One of the single most important takeaways from the beginning of Jesus’ Last Supper Discourse in John’s Gospel is the fundamental union of Jesus, the Word-made-Flesh, with his Father, from the time of the Incarnation to Jesus’ death on the cross and beyond: I am in the Father and the Father is in me, Jesus tells his disciples. Through his death, Jesus gives us access to divine life as well: I am going to prepare a place for you, he says. We are baptized into Christ’s death so we might join him in resurrection. But the place he prepares is here, now – it is relationship. Jesus calls us to be fully alive in him, here and now, on earth as it is in heaven. How? Where I am going you know the way, Jesus tells his disciples; I am the way and the truth and the life. Jesus, the perfect revelation of God’s infinite love for all creation, teaches us the way. Love is the way. Love is truth. Love is life. Love is what we are called to.
Although, as we see in the Acts of the Apostles, the early Christian community had its growing pains, with Hellenists complaining against Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution, the community is still very much grounded in their faith in this truth: that they too are called together, as a community, to act in concert as a community for the benefit of all, through love. They can only do so if they recognize the centrality of the Spirit and the importance of the wisdom they gain from the word of God, placing their trust in the Lord, as Psalm 33 reminds them to do.
The importance of interdependence is reinforced in the First Letter of Peter, which calls upon the Christian community of the author’s time to let themselves be built into a spiritual house, not a tangible structure but rather an intentional union in Christ, the cornerstone of our faith. Like the community in Acts, these Christians must work not only to meet the needs of their own, but call others to faith, for this is the work of God, and to do the work of God, they must be one in Jesus who is the revelation of God. Together we are called to learn the way and the truth and the life that is Jesus, and to build upon all that he accomplished, allowing the Lord to work through us for the benefit of our world.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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