A homily by Fr. Gene
Tucker, given at Trinity Church ,
Mt. Vernon , Illinois on
“FOLDED INTO THE VERY HEART OF GOD’S LOVE”
(Homily text: John 15:
9 - 17)
Let’s do
some theological reflection about the nature of God, about the love of God, and
about God’s love for each one of us.
We can
begin by thinking about God’s nature. We understand God to be the Three-in-One, the
Holy Trinity (we will celebrate the mystery and wonder of God as the One God in
Three Persons on Trinity Sunday, three weeks from now). So, we say that God is Father, Son and Holy
Spirit.
When Jesus
Christ came to earth, He explained quite a lot about the nature of God the Father. For example, in John 10: 30, Jesus says, “I
and the Father are one.” Those who heard
Him that day recognized immediately that He claimed to be divine, united to the
Father completely. Furthermore, Jesus
says that He has been sent by the Father, and His work is to do the will of the
Father, and to make known all that the Father has told Him (see John 15: 15).
With regard
to the Holy Spirit, Jesus explains that He will send the Spirit, so that the
Spirit can lead His disciples into all truth (See John 16: 7).
Reflecting
on the nature of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, theologians remind us that
these three Persons are united in a perfect relationship of love.
And we are
folded into this relationship of love, right into the very heart of God’s
love. We will explore that aspect of our
relationship to God in a moment.
The second
thing we might notice is that God reaches
beyond Himself to reach out to us.
It would be easy to imagine the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
continuing to bask in the love that each one has for the other, with no thought
of anything (or anyone) outside of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity
itself. But just the opposite is
true: God the Father sends the Son to
us, for our welfare. God reaches out,
beyond Himself, into our sinful and broken world. The Nicene Creed affirms the reason for the
sending of the Son as it says, “For us, and for our salvation, He (Jesus
Christ) came down from heaven.”
The Father sends the Son, carrying that divine
love, and offering it to us. Here this
reality is affirmed in our gospel text for this morning….Jesus says, “As the
Father has loved me, so have I loved you….” (verse 9). What the Lord asks of us is to abide in His
love, to model the faithful love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the
Father in the ways we keep His commandments.
The sending
of the Holy Spirit (John uses a word for the Holy Spirit which is often
translated in the various versions of the Bible as the Advocate, the Paraclete,
the Counselor) is part of the nature of God to reach beyond Himself toward
us. The Spirit comes from the Father and
from the Son (as the Nicene Creed affirms) to u. The Son, who came from the
Father, now sends the Spirit to us.
The third
aspect of God’s nature that we should consider is that God is the one who takes action. It is the Father who sends the Son. We did not ask for the Son to come, the
Father sent Him. Now that the Son has
come among us, He affirms this truth by telling us that “We did not choose Him,
but He chose us….”
Theologians
use various ways of describing this divine choosing: One way of describing God’s ability to choose
us is known as Prevenient Grace. It might be good for us to unpack that term a
little:
Prevenient: Coming from a Latin root, this word literally means “something that comes before”
Grace: God’s unearned favor towards us.
So Prevenient Grace is God’s favor towards
us, which he shows to us even before we are aware of its presence and its
power.
Jesus’
statement that “You did not choose me, but I chose you” shows us that God’s
grace was at work before we were ever aware of it. God’s will, God’s ability to choose, is at
work. God’s love is also at work in
choosing us.
Now what
does all this mean to us? How can we
understand these mysteries of God?
Perhaps our
own human relationships offer a way to find a way into the ways of God. Here I have in mind our own mothers, whom we
honor on Mother’s Day today, giving thanks for their gifts to us.
For
example, the highest ideals of being a mother involve loving us, even before we
are born.
The highest
ideals of being a mother involve choosing to care for us and love us, even when
we aren’t easy to be around or to love.
And, it is
often through our mothers (and fathers) that we begin to understand what the
world is all about.
In the same
way, God chooses to love us. We see this
love of God most clearly in the sending of the Son, Jesus Christ.
God chooses
to reach out to us in the person of Jesus Christ, choosing us even when we don’t
deserve God’s love, and might not be very righteous in God’s sight.
Jesus
Christ is the “window” into the nature of God, for it is through the person and
work of Jesus Christ that we come to understand the nature of God, and through
a better understanding of God, we come to a better understanding of the world
that God has made, and our place in that world.
Our task is
to live in such a way that we mirror Jesus’ faithfulness to the Father, keeping
the commandments He gave to us, to love God and one another.
AMEN.
