Much more than we know

Easter, Sunday 6B 5.5.2024

(Acts 10:25-48, John 15:9-17)

Even if we weren’t very good at maths – and I certainly wasn’t – we all know that two little parallel lines, the “equals” sign, indicate that this number is the same as that number. Most of us know, too, that when the lines aren’t parallel, but make a little arrowhead pointing to the left, <, it means that the number following the sign is greater than the number before it.

That “less than” sign sums up the theme in today’s readings: Whereas we think we know the world around us, there is always a much greater underlying reality waiting for us to discover. Didn’t we leave childhood behind and enter the turbulent but exciting stage of adolescence, and then the wider world of adulthood? As our mind expanded, we found the world was immeasurably wider and richer than our childhood world – although we need to keep on being a child as well.

In this first reading, we see Peter, loyal, if perhaps a bit slow-witted. We can presume he kept the Jewish dietary laws faithfully, so he must have been extremely shocked when the heavenly voice told him that these laws longer had to be observed: that all foods are clean. This is good news for those who like oysters, crayfish and bacon, but that wasn’t the main point. Peter saw it more clearly the next day when the pagan soldier Cornelius asked to be baptised. Peter realised that God was much bigger than he had thought; and God’s plan for humanity far greater.

This explains Jesus basic teaching: “repent and believe the good news”. the word repent – metanoia – doesn’t mean beat yourself up because you are guilty, but rather “get a new mind; see the bigger picture”: God is far bigger than you thought. God’s family includes everyone, not just Jews. Peter saw pagan Romans receiving the holy spirit: even members of the brutal army that was occupying his homeland. Peter’s horizon was being incredibly widened, just as Jesus had tried to widen it by telling stories about a kindly foreigner, the good Samaritan. But Peter had a hard job convincing other Jewish Christians that God loves everyone. We don’t like to let go of our cherished, narrow ideas, especially about God.

John’s gospel invites us to discover the wider truth that God has become intimately entwined with our world of matter and flesh. In the person of Jesus, God’s word calls himself the light of the world, the bread of life, the water of life. This incarnation is far more than our philosophy thought possible.

On the night before he died Jesus expanded our horizon much further. His love lifted us from being slaves into the intimacy of friendship. Another horizon much wider than we could imagine. God calls us friends! God does not threaten or punish us; nor is God hard to please or persuade by our petty prayers. This is surely the climax of the bible, revealing God’s true attitude towards us, and to all creation. “God saw that it was good”.

John’s gospel echoes the other three gospels, which all quote the central Jewish commandment: love God and your neighbour. But just before he died, Jesus told us to love one another “as I have loved you”. Amazingly, he empowers us to love by God’s own love, which formed a trillion galaxies!

With this power, we can love everyone, without exception: those who suffer terribly in the current genocide that Israel is inflicting on millions of Palestinians. We are called to love every perpetrator and every victim, praying to restrain and convert the one and to support and heal the other. Empowered by infinite love, we can resist all evil, nonviolently.

Christ expanded our horizon by inviting us to “Love one another as I have loved you”. he leads us towards the “harsh and dreadful love” that includes those who suffer and those who make others suffer. he was tortured to death defending the poorest against power used immorally by religious people and by Empire. We fervently hope that our loving does not call us to literal crucifixion, but there are plenty of near-equivalents in family life.

Finally, Jesus showed us the wider horizon of joy. whatever limited joys we have experienced so far in life, he promises us that we will eventually share his own infinite joy. Doesn’t this widen our horizons beyond imagining?

So whenever we feel shut in, blocked by some barrier that seems impenetrable, we might recall the simple sign (< ) which means “less than”, and know that the holy one is present within us, whose love is immeasurably greater than all our tiny planet’s pain and grief. Greater than genocide, than the suffering of children, than our own small limits, for all these are temporary, and immeasurably less than the infinite love which embraces us all.

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