SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER B

[cappie]

  After washing everyone’s feet, Jesus commissions the disciples saying, “ I shall not call you servants any more, I call you friends,”  We are friends of Jesus, too, we might say.

This friendship with Jesus means to fold us into the Body of Christ, the Christ who comes to live among us as one who serves, not one to be served. To serve others with God’s steadfast love for all humanity. To seek and serve Christ in all others. We are to serve all, not some, not many, surely not a few, but all others, loving our neighbour as ourselves – as we would like to be served.

It ought to strike us, if it has not already, the astonishing irony of John’s story of the Last Supper. Jesus commissions us to be his friends so that his “joy may be in [us], and so [our] joy may be complete,” overflowing from our lives into the lives of others – all others. Jesus is filled with joy despite the fact John tells us, “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father.  (John 13:1). And yet he remains filled with joy, commissioning those who wish to follow him to go into the world as those who wish to serve others, not be served by others. Such love for one another, such seeking to serve Christ in all persons, is the source of the same joy that fills the Risen Christ.

  Jesus imagines a new world unfolding from the events that are to follow that Last Supper. Jesus imagines his friends will now continue in the midst of God’s work: not only the judgment of the world, with all its problems, and troubles but also the renewal and repair of a broken world, as we become the Body of Christ, bringing his joy of service to others as a new reality for all people!  

  We hear in the First Readding about Peter, who,  has had a vision. As he is praying, he is hungry. The Lord shows him a vision of all manner of creatures to eat that are not Kosher and says, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” Peter says three times, “No, I have never eaten such things.” We are meant to remember that this is Peter, who had denied even knowing Jesus three times.  

As Peter emerges from this vision, Cornelius, a centurion, sends men to bring him to his home, where Peter is faced with a house filled with Gentiles, who want to hear about the Word. They want to hear of the God  and desire to enter into his new command to love one another, even as Jesus did, marching toward pain.

Peter begins to speak,  ,  ‘The truth I have now come to realise’ he said, ‘is that God does not have favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.’

And then it happens. The Holy Spirit comes upon these outsiders, and suddenly they, too, are extolling God in ways that anyone could understand! Peter and his Jewish, Christ-following friends of Jesus stare in disbelief. So that’s what the vision was all about, he must have been thinking. These are not just words I am speaking. God really, truly does not show any partiality whatsoever! And so, what could they do, but baptize this house filled with Gentiles? They would spend the next few days together, filled with the joy of Jesus, with God’s steadfast love for all persons: male and female, Jew and Roman, slave and free. All divisions would need to cease because the repair of the broken world had begun!

God’s Word on this day means to ask us: Do we accept Jesus’ invitation to become his friends? Do we wish to serve? Do we wish to serve even those who are most unlike us, as Peter and the friends of Jesus do?  

 In the Church, each of us has been begotten by the love of God. But the Scriptures today reveal that this divine gift brings with it a command and a duty. We are to love one another as we have been loved. We are to lay down our lives in giving ourselves to others—that they too might find friendship with Christ and new life through Him.