Sixth Sunday of Easter Yr C 2025

Title

Whoever Loves Me Will Keep My Word

Outline

Who are the people of God?

In the Old Testament it is clear that they are Abraham and his descendants, specifically the descendants of his grandson Israel, the priestly nation that he made a covenant with at Sinai, and later especially those under the rule of David. These are the holy ones of the Most High in Daniel, who are the collective expression, the body, of the Son of Man. While one may be born into this group, to remain you had to “keep my word,” Covenant or Torah or else one would be “cut off from my people.”

With the advent of Jesus it becomes more complex.

There is still one people of God, a priestly people, who form the New Jerusalem, which is a massive Holy of Holies where God dwells, but while the gates are the Twelve Patriarchs, the sons of Israel, the foundations are the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb.

Paul has to work that out at the Jerusalem council, for while all agreed that one was reborn into this people by baptism, some felt that to be a true believer one must also have circumcision, the birthmark of the Old Testament, and keep the rules of Kashrut, the purity laws of Israel. The solution worked out, as expressed later by Paul, was that one must keep from compromises with pagan practices and marriage alliances or non-marital sexual contact, that these fulfilled the Torah, the Covenant, as explicated by Jesus. Again, “Whoever loves me will keep my word.”

Notice that all members of the people of God are one, all are reborn by baptism which Paul notes for Gentiles makes them circumcised with the circumcision of Christ, all are a priestly people, all are disciples, keepers of the word, for Jesus’ word may reinterpret Sinai, but it is still the Father’s word, and makes them one body, one unity with Christ. Of course this means that Jews or even Christians could refuse this word and be cut off from the people.

To live this unity, to follow the word of the Word Christ, to be one body requires help

Namely the presence of Christ through the Holy Spirit, the Paraketos. That will bring peace, shalom, well-being, so we can live in peace in the middle of a hostile world, living in hope of the manifest presence of Christ and in union with the Father himself. The coming Ascension is not a separation but Jesus’ going to a new sphere from which he could be everywhere at once.

[Brothers and] Sisters our texts give us a grand and sweeping vision.

They show the way of peace and unity that Pope Leo XIV has called for. And they show that we cannot attain to it except by living under the guidance of the Spirit according to the word of Christ so we are in the love of the Father.

Meditate on this, and guided by the Spirit it will show each of us the way forward towards unity and peace.