During this joyful season of Easter, there’s perhaps a bit of a tendency or unspoken pressure to be always happy and joyful. Lent is over. Holy Week is over. All that sad and sorrowful season is gone. I don’t have to feel repentant, and that gloominess can be gone. On this note, today’s gospel lesson seems to be quite unfitting in this Easter season. Jesus in the gospel lesson brings us back to Maundy Thursday. I don’t know whose idea was this to select this gospel passage on this Fifth Sunday of Easter. But I think it’s brilliant in that we are once again reminded that the resurrection comes through death.
Jesus tells his disciples at the last supper, “Where I am going, you cannot come.” It’s a bit puzzling what he means by this. What we do know is that he’s talking about death, his own death. We can actually disagree with him and say, “Well, if it is death you’re talking about, I can get there too.” This reasoning of disagreement with Jesus then tells us that where we cannot follow Jesus is not death. It is something which goes through and beyond death that we cannot get to. Jesus is going further than death. Which means unless he first paves the way through death, no one can follow him. We are again in the shoes of the disciples, asking the same question, “Where are you going, Jesus?” We are, however, in a much better position than the disciples. We have what’s called “tradition” in our hands, something that is being handed over to us. The tradition teaches us where Jesus is going. So starting with the phrase, “Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, and was buried,” it leads us “...he descended to hell, rose again from the dead and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” This reiteration of the Apostles’ Creed might sound doctrinal, giving the impression that we just gotta believe what the creed tells us to be true and memorize it. Yet, this is not and should not be the case. Jesus in today’s gospel shows us what this mythical and metaphorical expression of descending to hell and sitting at the right hand of the Father means. So what it means is that Jesus’ paving through death is God’s initiative to eternal love. Simply put, imagine Jesus pioneering, paving, and creating the way of love that goes beyond death, that unconditional love, from that which nothing, not even death can separate us. And he, through his death and resurrection, already made the way of love, not just for us but for the world. Now, we are in a completely different place than the disciples. In the context of where this teaching of Jesus takes place in today’s gospel, he tells the disciples, “Where I am going, you cannot follow NOW.” And this “now” applies to us quite differently. Our now is to follow where Jesus is going. So he says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” We follow Jesus as we follow this new commandment of loving one another. We might say this commandment of loving one another is not something new because the Book of Deuteronomy and the Book of Leviticus also talk about about loving God and neighbor as oneself. This is true that this teaching is not new but different in that this love of God through Jesus, we Christians believe, opens up something completely new. This love brings the new creation, the new reality which God has created through Jesus. This newness of the commandment is the same newness of what St John saw in his vision in the second lesson, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth...he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." For the two weeks, the gospel talks a lot about love. Beginning with Jesus’s question of “Do you love me?”and hearing that voice with our hearts, Jesus again talks about love. Love one another. This mutual love is the path to follow Jesus and the place where we encounter Jesus. Now, what is love? Can someone define love? Oxford Dictionary defines it as “an intense feeling of deep affection.” Do you agree with this? For me, no. This definition is quite poor, if not misleading. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th century Dominican brother, can actually help us how to understand this love. He believes that there are two requirements for love. The first is the desire for the good of the beloved. And the second is the desire for union with the beloved. So if we say we love someone, we want the good, the best for that person and we want to be together with that person. This love can be easily applied to a married couple. But this applies to any relationship. Say that I as a priest want the best for N. Which means I want to be most helpful so that N. can flourish as who she truly is. Also, I want to build a healthy loving relationship with her that is most appropriate to her and me.* I will give you an example what is not love. Say Jerome who is married to Paula believes he truly loves Sheila. He wants the best for Sheila and desires to be in union with her. Now, this is clearly wrong morally. But let’s go deeper than that by using Aquinas’s way of understanding love. Jerome’s desire for union with Sheila, which we call cheating, is inappropriate for two reasons at least. First, that desire does not bring any good to Sheila herself. Sheila becomes a part of destroying the sanctity of marriage. Second, Jerome’s desire for union with Sheila also does not bring any good to Paula but deep pain. So how do I know if I truly love that person? That is to ask myself, “Do I desire the good of that person? And do I desire union with that person, seeking to build a healthy loving relationship?” What this love does is, that is, the fruit that love bears is a community of love in which people share themselves for the good of the beloved and for deeper union with the beloved. This community of love is the church, which is based on the love of Jesus. In this light, the voice of the Holy Spirit talking to St Peter in his heart makes more sense. “Do not make a distinction between them and us.” This is the circumcised versus the uncircumcised, the chosen versus the unchosen. Love does not seek to divide you and me. Instead, it seeks to be in union with the unchosen, the undesirable. And my friends, this love desiring the good of the unchosen and the undesirable and desiring union with them is dangerous and countercultural. This love is what got Jesus killed on the cross. And this love is what brought him back to the new life in his resurrection. We are called to this particular, new love of Jesus. And we are given the grace and power to follow the way of his love. Our personal relationship with God is our source to follow Jesus’s new commandment, that Jesus desires the good of all of us, empowering us to flourish, and desiring eternal union with us. This is what we want to do out in the world. And here in church, we practice and make many mistakes as well not to hurt one another but to learn again and again how to love truly in the way Jesus does. So my friends, are you following where Jesus is going? Where are you going now? * Eleonore Stump talks about Thomas Aquinas's understanding of love in her paper, "Love, by All Accounts." Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 80, no. 2 (2006): 25-43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27645191. * I’m indebted to Marie-Dominique Chenu who talks about a theological virtue of faith and the incarnation in his book, Aquinas and His Role in Theology, pp. 22-23: “The Word of God is heard in the context of faith. This Word can only be received in faith. Even in human dialogue with another person, exchanging words with one another, a certain bare minimum of truth is the fundamental condition for dialogue...When God is the partner, this psychological necessity becomes doubly important because of the radical demand arising from the very nature of the human spirit. The human mind needs to be lifted up (elevatio) to the level of its divine partner, whose life continues to remain totally mysterious. In this way, faith lifts up my intelligence to the mystery of this transcendent being who speaks to me. Faith is a theological virtue in the strict sense of the term, since from the start it confers on me a participation in the divine nature. Without that, how could there be dialogue?...in order to undertake and achieve the dialogue, God becomes human. As a result of this disconcerting initiative, since God is going to speak to me as a human being, I am going to undertake to dialogue with God as a human--first in the Scriptures, then (and supremely so) in the incarnation, and finally in his Church which continues to be his body. My faith will not bring about a mystical transport beyond my human condition, but rather a communion at my own psychological level achieved in human words with the capacity to proclaim God in my own earthly formulations, using human grammar and expressions. In Christ, the Word Of God has spoken to me in a dialogue that is consubstantial with my humanity. Certainly I should have no illusions about the frailty of what my words can say; in this context they can be, I can be sure that they will, following their intended meaning and by the Church’s assurance, authentically continue the truth of the Word of God.”
Open the eyes of our faith to see the new reality of the resurrection in our daily lives. Amen.
Have you ever wondered why the disciples are back at their old job place, why they are back to fishing even after their encounter with the risen Christ? I mean, if you think about St John’s accounts that Jesus shows himself to the disciples twice and now the third time at the shore, it is strange to see how little of impact the resurrection is on them. It’s like they simply forget that Jesus is risen. This is quite baffling and even shocking. The risen Christ shows up twice but it didn’t work much to make a change in his disciples. But I think their return to the shore to fish exactly shows the current state of our world. Our world that doesn’t believe in the resurrection of Jesus is actually the world to which the disciples are back. It is their reality in which they try their best to make a living. In that reality, the resurrection has never happened, and sin always happens. There’s nothing new in this reality but the same old. The disciples are trying to catch some fish but nothing is happening. It’s just one of those unlucky nights that they waste their time and get nothing out of their hard labor. This is the world where our efforts feel useless and God doesn’t seem to care much about our lives. And in this very world to which Jesus’s disciples return, they are no longer the disciples or followers of Jesus but fishermen who catch nothing. Speaking of a fisherman, the fisherman who catches nothing is not a very good one. From the capitalist perspective, this unproductive fisherman produces no profit and should be laid off. But let’s think about this a bit differently. Suppose someone who is not a fisherman catches nothing. Even from the capitalist perspective, this doesn’t really matter because fishing for that person is just a personal hobby. It isn’t a means to sustain his life. But if that person seriously believes that he is a real fisherman, he is out of touch with his reality. And this is exactly what the disciples are doing. They are no longer fishermen, yet they consider themselves to be ones. They’re in the wrong world and in the wrong reality. They’re indeed living in unreality. At this very moment of catching nothing, Jesus shows up again to bring them back to their true reality. This is the reality of the resurrection that Jesus is calling them to join. When Jesus appears to them for the third time and commands them to cast the net to the right side of their boat, things change drastically. Jesus brings them the whole new reality in which they become who they are supposed to be, not the fishermen in their old world, but the disciples, the followers of Jesus in their new world. The fact that they catch 153 fish does not mean that with Jesus you can make lots of money or become successful in this world of unreality that has nothing to do with the resurrection. What this miracle indicates is that with Jesus’s resurrection we can live in the world which lacks nothing of God’s abundant mercy and love. The resurrection, my friends, is not one of the many miracles that God has performed in this world. It is not just an event that should be listed as what kind of miracles God has done. There are no events or miracles that can be compared to the resurrection. The resurrection is the new creation. It is the new reality that God has opened up to the world through Jesus of Nazareth. The resurrection is the new genesis of our world. Only in this understanding of the resurrection as the new reality, Baptism and Eucharist make sense. Baptism is God’s invitation for us to live in this reality of the resurrection. Baptism is the way in which our bodies and souls enter in the reality of the resurrection in which we die with Christ and rise with Christ. Eucharist is God’s feeding of our bodies and souls with his own body and blood to continue to live in the reality of the resurrection. Let us look at Simon Peter in today’s gospel. He is the one who first says, “I am going fishing.” It’s almost like he’s leading all his friends back to unreality where the resurrection has no impact. Then Jesus shows up to take him and others out of that unreality. Peter, as soon as he recognizes it is Jesus who calls them out of the old boat, puts his clothes on and jumps into the sea. Peter’s behavior of putting clothes on and jumping into the sea, if you thinking about it, is quite odd. Swimming through the sea with your regular clothes on is quite difficult, and he as a fisherman would definitely know this better than anyone. Yet, he makes himself presentable as if he wants to look proper and polite before his teacher. This is Peter’s crossing over to the reality of the resurrection where he is no longer a fisherman but a fisher of people, a disciple and follower of Jesus. And jumping into the sea reminds us of baptism in which we become who we really are in God’s eyes. Then Jesus feeds Peter and other disciples with the bread and the fish. Which may remind us of the Eucharist. This Eastertide is then our season to transition from our old reality to the new reality of the resurrection. And our Christian life is our perpetual transition from old to new, being led by the Holy Spirit. It’s like the process of orientation to disorientation and then to reorientation of ourselves. We might go back to the old selves and fail again and again. I’m not saying we shouldn’t go back to fail again. Whatever stage you’re in this time of your life, and there’s no judgment of where you are at this moment, do not ever forget that Jesus is always in the midst of your unreality where you catch nothing. Jesus is always in that moment where you feel like a failure, catching you all the way at the bottom. And he will feed you and most importantly, will ask you, “Do you love me?” For Peter, Jesus had to ask him the same question three times because Peter hated himself so much at those three moments of denying Jesus. If you hated yourself so much more than three times, Jesus will ask you more than three times, “Do you love me?” And this question of love is not to test you whether you love him or not. We ask such a question because we love that person. “Do you love me?” already presupposes one’s love for the other. In this question of love, or rather through this love confession of Jesus, Peter is restored and healed. The rock that has been shattered is reoriented and resurrected. Similarly, Jesus’s changing of Saul or Paul’s unreality to the reality of the resurrection dramatically takes place in the second lesson. He gets completely disoriented, losing his sight and yet is reoriented as scales fall off from his eyes to see the whole new creation/reality o the resurrection. My friends in Christ, what reality are you living right now? Are you living in unreality in which your life has nothing to do with the resurrection? In this unreality, there’s no way we can be happy or satisfied. Even if we are, it is temporal and instant. This unreality has no goal that is ever fulfilling our hearts. It is the world that we try and try but catch nothing. It is the unreality that does not accept the new reality of the resurrection. More accurately speaking, this unreality only exists by denying and refusing the new reality of the resurrection. At the same time, it is incredibly difficult to see, feel, and experience the whole new reality Jesus has brought to the world. Even the disciples who saw the risen Christ twice returned to their old unreality. Even so then, for us it must be more difficult and challenging. Yet, my friends, the Holy Spirit has never been absent in our midst. The Holy Spirit has never left us alone in our unreality. The Holy Spirit continues to bring us out of the old boat, out of unreality to the whole new creation of the resurrection. Only in this respect, we can talk about the legitimate reason for the church to exist in this world. The church exists to be the sign of the new reality of the resurrection. The church is this new boat of the resurrection that catches the world out of the old boat of unreality. And all of you belong to this boat of the resurrection through Baptism and Eucharist. During this Eastertide, let us continue to remind ourselves which reality or unreality we place ourselves into. And even if we find ourselves in the old boat where we catch nothing, let us not despair but dare hear and see Jesus who brings the new reality of the resurrection without ceasing to tell us how much he loves us. Jesus’s love changes your unreality to the reality of the resurrection, in which you’re healed, restored, and reborn to build the beloved community of Jesus. From this fundamental truth of the Christian faith, we find reasons why we gather, calling ourselves the body of Christ, the church and celebrating the signs of that Easter love together. And here at Saint Agnes this morning, we are once again brought to the shore where Jesus is feeding us with his body and blood. And at the Table of Jesus, we hear him asking all of us personally and communally, “Do you love me?” Faith is our ability to say yes to that question over and over again. We say yes to build the beloved community of Jesus among ourselves and in the world. May the Holy Spirit grant us the grace to carry this new reality of the resurrection in which we speak the language of love and forgiveness to the world of unreality. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
|