirm the infinite dignity of all” is helpful. I can still recognize someone as a child of God with dignity and say that they have done something sinful.
It is this love, this treating everyone as a beloved child of God, no matter how much we think they are cruel, or even evil, that we can see God present in our lives here. We do not have to wait. Revelation makes that clear: I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.
So go forth, and love one another, as generously as you can. Help us build God’s kingdom here on earth.
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