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| "The Title on the Cross," by J. Tissot. Brooklyn Museum / Public Domain. |
Today
Christ speaks of four parties: his
Father, Christ himself, his disciples,
and the world.
He speaks
of his Father as the one who sent me.
Christ
speaks of the world as not knowing the one who sent
him, the world as having hated Christ, as having rejected his word, as having persecuted
him, as hating his disciples, persecuting them and rejecting their word.
Until the
end of the world, until the new heavens and the new earth, there will be ups
and downs in how many cleave to Christ, and there will always be foes of
Christ.
The word
of the Lord says spurning of Christ will grow as the end of the world draws near.
In today’s
Gospel, Christ reminds us to expect to be hated and persecuted because we
belong to him.
But
belonging to him is not a matter of our claiming to belong to him.
It is not
a matter of saying we have accepted him as Lord and Savior.
Rather, belonging
to Christ is a matter of his choosing us.
He says
today: I have
chosen you out of the world.
It is up
to us to own or spurn that Christ has chosen us.
He has
chosen us to join him in the Eternal Covenant of his Body and Blood.
If we
freely take, eat and drink it, we are owning a choice Christ has made to have
us belong to him, as he says in his Gospel today: you do not belong
to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world.
He has a
claim on us, but his claim does not enslave.
His claim
on us sets us free to receive from him.
Right
before today’s Gospel he said:
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you....
... a SLAVE does not know what his master is doing.
I have called you FRIENDS,
because I have told you EVERYTHING I have heard from my Father.
EVERYTHING Christ has from his Father he has
given to us.
The first
sin of human history, the sin that enslaved us, was the sin of believing that
God would NOT give us everything.
It was the
sin of believing that we would have to reach out and take it for ourselves.
Our NEW
freedom will come from letting God reach out and take US for himself.
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you....
I have called you FRIENDS,
because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
We might TAKE
the Body and Blood of Christ, but we must see our taking as letting GOD
take us.
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you....
If we
allow God his choice of us, it will guarantee us hatred from the world until
the end of the world, but it will take us into the Eternal Covenant of
friendship with the Son of God and a share in his Father.
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you....
I have called you FRIENDS,
because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
Turn. Love.
Repeat.
