Year C, Easter 5                                          

Dr. Lissa M. Wray Beal

Acts 11:1-18 Psalm 148:1-14 Revelation 21:1-6 John 13:31-35  

I’ve been reflecting this last while, that Anglicans know how to party! Getting together around fine wine and food, and celebrating! Now, not the kind of party in which you are celebrating a graduation, or an anniversary, or just that your friends are in town. I’m talking about the Mother of All Parties. . . Easter!

You see, I grew up, and spent many years in a tradition in which much was good, Easter really wasn’t much of a party. Suddenly, one Sunday you came to church and there might be Easter lilies. Or the kids put on a play about the empty tomb. But then, that was it. The day was over, and you had to wait one whole year before you trotted out the Easter hymns (Up from the Grave he arose. . . !!!). But we Anglicans: we recognize that this party is the one to celebrate: bigger than Christmas. The foundation of Pentecost and our Christian life. The reality that makes the wine and the bread deep, sweet, and life-giving. We celebrate Easter through many weeks (7), and then as we go into the long weeks of Ordinary Time, we expect that the joy of the celebration will linger. It will be remembered, and empower our daily living. And we even revisit the celebratory feast every seven days.

That is the way to party!

But I’ve also been reflecting this last while, that while we know how to party, can we really answer the “So what?” question? Can we say what Easter is about? Can we say how, or why, it matters – when our world blows up at marathons? When our teens’ bodies are considered so disposable that they are gang-raped, photos are posted on the internet, and a young woman decides that the way out of her peer’s voyeurism is to commit suicide? When off-shore factories collapse as we add a new T-shirt to our summer wardrobe? When shock jocks as much as rap-“artists” demean those with whom they differ? Or when we can only bicker about how, where, and if oil pipelines cross pristine lands?

What on earth does Easter mean in this world that doesn’t hear. Doesn’t care. And we struggle to bring the celebration beyond the walls of our own churches?

So, what about Easter?

I don’t think that our texts this morning can fully answer such a big question (really, it is the whole of the Bible—and the whole of the ongoing life of the Church that is needed to answer that!). But I think our texts begin to show us: what does Easter say to a world gone deaf, and a church on the sidelines?

I want to start with our gospel this morning. Jesus, the very night he is betrayed into the hands of sinners, tells his disciples to “love one another”. Now, this is something that Easter is definitely about: we celebrate God’s love this morning, and we pledge to ourselves walk in his love that lives in and amongst us and show that to one another.

Mind, though there are a few things this love is not, and that it is: there is nothing sentimental about this love: it is not just wishful thinking. Nor is it only being kind to others or saying nice things (although certainly it is that).

There is something new about this commandment: Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment” – which is strange because the Old Testament says a lot about loving God, and loving one another – their whole covenant life was geared towards that.

The newness of Jesus’ love commandment is that the commandment has something to do with Jesus’ own part in showing us what this commandment is going to look like, and what it will cost. He will show us. And then, by his life in us, he will call us to live out his love.

And this new love isn’t a love carried out only in the context of good relationships: you and I will be called to love one another when we see eye to eye, and when we utterly disagree and really “bug” one another. Nor is this love carried out by simply gathering together those who are like-minded – loving only them, and saying “To hell with the rest.”

Mostly, what this love is, is costly. It cost God everything (while paradoxically we receive it freely!). But our expression of this love is costly for it is carried out on the front lines where love stands against death—indeed, have you ever noticed that just before Jesus gives this commandment, Judas leaves in order to betray him? And just after this commandment, Peter is told he will deny Jesus? This is the context in which this love is operative: betrayal. Denial. Bigotry. Hatred.

This is a costly love, this Easter love.

And that is exactly what Peter learned in his encounter with Cornelius. Get it, now: Cornelius is not only a foreigner—a Gentile and therefore one outside of the special covenant of Israel—but he was a Roman foreigner. One of the oppressors. And to make it utterly obvious that he was the Other, he was a soldier of that Roman foreign oppressor. Oh, sure, he was one who feared God (that means he worshipped the God of Israel and observed the ethics of Judaism, but without the full commitment of circumcision). Sure, he was a God-fearer. But that didn’t remove his Gentile status—a status that meant that Peter should not enter his house and certainly not eat with him. That is the charge that is brought against Peter by some of the Jerusalem Church.

They didn’t yet realize that when Jesus died, rose and ascended to heaven, he’d broken down all those old barriers. No longer did it matter that you were slave or free, Jew or Gentile, male or female (all significant social barriers in that culture). What mattered only is that you—whoever you were—could turn to God in faith. Believe that Jesus was actually God come in the flesh to live and die for us. And receive the gift of life he freely offered.

But Peter told these in Jerusalem that that is exactly what had happened: that the Gentiles had accepted the Word of God. And when the Jerusalem church heard this, they accepted something, too. They had a glimpse and understanding that God’s death and resurrection had changed everything. That the old categories, and the old ways of coming to God had changed. That now, God planned to give “the same gift” (of repentance; of salvation; of the Holy Spirit) to the Gentiles that had already been given to the Jews.

We don’t realize how mind-blowing that would be to Peter’s generation, raised on tales of Jewish superiority. And when we read the New Testament, we see that it took many years for all the Church to understand God’s love was for all—Jew and Gentile. And now, they were asked to put God’s love within their hearts into action. They were being asked to accept that God had opened his love—not just to Jews who believed—but to Gentiles who believed as well.

And those objectors in Jerusalem? They heard Peter’s words. Their objections were silenced. And they took the new way of Jesus: if God’s love was big enough to encompass the Gentiles as well as the Jews, well then, the Jews were to do the same.

Easter calls us to costly love. To open our hearts to those we consider the Other, and to offer them the same love we ourselves have received—a love that cost God his own life.

At the Easter celebration, we sit at a full table, invited to drink deeply, and eat to the full. But we are in fact the Gentiles—and all of us are the ones who had been hostile to God. We are the younger brother—who squandered God’s riches in wastefulness. Or we are the older brother—who sulked at God’s riches freely given others. But all of us are now brought near to God—because of his costly, life-giving love. And so, when we sit at such a table, can we be offended if God should offer his love to others—that we might think aren’t worthy? Who are we to object to God’s love freely given when we ourselves have received it?

So, when others (and you know those whom you think are unworthy) “accept the word of God” and receive his gifts of repentance, salvation, and the confirming Spirit, we are to show that we, too, offer costly love. Like the Jerusalem church, we are to open our hearts and accept the Other who now sits at table with Us—because Jesus has invited us all.

In his book of poetry called Leavings (2012), Wendell Berry's poem-prayer gives us a way to start:

"I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.

I have no love
except it come from Thee.

Help me, please, to carry
this candle against the wind."

This Easter party—this candle against the wind—has been a long-time in preparation. And its table is long and wide. In our Lenten study this year, we traced how God made promises to Abraham that “all the nations should be blessed through him” and how those promises came to pass. Slowly. Through a long outworking in the life of the Jewish nation. And brought to completion in the life of Jesus Christ—God—who gave himself up to death to fulfill the promises made long ago. Through him, all the nations are blessed.

We sang about this in our Psalm this morning. God’s long-term vision in which we—with all of a renewed and restored creation—sing God’s praises. The heavens! The waters, pure and clean! The stars! The seas, the storms, the frosts and snows! The mountains! The animals, creeping things, and birds! All restored to the fullness of relationship with their creator. And at the end of that long list of praise, the human creation adds their voice: kings, and all peoples. Jews and Gentiles. All who rise to acknowledge the glory of God shown in the Easter cross and empty tomb.

And one day, far in the future, all that we have celebrated in the Easter Party will find its final fulfillment. For God will come once again to dwell with his people. Not in a tabernacle. Nor even in a temple. But himself in the very midst of his renewed earth, with people of every tribe, tongue, and nation.

So we celebrate at Easter. The fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham that all nations would find blessing in the Christ. The fulfillment of the promises that the earth would be renewed. The fulfillment of the promises that whatever ills we have done to our world, and to one another, God is well able to restore. Renew. And make new. And that celebration reminds us Christ’s death and resurrection changes everything. It calls us to costly love—because all are invited to the Table. It gives the motivation to our caring compassion—for Christ’s costly love cares for all: rich and poor, male and female, those at the centres of power and those on its margins. Easter reminds us, too, that Christ’s bodily resurrection shows the material world matters, and so we care for it, honouring and preserving God’s material creation.

This is the meaning of our Easter Party, in all its wild abandon. We sit in the midst of a battle field, with all going wrong around us. And we eat and drink and dare to say: Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again. We are a sign in the midst of a broken world, that that brokenness is not the last word. The Party is.

We are Frodo and Sam, travelling through the murky pits and sad lands of Mordor. Too often, all seems bleak and our strength too feeble. The quest stands on the edge of a knife and if we are honest, at times we think it will fail.

But we pull out the lembas bread. It is old, but always fresh in traditional wrappings. And we sit down in that dark place and share a meal. And our hearts are strangely warmed. We feel less alone, and the lights of heaven show themselves through the gathered gloom. We dare to believe once again that God is strong; that hate is not final; that Christ’s own life dwells within us. And we get up and walk on, talking anew about that life. Sharing our love, even in this dark place. And encouraged that we are not alone. We live in God’s world.

And in that world, he walks with us. Calling us to the continuous, joyful party of Easter—the sign of Christ’s redeeming love give for all people, and all creation. So, let’s party. And wait for the day when the Party-Giver returns to join in the feast.