For Sunday
Easter 5B
Collect
Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
In this short passage, Jesus uses the funny word, abide multiple times. It is one that has a lot of different meaning we attach to it—especially for those who live in the south.
But these associations ultimately revolve around a common understanding of proximity. Of literally being close to someone else. Caring. Listening. Reminding. This sense of proximity, of being close to, even in the direct presence of, may be the most valuable part of Jesus’s talk here.
This passage is part of the Last Supper, when Jesus is giving his final teaching to his disciples. And he has just spoken about knowing the way to the father and to the coming guidance of the Holy Spirit. Now he tells of relationship through intimacy. Living within his love. Being people so guided by his present love.
Christians have long struggled to define the nature of God’s work in light of human action. Suggesting that, for God to have authority, miracles originate within God and therefore outside of humanity. Or else it would be necessarily of human origin.
But Jesus’s focus on proximity, of our abiding in Jesus, listening, hoping, loving, reveals instead an inseparability of human and God action. At least, not when we abide in the grace and love of God. It provides a kind of spiritual union that allows the grace to show through us.
Have you ever felt so in tune in a moment that grace was so obvious? We often call it “being on the right track” or even “the planets are aligned.” Everything clicks, there are only green lights, and the world is just perfect? I think it is something like that.
That most of us don’t feel that every moment, however, is not an indicator of some spiritual failure. But something more like a reminder of what could be, is, and will be; when we bring ourselves closer to Jesus.