Fifth Sunday of Easter; 15 May 2022; Easter 5C (RCL); Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35.
This passage in John, like so many passages, seems to be full of non sequiturs. We jump from the mutual glorification of Father and Son, to Jesus’ address to his disciples, “Little children, I am with you only a little longer,” and his statement that they cannot come where he is going, to a new commandment. It seems like three unrelated sayings.
But of course, in John, their proximity is intended precisely to make us figure out what they have to do with one another. The opening phrase, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified,” places this passage smack in the middle of John’s narrative development. Up until this point, we have heard that the hour is not yet. But, now it is. And the theme of glory recalls the Prologue — we have beheld his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only Son. That places the Prologue in the background and as a reference point for the whole passage. We are also told in the Prologue that “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” using the same root as the word for “Little children” here.
Sitting at the center of John’s narrative development, this passage also looks forward to the end of the Gospel: “I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.'” In Chapter 14, Jesus will say that he is going ahead of his disciples to prepare a place for them, so that where he is, they may be also, and then say that in his Father’s house, there are may rest-stops. When Jesus encounters Mary in the garden he tells her to tell the disciples that he is setting out (or embarking) to his Father and our Father, his God and our God. We will also be invited to set out on that journey, Jesus having gone before us.
And as Jesus leaves the disciples, he gives a new commandment, that they love one another, in order to be known as Jesus’ own. It is in this love that we receive power to become children of God (the “Little children” of Jesus’ address) and begin our journey toward God. It is the same love with which the Father loves the Son and the Son the Father, blurring the boundaries between them (the Father and I are one — Jesus’ statement to the ‘Jews’ after he had told them that they could not come where he is going). It is the love which unifies us with the Father and the Son, through the agency of the Spirit. We will participate in the mutual glorification of Father and Son, but not until after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, when he breathes the Spirit over us.
The passage from the Revelation suggests something similar, only in the reverse direction. Rather than us journeying toward God, Jerusalem, the city of pilgrimage, will descend from heaven, and the dwelling of God will be among mortals. This is also an invitation to a life of participation in deity. And the reading from Acts indicates that this invitation is open to everyone, even those people we think should be excluded.