May 16, 2021: Seventh Sunday of Easter
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
Psalm 1
1 John 5:9-13
John 17:11-19
Bishop Ariel P. Santos
Today is the Seventh Sunday of Easter, the Sunday after the Feast of Ascension celebrated last Thursday of this week. On that day, it was a Muslim holiday. Some Christians knew that it was a Muslim holiday, but were not aware that it was Ascension Day as well. The Feast of Ascension is when Jesus Christ ascended on high to be with the Father - not to be inactive, but to rule and reign. Think of an enthronement of a king or a bishop who is given authority and power to rule so that he is all the more active and more involved. The throne or the chair represents power, authority and ability.
The Ascension as well is not about the Jesus’ absence but actually about His pervasive, ubiquitous presence. He is with us, in a different dimension behind a mystical and metaphysical veil. He did not leave or go away.
The Collect of the Day for Ascension read, “Almighty God, Whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that He might fill all things: Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to His promise, He abides with His Church on earth, even to the end of the ages …”
This is God’s promise: He will be with us even to the end of the ages.
The Preface on this Feast goes, “Christ, the Lord of all, Judge of heaven and earth, has passed beyond our sight, not to abandon us but to be our hope.” “Yahweh, we know that You are near,” just as He promised. We may not see Him; we see Him by faith at this point, but He is not away from us. St. Paul says in Ephesians 1:23 that as Christ is the head of the Church, “He fills all things everywhere with Himself.” In one translation it says, “He fills everything with His presence, everything in every way.” Another translation says that, “He makes everything complete in every way.”
Christ is actively watching over His word to perform it, to complete the good thing that He has started with all all authority in heaven and on earth. How does Jesus exercise this authority and power?
Jesus reveals this in the gospel today in His prayer. He gives an inside look into the heart of God. The Father and the Son are speaking to each Other and this is revealed: the love of the Father and the Son is unveiled through the Holy Spirit. The Godhead, the Trinity is a community of love and this love results in unity and in oneness. Again, love is the desiring and the pursuing of the good of another. God’s purpose is seen in Jesus’ prayer that we may be one, as a result of our love for each other, just as the Father and the Son are one.
God unites; God gathers and makes us one because He Himself is one. God’s nature is to unite - Jews and Gentiles; the hearts of the fathers and sons are united; man and wife become one; man and brother are united. This is the work, the will, and the purpose of God. The opposite of God’s will is division. Why is there division? It is because of sin, and sin is: me first before others. Sin is turned toward self. It is self before the whole community. If a person’s wants and needs is first, this results in division.
A Church father says: where there is division, there is sin. Division is the work of the devil; it is the participation in the work of the devil – diabolos. When we fell into sin through Adam, division started so the Father sent the Son into world to draw us back into the life, into the unity, and into the joy of the Godhead. God’s love overflows outside the Godhead and spills over into creation.
In John 15:13, Jesus says, “I pray these things that they may be one that they may have My joy made full in them.” Our oneness brings us the joy of Jesus and makes it full in us. We are always in the pursuit of happiness, but true happiness or true joy does not consist of accumulating material things or power that the world says would give us joy. True joy comes from being one with each other because this is the way we were built by God in His likeness – in unity. God is not prude; He wants to share the joy with us and He wants us to have this joy as well. How do we have His joy? It is by walking in unity – that we may be one so that God’s joy may be full in us.
In Philippians 2, St. Paul expressed the heart of God by saying, “Make my joy complete by being of the same mind, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose because it is for our good.” God gives us commandments for our good not for His good because He is already good all the time. Nobody can make Him better, but He shares the good so that we can experience it and have joy. How will Jesus’ joy be made full in us? It is by we being one with each other as the Father and the Son are one, and we sharing our love and joy with others. Even if we have success in our lives, if we are alone and have no one to share it with, we are not fulfilled and we are not complete.
1John 1:3-4 says, “What we have experienced, we proclaim to you; that you, too, may have fellowship with us who have fellowship with the Father and the Son; that our joy may be full.” This kind of love makes our joy complete. Why do we invite our loved ones on special occasions? We want to share our joy and celebrate it with them. If they come, they are rejoicing with us and share our joy because we are one and are built to be as one.
We have been criticized for using "secular" materials like movies for homilies. I don't mind because I see God in even the most mundane things. I have shown a video to show the confusion in a scene using the Chinese names like Yu, Me, He. My point is: in oneness, in unity, “I am you; he is me.” We are one and we should see each other as one. If we don’t understand that we are one, that we are part of each other, and that we are members of one another, then, we are blind. What makes people blind is not seeing the truth; that God made us one. He who divides and put asunder what God has joined together is blind. In one’s blindness, they don’t see beyond their self-centeredness. All that they see is themselves.
Jesus further says in His prayer, “I gave them (the disciples) Your word, Father. The world hates them because they’re not of it, and neither am I.” The world has this ideology of taking care of “me”. There are two definitions of the world in the Bible: one, the world that God created which is good; two, the fallen world that was compromised by sin. God wants to restore this fallen world to the original good world. People of the fallen ideology of sin will hate us when we proclaim the truth and when we proclaim our oneness and our unity. This is good because we are standing up for the truth. When people hate us, we rejoice but we make sure that they hate us for standing for proclaiming the truth and not because we offended them.
We are set apart, and we belong to the good world, not the fallen world. We are sanctified, holy, not of this world but we are of the kingdom of God which is in the world. We are still in the world and God sends us out into the world, not to be taken out, but protected from the evil one.
Our sanctification, salvation, and our protection from and victory over the evil one is through the Father’s world. Jesus said, “Sanctify them by the truth. Your Word is truth.” What is the Word? “That they may be one as You and the Father are One.”
May this sink into our hearts, our minds. May this be what we walk in every day. May this what we breathe every day. May this be the beat of our hearts. May our steps always lead toward this and may we walk accordingly. You and I are one! I in you; you and me; I am you; he is me. We are one!
This is the Word that will sanctify us and that will save us, that will protect us and give us victory: Love one another even as I, God, have love you; and we become one as the Father and Son are one. Believe it or not, like it or not, this is the way it is in the kingdom of our God.
