God died for us *and* is ever-present to us – Jn 14:15-21

Sixth Sunday of Easter; variations on this homily were preached at Holy Cross-St. Stan's and St. Joe parish (South Bend).  Baptisms all over the place today!

“And is better.”  Familiar words, I’m guessing: if you ever watch tv, you’ve probably caught ads for Ford which proudly proclaim just that to us.  To stir you up with excitement at how amazing it would be to buy a Ford (which, so the messaging would have it, has great mileage and impressive functionality), they present a bunch of situations in which ‘or’ would be thoroughly trumped by ‘and.’  Who would order sweet or sour chicken, practice black or white photography or stay at a bed or breakfast?  Yes, “and is better.”

The disciples fear themselves faced with “or.”  Named or not, they’ve encountered God’s presence in Jesus and they want that forever, always active, accompanying them, teaching them, consoling them, strengthening them.  But, they’ve also been hearing about this Way he has to walk.  And he has to, because we need him to.  We have become so tone deaf to our own belovedness that we can only be renewed in it by witnessing our God lay down his Life for love of us, consent to the Passion, experience abandonment and die, really die, not just appear to.  To love us to the end, there has to be an end, a final breath.  They fear.  Who wants to choose between a God of constant presence or a God who loved us to the end, real end, real death?  “And is better.”

In that upper room, Jesus consoles his disciples.  He tells them the shocking truth: “God is so utterly besotted with you that he dares to give you and.”  God so loves the world, that he’ll break any boundary to shower that love upon us, to beckon us into it, to strengthen us to live it.  He’ll trump any ‘or’ that tempts us to doubt, to fear: In Christ, He will be lifted up in death as a sign of his love and remain forever, in the Spirit, as sign of that self-same love.

On the cross, those few disciples who did not scatter would see this abundant ‘and’-love revealed.  The women and John must have winced in pain as the spear pierced their Lord.  He was pierced, consented to have violence enter him, but then out poured not just blood but water and blood.  He returned no insult, only life-giving sustenance.  I wonder if their minds traveled back to that time on the Feast of Tabernacles when he had called to the thirsty and said, “Come to me, for from me springs of living water will flow?”  Whether they understood yet or not, the narrator follows this saying by commenting on it for us: “He said this about the Spirit.”

There it was!  In this moment of dying, of consenting to there being an end to which to which we could be loved, out flows the streams of living water, the ever-abiding presence of the Spirit.  That’s what Zeenah is about to be gifted with.  She will be purified to serve as a glorious Temple for the Holy Spirit, reborn by water and the Spirit to share in Christ’s life as Priest, Prophet and King.  This is how we remain in so great a love: bathed in it, and buoyed up upon it.