Love, Fear, Hatred And God's Desire For Us Series

Sixth Sunday of Easter 2024

One of the biggest advantages of being closer to age 80 than age 70 is that you actually have a sixty or sixty-five year vantage point on history that you have personally lived through. That’s if your memory works at all, of course. Right now we are in the midst of both national and state elections all over our country. But I can look back to 1968, and we were in the midst of national and state elections. There was a war going on in a Far Eastern nation, which our soldiers and sailors and airmen were actually fighting. Oh, and there were nationwide protests on college campuses. That, of course, is a lot more exciting than preparing for final exams. But those of us who were college students involved with protests were not calling for the extermination of a nation or racial group. So there’s a difference today, and we can let St. John help us understand the difference.

I think most folks get the reality that human beings are born with needs and desires, but when the material needs are handled–safety, food, water, shelter–our desires are bigger than our ability to satisfy those desires. We’re constantly wanting more and more experiences, love, relationships and stuff, and we are never satisfied with what or whom we can get our arms around. We have a God-shaped hole in our hearts, and only God can fill it. As St. John says in his letter, “God is love.” So he gives us a rule to help us attain that human-satisfying union with the divine: “let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God.” Hate, and its close cousin, fear, are killers of love. We can only conquer them by first hearing God’s call to love, and then securing grace from God so we can love others even when we are hated by them.

One could hardly find a better example of hatred in the time of St. Peter than was experienced in the Holy Land between Gentile, Roman soldiers and the Jewish population of Judea. The Jews looked on themselves as God’s chosen, children of Abraham who had been promised full possession of that land. To them the Roman occupiers were literally damnable, killers of Jewish patriots in the occasional revolt, worshipers of meaningless idols and servants of a debauched leader back in Rome. The Romans had equally friendly opinions about the Jewish dogs they had to somehow keep in order. It was genocidal hatred on both sides.

Now St. Peter had lived with Jesus before the Resurrection for about three years, and for forty days afterwards. He had heard Jesus teach about loving others, even loving and forgiving enemies. But Jesus and His disciples had a mission to the Jews, not the Romans. It was a stretch for the Jesus followers to share the Gospel with those half-breed Samaritans in their territory north of Jerusalem, but they eventually accepted that. Then Peter gets a summons to call on this centurion, Cornelius, who had been having visions. Peter, too, had a vision, of a big king-size sheet coming down from heaven with all kinds of critters in it, clean and unclean. They came with divine instructions to make them all into food. Three times that happened. Eating pork? Lobster? Oysters? Reptiles?

But Peter eventually got it. Loving others was easy when they were friends. And, sure, baptism and discipleship. Samaritans? Well, they were half-Jewish, after all, and used Torah in their worship. But these pagan Romans? Yeah, Peter was convinced by divine signs. He had to love them, too, and take them into the community of Jesus people.

There may be little we can do in the present crises to heal the hatred between Jews and the Arabs in Gaza, or the West Bank. We should pray for peace, and stability. But there are folks we all think of as unclean. We have to find ways to love them, too, to wish for good for them, and especially for their acceptance of the Gospel. That’s not a nice thing to do; it may not even feel all warm and fuzzy to us, but it’s something Jesus requires if we are to be His people. All of us are invited to repent of our sins and come into communion in Christ with each other.