May 18 2025 Easter 5

Acts 11.1-18    Psalm 148    Revelation 21.1-6    John 13.31-34

I wish Trump could read the passage we have heard  from Acts today, and ‘really understand’ that there are no outsiders nor insiders, we are all one in the eyes of God.  We are all welcome, there are no barriers between ‘us and them’ as far as God is concerned, in fact God does not even see categories like ‘us and them’, to God we are all one and we are all equal.  But in saying that, I am not implying that we should all ‘be the same’, that we should lose those things that make us intrinsically ‘me’ and ‘you’.  Chinese should still follow Chinese ways regardless of where they live, Canadians should still remain Canadians, Muslims should remain loyal to Muslim traditions, and the world should remain as colourful and diverse as it was created to be.  As Peter tells us, no one and no thing is unclean.  If we believe God is omnipresent and omni-active then no place is without divine revelation.

In our Gospel, Jesus counsels his followers to ‘love one another’.  And Jesus is not just speaking of loving those who think like you, or follow the same football team as you; Jesus is challenging us to love all of creation, human and non-human.  And we do this by starting where we are; and then working outwards.  It is not easy, it is not meant to be easy, and it will not be achieved quickly.  Love is hard work, it is challenging work, and we will, inevitably, encounter conflict in the course of our lives.  But we keep trying, so that our love mirrors God’s love for us.  And we are challenged to strive to reach the point where our love reflects God’s love for all of creation in all its diversity and differences.  And when we get there we will find ourselves at a position of affirmation and inclusion.

This short passage of gospel is part of Jesus’ ‘farewell’ to the disciples, they are still gathered around the table where they shared that last meal and where Jesus washed their feet, Judas has left to ‘do what he must do’, and now Jesus is trying to prepare the disciples for what is about to happen.  Not his arrest and trial and death, but his leaving them after his resurrection.  He is preparing them for ‘life after’.  Jesus is telling them ‘where I am going you cannot come’.  Yet all through the gospels Jesus is telling his disciples and the crowds – follow me.  So these two appear to be in contradiction to each other.

But think about your lives.  Think about when your children were small; you wanted them always with you, until they reached that age when they needed to be ‘prepared’ to be ‘left alone’.  Not alone, as in on their own, but left ‘without you beside them’.  For school, for day care, while you went shopping, and in lots of other scenarios in our lives, we left our children ‘without us’.  Where I am going you cannot come.  This is what Jesus is setting up.  Except, as we know, this is not just for the day, or the afternoon, this is a ‘forever’ leaving.  And there will be times in your life, and mine, when that ‘forever’ scenario occurs.  When a partner, a parent, a loved one, dies, we are ‘left’.  And we cannot ‘follow’.  All our lives, we will be faced with times when someone has ‘gone’, and we cannot ‘follow’.

Today, this week, this year, we are living in that same ‘after time’ as the disciples. Jesus’ words to the disciples are words spoken to us as well.  This ‘new commandment’ is for us too - Love one another, love one another as Jesus has loved us.  And, in loving, we will find a new perspective on life.  As we love, and as we know ourselves to be loved, a hopefulness will come to us that allows us to see a new horizon.  As Christians, knowing Jesus in our lives, knowing him as the one who abides in us and calls us, we can have a sense of connection and belonging that even despite this world’s darkness, we can see hope and we show our hope in the way we love.

We love in the way we serve others; we love in the way we ‘wash each other’s feet’ and in the way we allow our feet to be washed.  And in this, our lives will be transformed, and we will find a hopefulness, despite the darkness of the world around us.  And the more often we love, the more often we wash and allow ourselves to be washed, we will find that, in the same way as the algorithm of our internet keeps giving us more ‘sites’  with similar messages as the one we have just accessed, so the algorithm of faith transforms us and gives us a deep sense of hope that, in the midst of sorrow, or pain, in the midst of life and death, in the midst of joy, we will always have hope.

So, as we reflect on our gospel reading today, and in fact as we reflect on the whole of John’s gospel, we could ask two leading questions, ‘how is Jesus loving here’, and ‘how might this inspire our loving now’.  So let us keep asking those questions and allow this algorithm to take hold ever more deeply so that the divine hope of salvation may transform our living and our loving, through Jesus who is our hope.