5 Easter B April 28, 2024
Acts 8:26-40 Psalm 22:24-30
1 John 4:7-21 John 15:1-8
Acts 8:26-40 Psalm 22:24-30
1 John 4:7-21 John 15:1-8
When a word or phrase is used a lot, it might gain the status of being a cliche, something overused in language to the point of losing its meaning. We might say that love gets overused in popular music and poetry, so much so that it almost seems circular in self referencing. Let's proclaim love in order to establish the importance of love, as in the verse by Emily Dickinson, "That love is all there is, Is all we know of love."
We often call the 13th chapter of First Corinthians, "the love chapter," the one read at many weddings, but First John, chapter 4 could also be "the love chapter."
In our human language, the word "love" has arisen to refer to a human experience. In the attempt to reduce to words what is the greatest conception for human beings, the word for such Plenitude is God, but such Plenitude also has in language words to speak about the best energies, flows and attributes which come to consciousness of people who confess the Plentitude of God. One could say that the overall connectedness between everything that lives and moves and has being within God is what we call love. Thusly, the Johannine writer states a most direct metaphor: God is Love.
Love is the best sort of connectedness between everything that is; but we know that connectedness has been distorted and misappropriated and we frightfully know the resulting alienations that we have with Plenitude and with each other.
How can the perfection of love be known when the live of alienation and dysfunctional connectedness is so obvious in our world?
Christians confess Jesus as the exemplary conduit through which a restoration in love can begin to happen. The writer of John's Gospel understands Jesus to be a Vine maintaining the connection with the many branches. The early church understood Christ as the expression of the pure connectively of love with God and with each other.
The call of life is to abide in the source of our connectivity with God and with each other. What is the inner flow of this connectivity? It could be called Love, or it could be called the Holy Spirit.
What are the barriers for us to experience the flow of the connectivity of love with God and with each other?
The main barriers are on the personal level of egotistical selfishness and on the social level in all the barriers responsible for group division and hate and separation. The purpose of the Acts of the Apostles was to proclaim that the love message of Jesus Christ was to go beyond Jerusalem, beyond Galilee, beyond Palestine even to Ethiopia. The evangelist Philip baptized and commission the Ethiopian eunuch to carry the message of the love of Christ to his homeland. There are no geographical or social limits to the practice of love, since it is to be discovered as the omnipresent reality of togetherness.
The Gospel for us today is an invitation to discover the connectedness of love. We do this by identifying with the King of Love, Christ himself and to experience an inner connectedness to guide us in the ways to live lovingly.
One linguistic result of living lovingly is to make us into poets who commit often the cliches which pertain to love and to Christ. St. Paul confessed poetically that Christ is all and in all. As lovers of Christ and those who wish to be more loving, we might describe the experience of abiding in Christ as: That Christ is all there is, Is all we know of Christ.
Our scientific sides will have to tolerate our poetic sides when we have come to know the love of God in Christ. We too, will speak the truthful cliches of love. Amen.
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