Homily for May 16, 2004
Year C - Cycle II
6th Sunday of Easter

by Dcn. Ray Alcouffe
Topic:  The Descending Way of Love
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Gospel Reading: 
John 14:23-29

"Jesus said to his disciples, 'Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.  Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.  I have told you this while I am with you.  The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.  Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives do I give it to you.  Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid...'"

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“We will come to him, and make our dwelling with him.”  Jesus is saying to us, his disciples, that “if you love me, you will keep my word.  And the Father and I will come to you.  And we will make you our dwelling place.”  If you think about this, it sounds so preposterous.  God, whom the entire universe cannot contain, is yet contained within me?  With this fact, though, we enter into the Mystery of God.  How God is present to us.  How God enters our lives as individuals, and, yet, is the same Creator-God who made the universe, and is thereby greater than anything we can imagine or conceive of.  But, since it is Jesus who presents this to us, and we want to be close to God, and the prerequisite is to love Jesus and to keep his word, we are lead to ask Jesus, “How am I to love you?  And in what way do I follow you, in order to keep your word?”  Well, the good news is, there is a way.  And we find it by imitating Jesus.

First, we have to know what we mean by imitating Jesus.  In the synoptic gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke, the disciples encounter Jesus as a remarkable human being.  They came to the conclusion that this Jesus is more than meets the eye.  From their day-to-day experience, the disciples came to see a person who was the Messiah; the promised deliverer from God; a worker of great miracles with a powerful message of love and forgiveness…forgiveness for one another, even if that other is our enemy.  And that’s the way many people in the world see Jesus; a great prophet and religious leader, but one among many.  The fact that Jesus is also God is inferred but is not ambiguously stated in those gospels.  But in the Gospel of John, on the contrary, the whole tone is different.  From the very beginning, we meet the all-powerful Creator-God in Jesus; a God who descends from on high to become a human being, a God whose motivation is love and forgiveness, a God who saves through the actions of that human being.  So, in the Gospel of John, it is clear who Jesus is, and what God has done and is doing, for us.  I think that’s why the Church has us read from this gospel during the Easter season.  If we reflect on the presentation of Jesus, we come to see what is the way of imitating Jesus that we are called to follow.

To do this, I went to my favorite spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen, and he has in his book called Letters to Mark about Jesus, a description of the way.  He calls Jesus’ way “The Descending Way of Love.”  This Descending Way of Love is the love of God made visible, made real, in Jesus.  I think that we’ve gotten so used to this action of God coming to us that, in a way, we just don’t realize the importance of this mystery of God present to us.  In a way, we Christians can be self-satisfied, and take the position that God should come for us, because we’re worth it to God.  But there’s more to this Descending Way, more than we really want to hear.  That, if we are to be with God, that’s the way we’re going to have to take.

I have in my mind this image of God descending to earth, like on a moving platform that’s going down, while I’m on a platform that’s, maybe, perhaps slowly, going up.  But as I see God coming down to me, at my level, he’s perfectly visible, and I am thrilled, assuming that God is going to get on my platform and be with me.  But to my surprise and chagrin, God keeps on descending.  He descends to the depths below, until I can almost not see God any more.  In reality, that’s just what God and Jesus did.  God became human, but he went further.  Once among us, he descended to the total dereliction of one condemned to death.  God’s love goes out further and further, into the greatest of destitutions; the destitution of a criminal whose life is taken from him.  It takes a while for this to sink in. 

For me, it is very, very hard, at my level, to want to follow Jesus to the level he has gone to.  And yet, just this past March, Joan and I went to the Utah State Prison to visit an inmate.  Some 18 years ago, this inmate, Rusty, was a child in our home; a foster son who was with us for almost a year.  After he left us, he followed a path in life which lead him to the State Pen.  And not just as an ordinary prisoner, but as one condemned to maximum security, “super max” he calls it.  We’ve had sporadic contact with Rusty, through letters and phone calls, and so when we got our last phone call from him, we decided that we would like to visit him face to face.  But Rusty didn’t want us to.  He was reluctant because of his present appearance.  Literally, he was covered with tattoos; some tattoos which had special meanings which I didn’t want to know.  He would be chained, behind a transparent barrier, allowing no physical contact.  But he did finally give us permission to visit. 

As Joan and I entered the prison, we were entering an alien place; with security gates, the searches, the multiple fences.  And as we descended to maximum security, we encountered a person whom we could recognize as the same person that we knew; with his smile and his cocky, outgoing attitude.  He told us he loved us.  But we also saw a person whose life had been, literally, taken from him.  This definitely was not a place, or a state, that Joan and I wanted to be in.  And yet, as I thought about this, our God became that prisoner.  He became more for us, in order to set us free.

The Descending Way of Love is difficult for us.  And that’s why we tend to rebel against God dwelling with us.  Because we know that God is so willing to descend, while we just want to ascend.  However much we want to ascend, it is in our nature to descend, and to only descend…not out of love, but out of circumstances or choices.  We experience this descent when we become ill with a life-threatening disease, or as we enter old age.  Now, those states render us more and more dependent.  Our former freedoms are taken away.  Or when we make choices; choices to offer someone an apology, or choices like Rusty’s, where all of our freedom is gone.  It’s good.  It’s good for us that God is willing to descend and be with us.  And since we are naturally on this descending path, even when we are under the illusion that we are upward mobile and heading upward, shouldn’t we follow Jesus, and make this descending way a way of love?  God is asking us to do that.  He asks us to do that when Jesus says to us, “How blessed are the poor in spirit.  Blessed are the gentle.  Blessed are those who mourn.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Blessed are the merciful.  Blessed are the poor in heart.  Blessed are the peacemakers.  And blessed are those who are persecuted in the cause of up-rightness.” Yes, each of us has to seek out his or her own descending way of love.  It is a way that is concealed in each of our hearts.  But that’s where God wants to dwell - in us.  We do this descending in imitation of Jesus because the Descending Way of Love, not be concerned with ourselves, then becomes transformed, becomes transformed into the Ascending Way of Love; the way to joy, to peace, and to new life.  This is for us, the Easter Mystery.

Now how do I do this?  How am I follow to Jesus and take His way?  What really counts here is being attentive to the voice of God’s love; to God’s word.  This voice invites us to obey.  That is, to make a generous response to that love, to that voice.  How should I hear that voice?  Well, Henri Nouwen offers three ways: 

First of all, listen to the Church.  That’s where Jesus is.  Jesus is in the Church.  And we listen to the Lord of the Church by taking part in the Church’s liturgical life; in Advent, in Christmas, in Lent, Easter and the Ascension, and at Pentecost.  And we also do it by partaking of the Eucharist, in order to be intimately united with Jesus. 

Second, listen to the Book.  That is, read the Bible, and read books about the Bible.  Read about the spiritual life, and the lives of the great saints. 

Third, listen to your heart; it’s there that Jesus speaks most intimately to us.  This is praying, just listening to Jesus who dwells in the depths of our hearts.  Do this every day.  Choose a time and a place to be quiet, and devote at least 10 minutes to listening and praying.  If we do this, we will hear God’s voice.  And our destiny, then, will be to be raised up at the end.

 God bless you all.