The Sixth Sunday of Easter (Mother Marisa)

​In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

About 2,024 years ago — give or take a few — when Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples, there were no bells. There were no champagne receptions. There were no glad shouts of “Alleluia!” Instead, there was a lot of confusion and fear and running around because no one believed what the myrrh-bearing women said they saw at the tomb in the garden. The news that Mary and Salome and Mary Magdalene brought — “He is not there!” — was simply too incomprehensible to be true. Only three days had passed since Jesus’ friends and followers had seen him gasp his last excruciating breath, nailed to a cross. It’s not surprising that they would not or could not wake up to what this news meant. 

And yet Jesus was there regardless — standing among them, alive and seemingly well, save for the nail-marks in his hands and feet and the wound in his side. His voice, the same. His smile, too. Jesus opened wide his arms with words of welcome; and then he ate breakfast. 

Nothing was the same after Jesus rose again. As each day passed, the disciples — Mary Magdalene, Thomas, Peter — had to come to grips with how much they hadn’t known or understood about this man they loved. They had to reckon with the earth-breaking, grave-shattering, veil-rending revelation that is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus was who he said he was. He is who he says he is; and that will never cease to surprise and amaze us — and turn our lives upside down. 

Because it’s easy, all too easy, for us to have the same experience as the disciples. We hear the Word Christ speaks and promptly forget it or immediately misunderstand it. No matter that we’re educated denizens of the 21st-century — humankind doesn’t change; and just like Thomas, we need Jesus to remind us that he is still flesh and blood and God — divine and human, our Lord and our God. And just like Peter, we need Jesus to remind us that he can forgive even the deepest of betrayals and then send the sinner out to become a saint. And just like the Jewish leaders and the Roman consuls as well as thousands of Christians throughout the years, we need Jesus to remind us that his reign is one not of coercion or rigidity or violence but one of love and mercy. That is what Eastertide is about. Jesus is among us, teaching us to live in light of who God revealed him to be by raising him from the dead. 

And what do we learn today but the oldest lesson of them all? God is love; and he commands us to love one another. 

“As the Father has loved me,” Jesus said, “so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

Even just on the surface, these words sound very nice. God is love. We can get behind that; we can print it on a t-shirt or stick it on our car. But to stop there is to surrender our understanding of Love to the 21st-century’s two dimensions, where love is more often the product of algorithms or the domain of advertisers or the half-guilty sense of familial obligation that descends upon us at Christmastime than it is anything to do with God. 

Given a moment to reflect, though, we can usually recognize that; and given another moment to reflect, we can actually recognize God’s love when we see it. Because it’s distinctive. It’s striking. It’s not normal to pour oneself out as an offering of love for someone else — including one’s enemies. But that is what God does, has done, and will do.

For God so loved that world that he sent his only Son to save it. 

And that love truly, truly I say to you, changes everything. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, lived and died as a human being; in his life, the Word rewrote what was possible for humans to accomplish; in his death, the Lamb broke the bonds of fear and pain that so often underly the sins committed against us and the sins committed by us; and in his resurrection, God opened up the way of eternal life to us now. 

This is Easter. Christ is in our midst, teaching us and reminding us and revealing to us who he is, that we might ready to follow him when he comes our way. 

And he does — and you are already following him. You may not realize it because we haven’t been taught to look for the Lord of Love in every moment of every day; but every time, every time you choose to control even justified anger and turn the other cheek, you are abiding in God’s love. Every time you give up an hour or a weekend to listen to a friend cry or to help a grieving family at their son’s funeral, you are abiding in God’s love. Every time you pause to behold the beauty of creation, you are abiding in God’s love. Every time you strive to see someone as a person rather than a caricature, you are abiding in God’s love. Every time you do your work with your whole heart and mind and soul and strength, you are abiding in God’s love. 
Every instance of this love that pulls us outside of ourselves is a moment we step into the reality of our existence: God’s love holds us, holds everything in life simply because he loves us and wants us to exist not just now but for all of eternity. 

Did you know that? Did you know how much God loves you? The creator and redeemer and sustainer of the world; the all-holy life-giving Trinity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit loves you, not as a child would, not as a lover, but as a God who knows you, who sees you — not as you might appear to your boss or your coworkers, not even as you might appear to your closest friends or family; but as you are. Your beauty and your ugliness, your light and your darkness, your fears and secrets and sins and hopes and dreams. All of it. He sees you for who you are and says, “My love.”

Nothing is impossible after that because nothing is impossible for God. We live in the light of his love. We walk in the morning of his resurrection. This is his Word. This is his command: Abide in his love. He has said these things to you so that his joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. AMEN.