Homily, Fifth Sunday of Easter April 20, 2008
by Deacon Wayne Hoy

Story of ‘The Lady with the cookies…’
A lady returning from a business trip checked in at the airport and received her boarding pass. The plane was not due to leave for a while yet so she bought a magazine and a bag of cookies and took a seat in the lounge. She became engrossed in her magazine, but after a while she noticed that each time she reached into her bag of cookies, the man seated next to her reached in and took a cookie also. She was aghast that a perfect stranger would be so rude to help himself to her cookies without even asking. “The audacity! she thought angrily. Sure enough, each time she took a cookie so did the man next to her. Well by this time she was seething. Finally she noticed that there was only one cookie left in the bag. She thought to herself, “I wonder what he’s going to do now?” Well, the man reached into the bag and took out the cookie and broke it in half and gave her one half. This was too much! She leaped from her seat and stormed to the other side of the room. Shortly the call came to board her plane, and still fuming she took her seat on the plane and it took off. Settled in her seat, she opened her travel bag to retrieve her magazine, and there in the bag was… an unopened bag of cookies. She suddenly wondered, ‘If these are my cookies…whose cookies had she been eating?

Things are not always as they appear…

Jesus looked the son of Joseph the carpenter. He dressed like any other Nazarene, and when in the big city was obviously recognized as a country bumpkin. And for some that is all they ever saw in him. But there were others, not many, who sensed something different, in fact, something marvelous about him. They noticed that whenever they were in his presence they felt freer than they had ever felt before. After encountering him, they found it hard to stay centered on themselves, their cares and concerns, as their attention began to shift noticeably outward toward others. They began to “see” and “hear” things that had escaped them before. Most marvelous of all, they found that they no longer lived in fear. No one was quite sure why all these wonderful things were happening, but they all agreed that it was great just being near him.

After a while, some began to catch on a little. Life away from him began to be seen as not-life. And so a handful of people decided to risk everything, which ironically they now saw as nothing, to walk with him. For three years they were inseparable, during which time it finally dawned on some of them that this Jesus fellow was truly a man of God. They began to understand that all the wonderful things that had occurred were due to the presence of God. That was it! God’s hand was at work in their midst. And one day in a fit of euphoria, one of them, Philip by name, asked Jesus when he would reveal the Father to them.
“Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Philip says.
You can almost sense the disappointment, the longing in Jesus’ voice as he speaks to Philip. “Philip, Philip, have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
At that moment the truth about Jesus of Nazareth was revealed. Jesus and the Father are one!
We have interpreted that to mean that Jesus is God. And so he is. But there is another, more profound truth contained here.
For what Jesus was saying to Philip was that the divine is not to be found outside of humankind, but within, in the intimacy and togetherness of God and human beings, promised and foretold in the Covenant, effected and realized in the Lord Jesus, and present in each one of us when we truly walk with him in faith.
This revelation is literally unbelievable; it is simply too ironic. After all, it is far easier to think intimacy with God solely in terms of our relating to him. But it becomes so much more difficult if God has been so indiscreet as to have identified himself with all humankind. There is a burning desire, a craving within each one of us to be in union with God, but have we considered that there is also a longing, a need within God to be in intimacy with us.
In scripture we find, “He created them in his own image, male and female…” And again, “The word was made flesh and dwelt among us…”
There is, I believe a wanting, perhaps even a need that God has to be with us in intimate union.
I help out at a parish in Evansville, Indiana during the summer and there is a priest, a dear friend who is dead now, bless his soul; but one homily he gave he was talking about the incarnation, God becoming human, and he said, “It would be like one of us lowering our self to become a dog,” and I thought, ‘Oh, no, father. I don’t think that is the point.’
It is not that God demeaned himself to become human, but by becoming a man he gave a new meaning to what it is to be human. That is the very heart of the Christian faith, and Jesus leads the way. Jesus is the way, and all are invited to walk alongside him. Listen to the words of the gospel…
“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works I do, and will do greater ones than these.”
It would seem that what Jesus is saying, is that to walk with him is to have the very same effect on people as he did. After encountering us, do people feel freer, fear less, walk taller, think nobler, sing more joyfully, and feel more alive than ever before?
You see the challenge then, is to take the invitation to intimacy with God and with each other to heart; to become signs of the kingdom. To give human life the direction Jesus gave it—that is Outward, forward, and always toward resurrection.