7th Sunday of Easter 2025

Sermon: 7th Sunday of Easter 2025

Texts: John 17:20-26

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

How easily can human beings fragment themselves, both individually and collectively. It is an unfortunate trait of our histories, as dialogue ceases and relationships are broken. From the many together as one, we then divide ourselves as the many against each other. Commonalities and empathy are easily forgotten in the face of self-interest. Indeed, this ongoing trends shows us that it not enough to rely on the inherent goodness of humanity alone. Human beings are prone to justify their sin, they can tolerate the suffering of their neighbors as long as they benefit it whichever misguided way. To exist as One, as Jesus desires in the Gospel, is not easy. To exists in community and love amidst inevitable difference, is not a passive dynamic. It requires cultivation and care, it requires attention.

When we cease to pay attention to our neighbors, when we no longer cultivate the fruits of the Spirit for the sake of neighbor and others outside the comfort zones of our selves, our hearts then begin to harden and crack.

The heart remains soft and alive when we desire, as Jesus does, to be in communion with each other wherever we are. The French scholar and Jesuit priest Michel de Certeau once wrote that the Christian is a being that receives their meaning and purpose while being “in movement” or “on the way”. A Christian’s relationships with God and neighbor are never a settled reality, they are ever growing. Meaning, God always approaches us as an Other we can never fully grasp, always something more than what we can categorize. The same happens with the neighbor. We never know who we will meet, every person challenges us with their difference and uniqueness, and it is precisely alongside with these “strangers”, God and neighbor, these outsiders that remove us from our comfort zones, where the gift of Christian love, forgiveness, mercy and community take shape. Like the muscles of our body, God exercises our capacity to love and build community as He desires by reshaping our restricted limits by introducing new elements to comfortable habits. If we want to love like God, and God very much desires that, then we will need to be open for the Holy Spirit to train us in His ways, to allow for our spirits to move in the freedom of God’s abounding love. To love and be friends with those that look and think like us is easy, we can lift that weight. But to love the stranger and the foreigner, to love and break bread and forgive those different than us, to be one with them in Christ, now that takes new movements. And it is to this kind of Itinerant Oneness, this oneness that finds unity in movement, in a love that migrates beyond barriers, that Jesus is inviting us to.

I’ll give one obvious example, myself as your pastor! I came to you as a stranger, as someone with a different cultural and linguistic background than you, perhaps different beliefs and stances on things, with all kinds of unknowns! And yet, you as the church received me into your midst, as I received you into my own life, and we began to break bread and anchor ourselves in the oneness of Christ. And in Christ, we have been able to build a relationship, a friendship that will continue to grow as God desires it. Our relationship is ever growing, and that is in so many ways a gift that God gives us, this moving dynamic of taking in the strange other and becoming one in love and mercy. That takes devoted attention, Beloved.

In the Gospel, Jesus says: “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.” We can witness that same movement of God’s Love. Jesus reveals to us the fullness of the God we did not know. We once might have not been aware of the grace we could receive, because of our sin and self-centeredness, we lived only on the surface. But in Christ God has invited us into His very life. He has breached the barriers of our selves and opened us up to a new life and world, a new way to live and see ourselves and neighbor. We are called, like in that vision in the Book of Revelation:

“The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.”

And let everyone who hears say, “Come.”

And let everyone who is thirsty come.

Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.”

A great invitation to a an ever expanding Oneness, a community that because it loves with God’s love, it is not conformed to the limits of the boxes we put ourselves and other people in. We can get to see in every person the glory of God, and His divine life is for everyone to partake in.

Now, this calling to oneness does not eliminate difference, nor conflict. It gives us a way to proceed through conflict. Instead of killing our enemies, we pray and eat and dialogue together. Instead of hating, we are allowed to see the Christ that invites all of humanity to His embrace, because He loves us and wants us to be one in Him. Therefore, all our conflicts are also transformed in Christ. Because we no longer see them through a human point of view, but through a Christ-centered one. It used to be popular many years ago to carry bracelets and pins that had the letters WWJD? What Would Jesus Do? Indeed, in the face of all our divisions, what would Jesus do? In this text, we have His ultimate desire, that we might be one in Him, to be where He goes, sharing in the Father’s love, and to let it be known. Perhaps that is a way in which we might become One: to let God’s Love be known. The Holy Spirit inevitably always leads us to that direction.

In a world of fragmented relationships, we get to be people who piece back together the remains. We recognize the brokenness, but also the fact that we have a Christ that pieces us back together again. So Beloved, refuse to multiply your enemies. Instead, seek the face of Christ hidden in every person. Desire this oneness. Pray for it when it seems impossible. The new world is coming through, and God calls us to receive it.