Homily for Fifth Sunday of Easter
Paul is not the most popular figure in certain quarters today. He is probably the most politically incorrect New Testament writer of them all. His ideas are at odds with the thinking of our own day on many matters. However, as we see from that first reading, he wasn't very popular in his own day either. His language was Greek and his background that of an Old Testament Pharisee. For example, it is only a person with a Greek cultural background could compare the Christian life to the Olympic Games. A good example of this is to be found in the first Letter to the Corinthians:
"Do you realise that, though all the runners in the stadium take part in the race, only one of them gets the prize? Run like that - to win. Every athlete concentrates completely on training, and this is to win a wreath that will wither, whereas ours will never wither. So that is how I run, not without a clear goal; and how I box, not pummeling fresh air. I punish my body and bring it under control, to avoid any risk that, having acted as cheerleader to others, I myself might be disqualified."
He was a man of great passion and strong enthusiasms. He is the type of fellow you would want to have on your side. He was given to fierce outbursts of indignation. He tells us himself that, before his mysterious conversion, he persecuted the followers of the Way with great enthusiasm. After his conversion, that same energy and enthusiasm is now directed towards preaching the gospel and Christ crucified. However, many of the early Christians didn't trust Paul. Once a Jew, always a Jew, they reasoned. Ironically, the most Jewish of the New Testament figures became known as the Apostle of the Gentiles.
As we see in today's first reading, Paul so upset some of the Hellenists in Jerusalem that he had to be smuggled out of the city. Paul is very much at odds with the landscape of the gospels: the gospels emerge from a rural setting; Paul is by far the most cosmopolitan figure of the New Testament. He is constantly on the move, founding Churches and moving on. He made three great missionary journeys in the course of his life and he is reckoned to have travelled over 8,000 miles by sea. Incidentally, the crew on the boat seems to have been constantly changing. I would imagine that very few could live at close quarters with the intensity of Paul's personality.
As I have already mentioned, the gospels will take their language and imagery from the rural setting rather than from the world of athletics. The vine had functioned as an image throughout the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, God compares his people to a vine that he had brought out of the barren land of Egypt and panted in the fertile soil of Palestine. However, much to the disappointment of the vinedresser, it produced only sour grapes!
So John takes up this traditional image and uses it as an extended metaphor in his gospel. The followers of Jesus will be like branches of the vine. If we remain attached to him, his life and blood will flow through us and we will bear fruit in plenty. But cut off from him we will wither. The father is the vinedresser, nourishing his plant and caring for it. With simple images such as this John expresses a profound religious truth: the unity of all creation. We are all branches on the same vine and, cut off from that and from one another, we wither, we are alienated.
Every human being experiences alienation to some extent. The first fruit of alienation is loneliness. No person has ever walked this earth and been free from the pain of loneliness. Rich and poor, healthy and unhealthy, faith-filled and agnostic, married or unmarried, have all alike to struggle with the paralysing grip of loneliness.
To be human, however, is also to respond. The human person has always responded to pain. The response has varied greatly. Sometimes loneliness has led us to new heights of creativity, sometimes it has led us to drugs, alcohol and emotional paralysis. Sometimes it has led us to the true encounter of love, sometimes to dehumanising relationships and destructive sexuality. Sometimes it has led us to God, and to a fuller life, sometimes it has driven people to end it all. For loneliness is one of the most profound human experiences. It is part of the price we pay for living. The Catholic tradition has been realistic about this aspect of the human experience. We were destined from the beginning for each other and for God. St. Paul refers to this frustrating gap as 'looking through a glass darkly'; a riddle, a veil, a mist of unreality separates us from God and others and from what is authentically real.
But from the crushed grapes will come the wine that cheers. If we embrace the loneliness, the frustrations that come our way, if we embrace life in all its fullness, then an abundance of life will be ours. The same imagery of course is taken into the Eucharist: the work of human hands, the bread and wine of our daily experience will be transformed to sustain us eternally.