“7th Sunday of Easter”

A few weeks ago, a great saint of our time, Jean Vanier, died at age 90. He spent his life establishing and living in communities around the world for people with developmental disabilities, and reflecting on what their lives mean for the rest of us. He said that what Jesus did on this earth was teach us that we can never think of the world as a hierarchy, or a pyramid, where there are people at the top with power and money and abilities, and a larger number of people at the bottom, who don’t have those things the people at the top have. Instead, Jesus came to show us that we are not a pyramid but a living body, all the different parts fit together and live as one, the parts don’t make any sense without one another, and in fact can’t live without one another. If one part of the body is ill it affects everyone, if the body is healthy, everyone thrives.
Our gospels during the Easter Season every year are all from this long farewell message. Some of Jesus’s words are directed to the disciples themselves, emotional and beautiful words, although sometimes hard for us to understand. But today we reach a kind of climax, since now Jesus is addressing not the disciples but his father, God the father, and now what he says is sometimes so intense that it is even harder for us to understand what he means. At the very least, what does all this talk about this mysterious unity, I in them and you in me, what does it have to do with us?
If that reality of God and Christ are in us, then we will all be one with one another, in a relationship that is so deep it overcomes all our differences.
This is what’s possible for us — we are called to complete trust and honesty, a church and a world where people love one another as equals, one bread, one body, one Lord of all, says the song, that’s the way we’re called to see the whole world. Not people banded together in a cult, all looking and behaving the same, but people who under the surface are united in love with Jesus and one another.