Seventh Sunday of Easter; 29 May 2022; Easter 7C (RCL); Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26.
This is one of those passages in John in which boundaries are blurred. If you listen to it (rather than read it), by the end, you’re not sure who is in whom. I think that is precisely the evangelist’s point. If we entrust our lives to one another, then our lives will overlap. Jesus has entrusted his life to us, and in that life is the Father, so our lives and the divine life overlap. We are one just as the Trinity is one (even though John does not use the concept of Trinity, he comes close). Just as we share in the divine life, we share in each other’s lives.
That insight becomes especially poignant in light of recent events. The ten people murdered in Buffalo last week and the twenty-one people murdered in Texas this week (nineteen children) are us. We share their lives and they ours. We feel the anguish of their survivors as if it were our own, and we know that it is God’s own. Jesus entrusted his life to us in his ministry and on the cross, and entrusted it back to God, so that our lives and deaths may be taken up into God’s own life as well.
The problem with this kind of unity and solidarity is that we don’t get to pick and choose what aspects of the lives of others we will share — it’s all or nothing. Jesus’ death on the cross shows us the cost of such interpenetration of lives and just how far God comes to share our lives.
We need words like the words at the end of the Book of Revelation. Last week, the visionary shared with us the vision of the heavenly city, and this week, quoting Isaiah, invites us all to come and share the water of life. We are all thirsty for respite from the violence in the world around us, and long for a city with trees whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.
With the visionary, we can say, “Amen, come Lord Jesus.” The sooner the better.