Scripture Readings: Acts 8.5-8,14-17; 1 Peter 3.15-18; John 14.15-21
“Jesus continues speaking to his disciples. ‘You know the Spirit because the Spirit abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.’” – John 14.17-20
Jesus speaks to his disciples’ most primal fear—separation, abandonment, aloneness, death itself. Our news calls us to bravery and kindness in the face of fear today.
In Sunday’s gospel Jesus talks with his friends after their last supper together. Looking beyond his death to his risen presence, Jesus promises his friends a new relationships with him. The pervasive power of God’s love means there is nowhere we can go where the Spirit is not.
Loving one another identifies us as Jesus’ disciples. Loving one another puts us in relationship with Jesus, his Father, and the Spirit who abides in us.
The intangible bonds of love, friendship, discipleship last. The small and large gestures that make love visible last. Tenderness lasts and gets passed down generations in parents’ care for their kids, in friends’ presence in difficult times.
Jesus entrusts his first disciples and us with his mission to invest our hearts and hands in families and friends and extend them beyond, building an ever-widening human community. As we experience our interdependence day by day during the pandemic, let us transform our fear for ourselves into love for one another.
How are you experiencing the presence of God in others’ love for you and your love for them?