A homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 5, 2024
Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48, 1 Jn 4:7-10, Jn 15:9-17
Not everybody is a hugger, and that’s OK.
Whether it’s trees or teammates, cheek-pinching aunts or long-lost buddies, hugging just isn’t for everyone. And with so-called social distancing the rule during the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of us migrated toward social isolation.
Hugging correctly takes skill and emotion, regardless if we actually make physical contact or merely exchange sentiments from a few feet or even a dozen time zones away. Done right, a hug is a two-way sharing, a simultaneous giving and receiving.
For a hug to be done right, we have to take a huge chance and expose ourselves, our true selves, our inner selves.
We have to be vulnerable for a few seconds or — gasp! — a couple of minutes.
For a hug. The sibling of the handshake. The kissin’ cousin of a nod, a wink and a smile.
Getting close enough to someone to hug them often means we’re willing to get close enough to them to be involved in their lives. If they’ll let us, of course. That’s why a proper hug is an exchange, not an imposition.
A hug and its ilk are entries into the kind of love that Jesus describes in our Scripture passages today, the kind of love he modeled while he walked the Earth, the kind of love he challenges his disciples — us — to continue in his name as long as humankind roams the Earth.
The love that goes far beyond a quick squeeze and an even quicker “g’mornin’.”
We do try, but imitating Christ’s love can be a heavy lift. Each of us brings different talents, gifts and strengths, as well as varying levels of intensity, awareness and vulnerability as we answer Christ’s call. And let’s be real: Only a special few of us will throw themselves on a literal or figurative grenade.
We mourn yet celebrate the heroes among us who made the ultimate sacrifice for their sisters and brothers.
But sometimes we’re slow to celebrate and assist the heroes among us who make mundane sacrifices every day for their sisters and brothers. Sometimes we just don’t see what they need.
Yes, celebrations are joyous, but all too often, our first responders and teachers and healthcare professionals and everyone we all too recently hailed as essential need resources, not parades. Safety and bio breaks and good pay on the job, not pots clanging at 7 p.m. Time off to recharge with family at home, not a second or third job to make enough to pay for that home.
Are we making the effort to find people who could use our help, and then the effort to share their load? Are we willing to pay a tiny bit more at the store or in our tax bill to ensure that every worker is treated with dignity?
As John quotes Jesus:
I … chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit…
How full is our wicker basket of the fruit of love?
Then again, are we open to being helped ourselves? Because accepting love is as important as giving it.
Accepting the love and assistance of others who are Christ to us, and who see in us the spirit of Christ in need, requires us to expose our soft white underbellies. To throw away embarrassment and replace it with gratitude and humility. To acknowledge that we are human and that life is messy.
To feel the abundant warmth that comes from the Source of All That is Good through the love of a fellow pilgrim, and to be uplifted by it.
We all know St. Paul’s riff on love in his First Letter to the Corinthians. All about patience and kindness and endurance.
All true.
All profound.
All incredibly necessary these days as our world, our nation, and even our backyards are bleeding with anger and hatred. It seems as if the darkness is deepening, not lifting. Love is for wimps.
But the essence of John’s Gospel today and every day is this:
Love is.
Love does.
Loving is doing as much as feeling.
Feeling love spurs us to action.
Love binds us to each other.
Love binds us to our Creator, who hugs us back.
Our Creator, God, is Love.
