Easter
5 Homily By The Rev. Marcia McRae
St.
John’s Episcopal Church, Bainbridge, GA, 28 April 2013
Year
C RCL Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation
21:1-6; John 13:31-35
“See,
the home of God IS
among mortals.” Look
around. You
are sitting
in the home of God. You are the
home of God.
You & the Brothers & Sisters sitting here are
where the Holy
Spirit dwells.
Our scriptures tell us God
dwells among
all people: those
who are like
us & those who are
different. This is
hard to
swallow for the believers who hear that Peter is
eating with
Gentiles – outcasts of society.
We are
Gentiles in Peter's
world.
Peter is
steadfastly following Jesus. Following Jesus is
the
way that leads to eternal life, & it leads
Peter to do
something he never imagines: to
eat with Gentiles.
Following Jesus leads
Peter to a heap of trouble. Peter takes
the heat for eating with
Gentiles – for eating with you & me.
Then he teaches the
believers – & us – that God’s love
reaches
far. The way that leads to eternal life is
open even to
outcasts.
Peter says
that the Holy Spirit’s falling on the Gentiles
“fulfills the
promise Jesus himself has made & by which we (also) are
blessed.”1
By the grace of the Holy Spirit, Peter’s
words lead
the believers in Jerusalem to see this new way,
this truth, this new
life.
They react with silence, then praise:
WOW! “...God has given
even to the Gentiles
the repentance that leads
to life.”
WOW! That's us!
They praise God! They praise God like
all creation
praises God, as we
hear in our Psalm. Like Peter, they see
that God does make
all things new.
How does Peter come to believe this? How does he see
with
new eyes? He prays. Peter tells us plainly “I was in the city
of Joppa praying...”
This sudden new perspective about who is
acceptable to God
comes to Peter through his habit of prayer. He is
ready to
understand how far-reaching God’s love is.
Jesus tells the disciples:
“love one another”.
This kind of love reveals
God’s holy love, which is
the essence of the Holy Trinity.2
Holy love is
essential to the unity of the Church”3.
What does holy love
do?
Stay self-focused? Exclude
others? Holy love spreads
– even to the “Gentiles” of our day:
individuals our society
declares outcasts. Like all humans,
outcasts thirst
to know God. God says: “To the thirsty
I will
give water as a
gift from the spring of the
water of life.”
One place we see the spring
of the water of life is the
baptismal font. In Holy Baptism we ask
that God “Teach
We see love in the power of
the Spirit when Peter eats with
Gentiles. We see love in the power of
the Spirit when Pope
Francis washes a Moslem woman’s feet on Maundy
Thursday.
What does love in the
power of the Spirit look like
if you are not the pope & there are
no Moslem
woman’s feet to wash?
It looks like active
ministry: feeding, clothing, sheltering right here. These are easy to
see – like our baptismal font.
What is
hard to see is the silent, inner
work of the
individual, who takes time to be
in God’s presence, time to
listen. It’s what Peter does as he
prays in Joppa.
If we are always busy
“doing” it
is hard to hear
God tell us
something new. Like Peter, we must live with the habit of
prayer, the
habit of holy silence. This silent work looks
like doing nothing. It
is essential.
It is as essential as water is to the body.
God says:
“To the thirsty
I will give water
as a
gift from the spring of the water of life.”
The spring of the water
of life is
where we can drink
deeply
the living water of God’s love. Time
alone with God
strengthens
the individual to do
what God calls that
unique
person to do.
Time alone with God is time to connect the deepest part of you to God.
This prayer from a diocesan
retreat speaks of this deep connection:
Give me a candle of the Spirit,
O God, as I go down to the deep
of my own being.
Take me down to the spring of life
& tell me my nature & my name.
Show me the hidden things,
the seed of which . . .
you planted in me at my making5
When I tend
the seed God planted in me at my making, I can
hear God
better. The seed receives
living water. Only
you can tend the seed God
planted in you at your
making:
- Go with God down to the spring of life.
- Listen as God tells you your nature and your name.
- Look as God shows you the hidden things – the beautiful hidden surprise – the seed of which God planted in you – & only in you – at your making.
Tend that thirsty seed.
Drink deeply from the spring of the
water of life.
My Brothers & Sisters, drink deeply
from the spring of the water of life.
Amen.
Bibliography
Book
of Common Prayer. New
York: Church Publishing Inc. 1986.
Harper’s
Bible Commentary.
General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row
Publishers. 1988.
Holy
Bible. New Revised
Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.
Holy
Bible with the Apocrypha.
New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press.
1989.
Jewish
Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation.
New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.
New
Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha.
Eds.: Herbert G. May, Bruce M. Metzger. New York: Oxford University
Press, Incorporated, 1977.
3
Harpers. P. 1067.
5
Note: I learned the prayer from the leader of one of the annual
silent retreats for women at Honey Creek, (Episcopal
Docese of
Georgia's Camp & Conference Center), but do not recall the year,
the leader, nor do I know the prayer’s
origin.
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