4th Sunday of Easter, B April 25, 2021
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
When we talk about heaven, most of us imagine it to be a place of eternal happiness, whatever that looks like. Well, St. John in the second reading is talking about heaven. And do you know how he defines the joy in heaven? “We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” That’s what will bring us everlasting happiness, to see Jesus Christ as he is and so to become like him.
So, it should make sense that, if we want to know joy even here on earth, we should start that process of becoming like Jesus even now. In other words, if you want to be happy, if you want the joy I keep promising, then be like Jesus.
What is Jesus like? I can tell you what he is not like. He’s not like what most of the world think he is. Movies, songs, books, bumper stickers, and catchphrases just don’t do it justice. If you want to know what Jesus is like, read the gospels. There is no substitute.
And the gospel today tells us something very important about Jesus. “I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” Jesus sets up an important parallel: our relationship to him is a reflection, a copy of his relationship to the Father. The Father knows him, he knows us. Jesus then says, “This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down.”
The parallel of that means that Jesus’ love for us is connected to our willingness to lay down our lives. Unlike Jesus, other people definitely can take our lives away from us. Unlike Jesus, we do not have the power to simply “take up” our lives once we’ve died, at least, not directly. Still, the joy we most desire means being like Jesus which means being willing to lay down our lives.
To put it more bluntly, if we want to know joy, we have to choose to suffer. Well, it’s not that we choose to suffer for its own sake but rather that, like Jesus, we choose to do something good even though it means we will suffer for it. Jesus chose to obey his father by laying down his life for the sheep. It’s not that he took his own life, but that he sacrificed it for the sake of another, for our sake. It’s not that he wanted to die, but that he wanted to “take up” his life again, to conquer death and that doing that meant first going through it.
It’s the reality of this world that if you always run from suffering, you will end up miserable. If you refuse to exercise, your body will suffer more in the long run. If you refuse to work, you will suffer boredom and deprivation. If you refuse to have difficult conversations, you will suffer from poor relationships. If you refuse to die for Jesus, you will still end up dying, but for no reason.
Which brings us to baptism. For now, we enjoy a lot of freedom to practice our faith. We pray this will continue and most of us won’t literally become martyrs. But all of us are, or should be, baptized. Baptism is symbolic of death and resurrection. But it’s more than symbolic. If we want to be like Jesus, we need baptism because it actually changes us. St. John says here we are “children of God.” That’s because we’re baptized. People like to say, “everyone is a child of God,” but that is simply not what the bible tells us or what the Church teaches. God loves everyone, yes. He created everyone, yes. Jesus died for everyone, yes. But, until we are baptized, we are not yet God’s children. You may see a child in the neighborhood and care about them, but adopting that child and bringing them home is a bit more than that. Baptism is that adoption; It makes us like Jesus, the son of God.
And we can’t earn that. The first part of becoming like Jesus is a total gift. His love is offered regardless of what we’ve done. We can accept that and be baptized to become like him. Being like Jesus is supposed to bring joy, but how many of us are baptized and still aren’t quite full of joy? That’s because baptism is the beginning of a process. As a sacrament, it gives grace. It works and nothing we do can take away from baptism. What we can do, however, is put obstacles in the way. We can refuse to cooperate with the grace. We can ignore the responsibilities of baptism, which means we also ignore the benefits.
That’s a lot like what is going on in the first reading. Peter is talking to the Jewish leaders. The Jews, as God’s chosen people, have a special relationship with God. That offer was from God and he didn’t go back on it. But they refused to accept what he offered. They rejected the cornerstone and refused to acknowledge that their special relationship with God gave them the responsibility of recognizing and accepting Jesus as the messiah and the son of God.
Instead, they focused on what they could get and keep: power, prestige, money… Jesus however came to lay down his life. They lost all they had in the end, but Jesus got his life back and still has it along with eternal joy. We can choose either to be like the Jewish leaders and squander God’s gifts to us or we can be like Jesus and use that gift.
And there is only one right way to use it: by laying down our lives. It’s not just about self-denial and penance. Those are required, yes, but it’s really about the other. Jesus doesn’t just lay down his life, he lays it down for the sheep. The point is not to be selfless but to be self-giving. Your “self” is part of God’s gift; It’s the self that gets baptized. It is ourselves that we put in service to love. We make sacrifices to stop ourselves from being selfish, but not to annihilate ourselves. We purify ourselves so that we can have a worthy “self” to give away.
The point is this: if you would know joy, you must see Jesus as he truly is, not as the world imagines him to be. Read the Gospels and study the faith. You have to become like him by receiving the sacraments well. You must become like him by laying down your life, denying yourself long enough to be able to give yourself to others. That starts by giving yourself to God, by going to Mass with the mindset of what you can give, not what you can get. Respond and sing even if you don’t feel like it because it’s what God asks. This self-gift extends to others by prayer and fasting, by service and evangelization, by patiently enduring and forgiving the faults of others. This can feel like death because it is, but it gives way to the only life worth living: Life like Christ, life with Christ.