FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR B

May 2, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.

Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:22-30

I John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8

A theme running through this morning’s readings is that of life—particularly appropriate for Eastertide, when we celebrate Christ risen from the dead to new, glorious, and eternal life, which he offers in turn to share with us.

Today’s Collect mentions the word life three times, first addressing God, whom truly to know is everlasting life, and then asking him to grant that we may so know Jesus to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may follow in his steps the way leading to eternal life.

Saint John writes in the Epistle that God manifested his love among us by sending his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In Psalm 22 the psalmist acclaims the Lord as the source of all life: “My soul shall live for him; my descendants shall serve him.”

In the Gospel reading from John 15, Our Lord employs the extended metaphor of a vine and its branches to depict his life-giving relationship with his disciples: “I am the vine; you are the branches.” Just as the vine is the branches’ life, so the risen Christ is our life. Just as the branches wither and die when cut off from the vine, so apart from Christ we have no life in us.

So today’s readings invite and challenge us to stay connected as branches to the vine: to nurture our life-giving union with Christ, established in Holy Baptism, so that we may bear the fruit of good works and so prove to be his disciples.

Jesus uses the verb “abide” to describe this staying connected to the vine: “Abide in me and I in you … He who abides in me and I in him, he it is who bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” And again: “By this my father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.”

The Church’s tradition commends an array of spiritual practices by which may nurture our vital union with Christ. First and foremost is what we’re doing here this morning, and what we do here Sunday by Sunday, and week by week: celebrate Mass together and receive the Sacraments. Beyond that, we have daily prayer, Bible reading, and a host of devotional exercises by which we can stay connected to Christ as the source of our life.

The surest test of our success in this endeavor is love. Saint John writes in today’s Epistle: “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own spirit.” And the chief fruit of the Spirit in our lives is precisely love. As John writes: “If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”

The story of Philip the Deacon and the Ethiopian eunuch in today’s reading from Acts vividly illustrates what life in the Spirit manifesting itself in love looks like in practice. Notice how throughout the story Philip remains fully open and responsive to the Spirit’s promptings. At a time when the disciples are being scattered, fleeing Jerusalem during a persecution of the fledgling Church, an angel of the Lord tells Philip to take the road that heads southwest towards Gaza—the opposite direction from which he was intending to travel—and he goes as the angel directs. 

Having taken this road, Philip encounters a high-ranking Ethiopian official on his way home from worshiping in Jerusalem. (The way back to Ethiopia was south along the coastal road towards Egypt.) We don’t know whether he was Jewish, even though by tradition a Jewish community existed in Ethiopia since the time of the Queen of Sheba's visit to King Solomon centuries before. Since the twentieth century, by the way, large numbers of this ancient Jewish community have immigrated from Ethiopia to Israel. Like them, this Ethiopian official was almost certainly black, so it’s interesting and instructive for us that the first foreign convert to Christianity of whom we have record in the New Testament was a black African.

On account of his emasculation, however, he would have been barred from full participation in the Temple sacrifices. So perhaps he was ready for a newer and fuller relationship with Israel’s God than the official worship in Jerusalem was able to offer him.

In any case, the Spirit tells Philip to approach the chariot—an action that under most circumstances would seem presumptuous and risky. Philip nonetheless obeys, and the fruit of his obedience is the conversion and baptism of this important foreign official. The point to note is that the success of Philip’s ministry is due not so much to his initiative, courage, knowledge of Scripture, and eloquence—although these gifts undoubtedly played their part—as to his willingness to respond in love to the Spirit’s inner movements as the active expression of his life in Christ and Christ’s life in him. Then, in that wonderful flourish at the end of the story, the Spirit catches Philip up and takes him away north to Caesarea, so that the newly-baptized Ethiopian sees him no more but goes on his way rejoicing.

How wonderful it would be if our life in Christ were so rich and so deep that those whom we encounter gain such a glimpse of his love through us that they go on their way rejoicing! May God grant us the grace of his Spirit to be such conduits of Christ’s life and love in our world today.