The World Will No Longer See Me

[A reflection on the Gospel appointed for the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Rogation), which can be found with the other readings at https://www.episcopalchurch.org/lectionary/easter-6a/]

It seems that the world has lost sight of what is good and holy.

Greed runs unchecked. Violence and lawlessness are openly practiced in the highest places. War, which really has never died down, has flared up again Fear is rampant: fear of being victims of crime, fear of war spilling over into our lives, fear of an energy crisis, fear of a shortage of resources like energy, food, or even clean water. Those from whom we expect to show us another, more excellent way (1 Cor 12.31b) instead play into that fear and have become servants and mouthpieces of those who seem to reject God.

Perhaps the world never had sight of what is good and holy to begin with.

Our Lord as He was talking with His disciples at the end of His mission on earth told them plainly that He would send in His place the Advocate to those who love Him and keep His commandment, but not to the world, who cannot receive the Advocate because they do not love Him nor keep His commandments.

Those commandments hinge around love. In Jesus' words, if we love Him, we keep His commandments, because to love Him is to love each other, to love the neighbour, to love the enemy, and to do good to them. That is what the world does not see, that is what the world will not do. Where is the love in violence? Where is the love in hatred? Where is the love in greed and depriving others of what they need, either stealing it outright or pricing it outside their reach? Where is the love in all that we see around us?

The world does not love. It encourages us not to love. It is Darwinian and nihilistic to the core, only making lip service when people have twinges of conscience. It blinds us to the source of love, the one who commands us to love. We speak not of a romantic love, or a love based on common interest or familial proximity, because truly we see those are transitory, waxing and waning with emotion and whether it meshes with self-interest. No, the love of which Our Lord speaks is the one He demonstrated, a love that is gentle with those who hate Him, a love that reaches out even when the receiver is at their most aggravating, a love that is self-giving and limitless, a love that will and does pour out its life for the sake of all around them.

God is love, as the Apostle John had written some decades after Our Lord ascended and sent the Advocate in His place. Those who take this seriously and seek out what it means to share this love and make it part of their lives get to see that. In embracing that highest love the Advocate comes to them, Our Lord is present with them, and the Father is made manifest to them. Because the world rejects love, because it blinds itself to love, it therefore is blind to God.

May God grant us the clear vision to see and embrace that love, that the Advocate may lead us into all truth. Otherwise there is only darkness.