5th Sunday Easter, C, A New Heaven and A New Earth

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John 13: 31-33a, 34-35 (5th Sunday of Easter, C, A New Heaven and A New Earth)

Focus: Love Made a New Heaven and Love Makes a New Earth.

Function: To remind hearers that love made a new heaven and makes a new earth.

  1. Love Made a New Heaven
  2. Love-making… (Do you think I’m “talking dirty” in Church? You not going to tell my mom, are you?) Love-making is creating something new, isn’t it? Don’t you remember when you fell in love with someone and something, all things were new, exciting, possible… fun.
  3. As Christians, during the Easter season—the weeks following Holy Week—we celebrate the depths of divine love-making—a love that made something new and continues to make something new because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Divine love expressed in Jesus Christ made all things new, especially heaven. God was no longer a distant, angry, cold, and impersonal God, but God-among-us, God as one of us, God with skin on, God Incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.
  4. Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, came to dwell among us to teach us, to guide us, to inspire us to live a new type of life. Jesus’ earthly life then, and the heavenly life He offers in the future Reign of God, flows from the depths of divine love. Jesus shared Himself freely in service to and offered Himself willingly in sacrifice for all—all regardless of race, class, gender, orientation, heritage, etc. God’s presence among us in Jesus Christ is a universal promise of a new heaven offered to all, because as the well-known passage from John’s Gospel proclaims, “God so loved the world…” Jesus’ universal invitation to a new heaven points to our purpose—we might say—an invitation to model our life on His life in order to make a new earth.
  5. Love Makes a New Earth
  6. Jesus Christ modeled a life of loving service and sacrifice for us—a life which made a new heaven and guides us to make a new earth. Jesus modeled love for us two-thousand years ago and guides us in love today so that we might make a new earth, a world transformed, a globe refashioned, our terrestrial home, a place that fully respects the dignity of every human made in the Divine image and likeness, regardless of where they are born. Jesus Christ who made a new heaven by His life, death and resurrection, inspires and sustains us in our making a new earth and in our building of the Reign of God now. We engage in making a new earth so that one day earth will kiss heaven, temporality and eternity will embrace in the future Reign of God, in that moment of the fulfillment of God’s Reign of peace and justice.
  7. The new heaven offered to us by Jesus Christ inspires us to make a new earth. As Christians, followers of and believers in Jesus Christ, there is no escaping our vocation, our duty, our responsibility to transform the world around us so that others might come to know the God of life and love through our lives of solidarity and our commitment to actions to make all things new today.
  8. We make known God’s life and love to create a new earth by seeing God as Creator and Sustainer of all life. We honor the Creator by how we respect creation. We glorify the Sustainer by how we sustain what has been entrusted to us. This respect for and sustenance of God’s creation is part of our Catholic social teaching. Our Christian faith teaches us to treasure creation rather seeing her as a treasure chest. Our Christian faith instructs us to sustain creation rather than wantonly consuming her. Ultimately, creation belongs to the Creator and was shared with all, not just the “lucky” few who control and devour the biggest share.
  9. Conclusion

We follow Jesus’ new commandment to love—to love God and to love our neighbor, and to love the rest of God’s creation; we accept the new heaven made by God’s loving action in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We too embrace the model of Jesus Christ and collaborate with the God who came to dwell among us to teach, to guide, and to model a way to build a new earth, a place where the dignity of all of creation—especially those made in the divine image and likeness—is respected and directed toward the glory of God.

May our love-making—our love of God, for all others, for the rest of creation—indeed reflect the One who made us in love.

Intentions for the 5th Sunday of Easter

For all Church leaders, may these men and women guide us toward a deeper love of God and neighbor, as well as of the rest of creation, we pray to the Lord.

For those who work to make a new earth into a place where all people are treated with equal dignity and where the rest of creation is valued as a gift from God, we pray to the Lord.

For those members of our community on retreat this weekend, may they profoundly experience God’s love through the prayers of many, we pray to the Lord.

For each of us here, may we daily accept and appreciate the new heaven promised us by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and express this in our actions to make a new earth, we pray to the Lord.

For greater respect of God’s creation, and more sustainable use of her resources by all of earth’s inhabitants, we pray to the Lord.

For those who have lost loved ones, may they rejoice in the new life their loved ones now share with Jesus, we pray to the Lord.

For all people who are forced to migrate because of war and violence as well as because of economic and ecological displacement, may their host countries treat them as brothers and sisters of the same God, we pray to the Lord.