May 25 | Easter 6, Year C
Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35
True Christianity is a relationship manifested in a web of relationships. The Messiah Jesus made the perfect relationship between the incarnate Son and the Father known, demonstrated that same relationship to the disciples, and commanded them to have the equivalent relationship with one another and the world. Divine love is to be the basis for those relationships. It is the love that motivated Jesus to live a life of perfect obedience to the Father, thereby revealing God’s nature. That same love was demonstrated by Jesus’ investment in humankind through his disciples and his sacrificial death on the cross. And this love is the major tool through which his Church is to reach the world with the truth about God.
For us, love is an emotion. As such, when we think about love, we enter the world of fickle feelings and uncontrollable urges. Our feelings are always measured relative to the emotional environment of the moment. When we fall in love, we are on an emotional high. But emotional love must be fed every day and exhausts our reserves rather quickly. Like a drug-induced high, it takes ever-increasing and more potent stimuli to retain a satisfying love-high.
If that were the love God had for us, we would have been consumed long ago. God’s love is not an emotion but an attribute of his nature—his essence. It is a steadfast love. It is the love St. Paul describes in the magnificent 1 Corinthians 13. In contrast to an emotion, it is a rational love, a matter of the will.
Our call as the Church is to announce and demonstrate the will of God through Jesus Christ. Our God-given means for fulfilling our call is divine love. In a world of lonely and alienated people, authentic, other-centered love will bring people into the kingdom. It is all about relationships.
God’s will and love are eternal. In Revelation, we read that when the time is right according to his sovereign reckoning, this fallen creation will reach its ending. But as in the days of Noah, destruction will not be the last word. When the final judgment is made and the sentence is accomplished, God will create the world anew. It will be recognizable as heaven and earth and Jerusalem. Rather than a creation of another order, the new creation will be a restoration of creation as God always meant it to be. The sea, symbolic of chaos, uncontrolled power, and unseen dangers, will no longer be present. In fact, all evil, suffering, pain, and death, as well as associated mourning, will have been eliminated.
Most important is the restoration of God’s presence among his people. The company of believers will be brought into an intimate relationship with God. The imagery of the New Jerusalem, the symbol of God’s faithful people, being presented by God as a bride fills us with the hope, joy, and assurance of an eternal loving relationship with God.
All of this is ours if we “overcome.” Overcoming is not something we achieve with our own strength, and most certainly it is not our personal defeat of evil. The “overcomers” are those who choose Christ and reject the world, and then maintain that decision regardless of the opposition they face from the world and from their fleshly natures. These are those whose names are written in the book of life. These are those who in this life have submitted themselves to the Holy Spirit and obediently followed our Lord Jesus Christ—regardless of the consequences. Our relationship with the living God is eternal life.
Look It Up: Acts 11:1-18
Think About It: What do the testimonies about God working in the world help us to see of his plan and the way he would have it executed?
The Rev. Dr. Chuck Alley, former rector of St. Matthew’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, teaches anatomy at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical School.
