Easter VII Year C: Take Me To The River

Acts 16:16-34
Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20
John 17:20-26

We just heard the final words of Jesus at the Last Supper before going to the garden where he was arrested. His entire speech is long – 3 ½ chapters in the Gospel According To John, and towards the end of it, he prays that his followers would be united, as he and the Father are. He gives two reasons for this: so that the world will know that Jesus was sent to us by God, and so that the world will know that God loves the disciple of Jesus as much as he loves Jesus. Jesus does not pray that his followers may be one so that God will love them; God already loves us. The desired unity is only meant to be an outward sign of God’s love for us. That is a good thing, because if God’s love for us depended on anything we did, we would not be worthy of that love, because it is obvious from our own lives and from church history that we are not very good at living in unity with other Christians.

That is why Jesus’s prayer is so surprising. It is easy to believe that God loves Jesus. Even those who do not accept the divinity of Jesus can understand why God would love him, because he was so good and kind and said spiritual things. Of course God loves Jesus – who wouldn’t? Those of us who believe that Jesus was not really a goody-two-shoes, but was rather God in human flesh, understand that the Father loves Jesus as the only begotten second person of the Trinity (a love that we do not have the power to understand, a love that is the foundation and structure of the universe). And Jesus makes it very clear in his prayer that God loves us in the same manner that he loves Jesus. That is hard to accept. It is hard to understand, hard to believe, and hard to confront. In God’s eyes, we (as petty, judgmental, and conniving as we are) are loved as much as Jesus. In God’s eyes, we are as worthy of infinite love as is God’s own self. God knows us better than anyone else (including ourselves), and yet God loves us more than anyone else (including ourselves). It is almost impossible to believe that we are worthy of any love at all, much less God’s infinite love, but it is true.

We are worthy, but not because we have earned any worth. We can not earn anything in God’s eyes. It is impossible to do, so it is neither asked for, nor expected. Our infinite and unconditional worth is freely bestowed upon us by God. Our second reading from the Book of Revelation talks about the gift of God’s love, as the Holy Spirit calls everyone to come drink the water of life flowing like a river from God’s throne – freely and abundantly offered. No one is forced to come drink, but all are invited. There are no limits on how much we can drink, nor are there any conditions that we must fulfill, other than simply being thirsty for love and life.

A different river is the setting for our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, but it is just as much proof of God’s love as is the river in heaven. Paul and Silas are in Macedonia, going to pray with some people who meet by a river in Philippi. On the way, they meet a slave who makes her masters rich by telling fortunes. The reason she can do this is because she is possessed by a foreign spirit. Paul confronts the spirit and makes it leave her, healing her and setting her free from its power. Her human masters bring legal action against the apostles for ruining their source of income, since the girl can no longer tell fortunes without the foreign spirit controlling her. By healing her, Paul shows us how much more important to God is our health and happiness, compared to our ability to make money. We are important to God simply because we exist, not because we can acquire possessions, wield power, create artwork, achieve popularity, or make athletic,  intellectual or scientific breakthroughs. God creates us out of love; that is our reason for being and our true fulfillment – not any outward sign of supposed success.

God’s river of life and love flows to us, offering us more than we could ever imagine or understand, and its flow does not depend on who we are, how we feel, or what we do. It is not forced upon us, just offered. We can’t do anything to lose it – we can’t be bad enough for God not to love us – but we can, if we choose, decide to not drink from the river, and so not accept God’s gift. We do that every time we think we can live life on our own and have no need for God. When we do that, we are not really gaining independence, we are simply losing our own life. God offers us life, love, and true fulfillment, and all we have to do to receive it is to be humble enough to accept it. We must admit we are nothing without God, and everything with God. We must admit that we can not love on our own, and that we can not live on our own. We must admit that everything we try to do on our own ends in failure and heartache, while everything we do in God is simply a step to something even greater. But we must take the step to the river and drink, taking ourselves out of the center of our lives so that God can fill us with true love and life. God is calling us to drink, no matter how many times we turn our backs on him.

But back to Jesus’s prayer for unity from our gospel reading. Someday, all Christians might be united in the way that Jesus is one with his father (I suspect  we already are, but we just don’t realize it or act like it). At least we don’t act like it yet, and maybe that is because we do not understand the unity of God, either. All we know is that Jesus desires our unity, so it can’t be bad. Our unity is not a prerequisite for God’s love for us; it is merely an outward sign of it. So until we admit and act like we are one as Jesus and the Father are one, we can at least try to remember that the people around us are loved by God, and therefor might be worthy of our love, too. Just as we can not earn God’s love, so the people around us can not earn our love. It must be given by us, no matter the response. May we freely give from the river flowing into us from God, and may we freely accept it from others, who love us even though we have never done anything to deserve it from them. Maybe that is s start toward unity in Jesus. Maybe that is the fulfillment of it.   AMEN