“The
Father and I are one,” Jesus tells the crowd. And that statement has led to all
kinds of theologizing to try and make sense of what it can mean for Jesus, who
certainly looked pretty human, to be able to say that. And the crystallization
of a few hundred years of puzzling over that is what we say in our creed, what
we mean when we confess Jesus is fully divine and fully human. It’s an amazing
confession, when you think about it, that there’s nothing that authentic to
being human that’s incompatible with divinity. That’s an amazingly daring statement
about our created dignity, to which God longs to restore us, and to which God
has acted in Christ to begin to restore us. It’s also an amazingly daring
statement about God, the limitless God, who can hold creation in his
fingertips, but consented to know limit, to know impairment, to know hunger and
thirst and death all for love of us. That God, in His totally radically free
will, wills to love us so much even when we turn away that He consents to know
a thirst for us that He doesn’t have to.
That’s
what that union of Father and Son means, and that’s precisely how Jesus
introduces it. He doesn’t introduce the union of Father and Son just to tell us
a private piece of information about himself that’s just kind of interesting
trivia, or good fodder for theology essays. No, he leads up to that statement
by saying that no-one can snatch his flock out his hand, and no-one can take
them out of his Father’s hand either. The union of Father and Son is most fully
displayed to us in how they unite to care for us.
The image
of being held in God’s hand, held in Jesus’ hand is vivid. And I’d invite you at
some point to take some quiet, and just rest in that. Once, in my life of
prayer, I had a tactile experience of that. It was a few months into my first
year in seminary, and we were on our first retreat as a class of postulants. Now,
going to seminary is a lot like starting to date someone. You don’t start to
date someone because you’re sure you’re going to marry them (usually!) but
because it’s fun, and because that’s the only way you’d be able to figure out
if you’re meant to marry them or not. Entering seminary or a formation program
with a religious community is a lot like that. It’s hopefully somewhat fun, but
it’s also the continuation of discernment process, of figuring out if this is
meant to be forever. I’ve heard it said that the chief goal in the first year in
seminary is to get comfortable enough with the community, with yourself and
with God to be able to ask those hard discernment questions later. So, needless
to say, I was coming in to that retreat with a lot of uncertainty, a lot of
questions, and without really having that comfort. And then, in prayer, that
first evening, before the Blessed Sacrament, I felt it. I physically felt
embrace and I knew no-one was touching me, no-one except God who holds us in
the palm of His hand. And I didn’t remember those verses of John, but I knew:
no-one could pluck me out of that hand. I was safe. I could ask hard questions,
and it would be OK.
The book
of Revelation paints maybe a fuller image of what that care looks like, of what
being in God’s hand looks like. It talks about springs of life giving water,
and about God wiping every tear from every eye. Maybe that fuller image might
be something you might like to sit with.
And the
really amazing thing is that the union Jesus and God the Father have in caring
for us, is not something impenetrable. Holding us in their hands is not holding
us at arms’ reach. It’s drawing us into their union, which means drawing us in
to their ministry of caring, of holding, of offering refreshing water to the
thirsty and wiping every tear from every eye.
We heard
in Acts how Paul answered that call with his preaching. We heard that it didn’t
go much better for him than it did for Jesus. That he knew rejection. And when
rejected, he didn’t keep bugging the same people, but he went to new people, to
people who it was probably less comfortable for him to go to tell of God who in
Christ draws us to himself. And I should clarify something about that Acts
reading, that Paul turns away from one group of Jews to a different group of
Gentiles, but that doesn’t mean he gave up on the Jewish people. After this
story in Acts, in later chapters, he again preaches in synagogues. The verse of
Revelation right before where our reading started tells of 144,000 Jewish
people in heaven, and then more in the uncountable multitude made of every race
and nation.
But,
back to that call. My sheep hear my voice, Jesus says. Paul heard it. Jesus has
a call for each of us. The Church calls this Sunday ‘Vocation Sunday,’ to
encourage us to listen for that call, and to be bold in following it. And I’m always
happy to talk about how wonderful, and joy-giving, and humbling, and
over-whelming, and beautiful, my experience of priesthood and religious life in
Holy Cross have been. But, we also have to recognize today the observance of
Mother’s Day. And for lots of people, this is a wonderful day to celebrate the
love and the sacrifice of mothers, the way in which so many mothers respond to
that call to extend God’s tender care to another. But, if we’re to celebrate
this as Christians, we also have to remember all those for whom this day is
hard. For whom this day brings forth those tears that God will wipe away, but
that maybe we also should be careful not to cause.
There
are, I’m sure, among us, some of the following: mothers estranged from
children, or children estranged from mothers; mothers grieving children, and
children grieving mothers; women frustrated at not being mothers; women
frustrated at those who expect them to be mothers; women experiencing difficult
or crisis pregnancies, and terrified by motherhood. God has you all, has us
all, in the palm of His hand. He won’t let us go. He’ll dry every tear from
every eye. And He will call on us, there’ll be a way we’ll extend that care to
another.
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