05.10.2020 Homily

The words that Jesus speaks in the gospel reading this morning are part of that instruction. That final instruction, that final teaching that he gives to his disciples on the night before he dies. And we need to put it into a context. The evening began with Jesus, taking off his outer garment and putting a towel around his waist and going one by one to his disciples and washing their feet. And when he had done that, he said, do you understand what I have done? You call me Lord and master. And that is truly what I am. And if I, the Lord and master have washed your feet, how much more ought you to wash the feet of each other, then he will go on to say, this is my commandment. That you are to love one another as I have loved you. And no one has greater love than the one who lays down his life for his friends. 

So now we come to the gospel of this weekend. And the gospel is really about knowing the words know, and knowing are found a number of times in that short gospel passage. If you know me, you would know my father. And now you do know him because you have seen him. Phillip says, show us the father. And that will be enough for us. Jesus said, Philip, do you not understand that? If you know me, if you see me, you see the father. 

Most of us know from the outside in, there's an subject out there that we wish to have knowledge of. And we acquire that knowledge and we bring that into ourselves. We get, yet we take it, we acquire it. We say, now I get the solution to that mathematical problem. Now I acquire a higher education. Now I take in information from the world around me. It's the way we come to know. We come to know about things and persons and events. That's not the same as saying I come to know. And that's what Jesus is about in his instruction to his disciples. Not concerned about taking the outside in. He's concerned about the inside. The coming to know, that is fundamentally an interpersonal and intimate connection with another. It's not about knowing about somebody it's knowing the person. 

And so Jesus says, if you truly knew me, not know about me, if you truly knew me, you would know my father. And from now on, you do know him and you have seen him the way we come to the knowledge of God, that intimate, knowing that intimate, that intimate involvement, that is not a thing of the head, but as a thing of the heart, the way we come to that is in an interpersonal deep abiding relationship with Jesus. And that's what he invites his disciples to. And then he goes on and he will tell them that. And the way you come to that relationship with me has to do with the way you relate to each other, that as I have loved you, I asked that you love each other. And that in that love for each other, you will come to a deeper appreciation, a fuller appreciation of, of who I am. And through me who the father is. Jesus is the human face of the living. God. We come today to celebrate the mystery of the Eucharist. We celebrate that mystery in which, in which Jesus, places, himself caring all that there is of our lives and the life of the world. And by his dying and resurrection, he, he renews all that exists. He renews the creation that the mystery of the altar is the mystery of the recreation. 

As we pray this morning, think about that, that intimate gathering of those 12 around the table, the night before he died. The washing of the feet, and then the teaching. If you do see me, then you truly do see my father.