Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter
Our reading from John’s Gospel delivers an incredible, unbelievable (even) promise: complete joy. Seriously? In this world? Is John unaware of the suffering in the world, whether in his time or our own? Of course, he is. He writes about the crucifixion, after all.
So, what does he mean by this absurd promise? Complete joy. How?
Jesus provides a beautiful, if somewhat cryptic answer: Keep my commandments.
We recall his commandments: “ Love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.” And don’t forget: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Those are no easy commandments to keep these days, I find. So much hatred. So much anger. So much violence.
How am I supposed to love _______? I invite you to fill in the blank with whomever you have trouble loving these days. I’ll confess that I have a really hard time loving people who feel threatened by individuals who don’t fit certain sexual identity expectations. I also struggle with loving people who gun down children in malls.
Perhaps the answer to that question is another thing Jesus says in this short reading: “Remain in my love.” Others translate it as “dwell in my love.”
Dwell in my love. What does that mean?
For help, I turn to the 14th century mystic, Julian of Norwich, who writes so eloquently about remaining/dwelling in God. She writes:
And because of the great and endless love that God has for all humanity, God makes no distinction in love between the Soul of Christ and the smallest rescued soul. [Hmm, does that include people I have a very hard time loving?] It is easy enough to believe that Christ’s Soul dwells in the Divine Essence [True word. I’m on board with the idea of Jesus and God dwelling together.]—but it follows then that where Christ’s Soul makes its home, so do all the souls He rescues [Hold on. All the souls? Even the ones I don’t know how to love?] .
She continues:
We should take great joy [she apparently read today’s passage from John] in the fact that God lives in our souls—and even more joy in the fact that our souls live in God! Our souls were created to be God’s home; and our souls’ home is God, who was never created. God who is our Maker lives in our souls, and our souls live in [dwell in] the Divine Essence, the very substance from which we were created. Thus, I can see no difference between the Divine Essence and our own: all is God. Yet let’s be clear: only God is God, and our essence is a Divine creation that lives with God.
This quote from Julian teaches me at least three things:
- God is God. We are not God. Perhaps that explains how it is that God is so much better than we humans are at loving all whom He has created.
- Still, the fact that we are definitely not God, does not get us off the hook. We are still called to love as God loves.
- That means all. No exceptions. Even those I invited you to supply in the blank space above.
This, I believe Julian has right. This is how we dwell with Jesus and with God. And if we do this, Jesus promises, we will have, believe it or not, complete joy. Wow.
That is not a word we hear much today from angry preachers, pundits, and politicians. And it is precisely the word, I think, we need today.
All is God. All is God. All is God.
Amen.
-Sue Trollinger