4
Fr. Keith Boisvert
14 May 2017
5th Sunday of Easter (A)
When we hear Jesus talking in John’s gospel reading today, we find ourselves in the middle of his Farewell Address to his closest colleagues. In effect, we are eavesdropping on this very personal conversation, while Jesus is offering final teaching and encouragement to his friends before his death. Today’s passage begins very tenderly as Jesus consoles his followers by saying, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”
Yet, this passage is filled with riddling language. Earlier in this Farewell Address, Peter has already asked where Jesus is going (John 13:36). But in John’s gospel, you’ll notice that Jesus rarely answers anyone directly. And so, in the selection we heard, both Thomas and Philip are hard pressed to catch the true drift of Jesus’ words, as Thomas poses a question like, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”… and Jesus winds up saying to Philip, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me?”
It’s important to know that people in the first century had a habitual “feel” for the location of the holy. Much as today, when we look at life so much through a psychological filter, the ancient sensibility was greatly given to drawing boundary lines, defining where the “holy” was and wasn’t, and pointing out thresholds of entrance into the holy. The befuddlement of both Thomas and Philip suggests that the normal understanding of where the sacred is located in life was being readjusted through the teaching of Jesus, and those taking his class were confused. Stating that there were “many dwelling places” in his Father’s house only brings more disorientation for these learners.
This redefinition of the holy, however, is nothing less than what is happening throughout the gospel of John for the disciples. With this Fourth Gospel comes the clear insight that the divine is not aloof; rather it is intimate and self-giving, reinforced when Jesus explains that “whoever has seen me as seen the Father.” Through Jesus, the mutuality of God’s love has come to reside within human life. In effect, one does not have to be totally transported onto a separate divine plane to come into contact with the “holy”. Rather, it is through everyday contact with the human that the sacred is so often experienced.
Such a claim was shocking in the first century, for it flew in the face of the presumption that the divine would only occasionally make contact in human experience for a fleeting moment. You might think of angels appearing and making contact and then disappearing to have a sense of this. Some scholars think when Jesus said, "...whoever has seen me has seen the Father," it was the most shocking thing he ever said to the people of his time. The Greeks saw God as utterly invisible... and the Jews believed that no one had ever actually seen God.
However, please note that this teaching of Jesus significantly contrasts with those who would reduce reality to the “merely” human, as so often happens in our culture today. To perceive that the sacred emerges in the depths of the human is not to say that the human is all that there is. The thinking behind this passage is that authentic human life is about mutual self-giving. Jesus reveals that God is not solitary, but rather an everlasting mutuality, shown in the love that is shared between the Father and the Son. For those of us who believe, and thus hopefully live in this life of mutual self-giving, there is the added realization that we too will manifest such a life to the world, thereby continuing the mission of Jesus as Son of the Father.
The significance of this belief cannot be overestimated. Believers such as us are called to live the very life of God, this life of mutual, self-giving love. This means that, in faith, one comes to understand that reality is no longer an individual affair; rather, our deepest and fondest dreams are realized in the process of mutual self-giving. The very source and end of life comes to us in the process of trusting this mystery and living our lives in and through it. For the Gospel of John, it is this life of trust that is real, and upon which the entire possibility of salvation rests. In your prayer sometime this week, you might reflect on whether you trust God deeply in this way.
As this is Mother's Day, it seems natural to use parents as an example here. The relationship between parent and child can give us a keen insight into this divine essence of mutual self-giving. During the natural ebb and flow of human life, the “giving” is sometimes more one-sided depending on the age of child and parent. But the mutuality of love is so often a bond throughout the life cycle, and helps us to envision John’s theology. On Friday evenings now, as I help my mother to undress and get into her pajamas, I can't help but think of the many times she dressed me as a child. When we go for a walk and I push my mother around in her wheelchair, taking me for walks as a child in a stroller come to mind.
Scrubbing the pan in which Sunday’s roast was cooked… getting your children to and from school, and doctor’s appointments, and rehearsals, and sporting events… earning a living and paying the bills are not always inspiring, exhilarating experiences… but they are holy acts. The details of being a parent—cleaning, teaching, disciplining, driving to and picking up, paying tuition, guiding, challenging, consoling, feeding, clothing—all these take on a spiritual character when they are part of transforming a child into a sacred and thoughtful and engaged adult.
For parents, the spiritual is not ethereal or remote; the holy is not abstract and confined to words and images. For Moms and Dads, the spiritual is painfully real; the holy is directly connected to the most ordinary and mundane human activities. In parenting, the spiritual transcends the present to envision the future—and who contributes more to the future than a parent raising a child into a responsible, spiritually-grounded, loving adult? Parents are unfolding the holy work of creation when they give life to a new human being with a soul and a spirit. Throughout your life as a parent, you are continuing the work begun, and now entrusted to you, by God.
It is interesting that Jesus taught us to relate to God by using the parental image “Father”. In the gospel today he challenges Philip by saying, “How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.” This is the language of mutual, self-giving love: “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.” Whether we are young or old, whether we are a parent or not, all of us as disciples are invited by John’s gospel to confidently interpret and describe our lives in similar words.
And so I invite you to envision yourself speaking these words: “Do you not believe that I am in Jesus, and that Jesus is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. Jesus who dwells in me is doing his works.” As we are spiritually united with Jesus in the Eucharist we share today, we are strengthened to know more deeply... and to believe more fully... and to live more clearly those words and the vision of reality that is mutual, self-giving love.