6th Sunday of Easter
Acts 10:25-26; 1 John 4:7-10; John 15: 9-17
Dc. Larry Brockman
God is love! So, let us just think about that for a moment.
Ponder the fact that the very essence of Almighty God, who made everything from nothing; knows everything; and keeps everything that he made in existence; is love. It’s the only thing that makes sense, isn’t it? Why would God make anything except that it pleased him to do so; and why would he maintain it unless he loved it? In fact, once God creates something, his attention is always focused on the welfare of His creation. It’s self sacrificial love.
Now you might think of some examples to challenge my statement that everything God created is out of love. For, as Ogden Nash so succinctly put it: “God in his wisdom made the fly and then forgot to tell us why”.
But you know what?” Anyone who studies the hierarchy of God’s created life forms can tell you exactly where the fly fits in. There is an incredible master design of both the physical world and plants and animals. And all of it behaves according to God’s plan. As it says in the creation story in Genesis over and over again; “And God saw that it was good, very good”.
So, while there are things that happen in nature, so called “acts of God”; and there are interactions between animals and animals, or people and people, which seem to contradict what a loving God would do or allow to happen, that simply isn’t true, just as it isn’t true that flies are all bad.
Things may seem differently to us sometimes because we don’t have the big picture; “For who can probe the mind of God” as it says in the Psalms. The problem that we have with God’s “love” is that we really don’t understand love. And in fact, as human beings we will always be incapable of understanding the mind of God, and that includes the depth of his love for us.
I’m sure that parents and Grandparents and can appreciate what it must be like for God when they find it necessary to discipline their children. In so many cases their children just can’t understand the wisdom and love in that discipline. But the parents and Grandparents have been there, done that.
And so, we have to accept on Faith that God is Love and that love is what motivates everything He does. And it is not such a great leap of faith either. Because here we all are- we came into existence out of God’s love; and out of God’s love we were given life, talents, limitations and a free will. God does not interfere with that out of love. He lets us take our “gift of life” and run with it. However life unfolds for us, it is constantly maintained by God within the constraints of the consequences we face for our own choices made by our free will.
Now, our readings today tell us more about God’s love. First, God loves all of us the same, but manifests that love differently. Wasn’t that the point of the reading from Acts? The Disciples were uniquely gifted by God. After all, they were born as part of the chosen people, the Jews, and they lived with Jesus and were intimately familiar with him. Then, they were witnesses to his resurrected body. They had everything going for them in accepting the Faith. These Jews did not mix with Gentiles. It would have been unthinkable for them, taboo.
But those hundreds of Gentiles that heard the Gospel Story accepted it on Faith. They were welcomed into the Church and received the gift of the Spirit. Peter recognized that, different though they might be, these Gentiles were ready. They were loved just as much by God, but that love was manifested differently.
Now since God loves all of us the same Then clearly, if we are made in the image in likeness of God, that means all of us are called to love one another as He loves us. That’s what Jesus tells us in the Gospel and John says in the second reading. God sent Jesus to us to redeem us- the gift of his only begotten son. But Jesus also gave us a roadmap, the Gospel, for how to love as he loved us. It’s called unconditional, sacrificial love, the kind of love where a person, “lays down one’s own life for his friends” as Jesus says.
You know what? We are called to do that all the time, aren’t we? Mom’s and Dad’s do it all the time for their children; children do it all the time for their aged parents; men and women in the armed services, police, and fire departments do it all the time for the rest of us. Whatever station in life you have, you are likely called to sacrifice your own interests for others in some way. That’s what Jesus did for all of us. And that’s the kind of love we are called to show for each other.
But the challenge is that we are called to love everyone, even those pesky folks down the street who we don’t like, just as Peter and his disciples were called to love and accept the Gentiles.
When you think about God’s love for us, it can be no other way, can it?
