6th Sunday of Easter, B May 9, 2021
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete.” Perfect! Isn’t that exactly what we want… what we’ve been talking about this whole Easter season? Who doesn’t want complete joy? Well then, what is it Jesus says that makes this possible? “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.”
That kind of sounds like a simple exchange, doesn’t it? Just do the right thing and I’ll reward you with joy. Sort of like do your job and I’ll pay you or do your homework and I’ll give you a good grade. That’s not completely wrong – God does often talk about rewarding us for good deeds – but that misses the heart of what joy even is.
And this missing heart is important when you come up against this question: will everyone go to heaven? I say that because when we talk about joy, we have to also talk about heaven – the two are intimately connected. What’s the answer though? So many people seem to assume everyone goes to heaven. They look at what St. John the Evangelist says in the second reading to justify this. God is love. And if God is love, why wouldn’t he just give everyone heaven? After all, it was love that motivated him to make us in the first place. If he created everyone out of love, why not bring everyone to heaven out of love? After all, how can God be love and send someone to Hell?
There’s a problem looming in the background. We have this vision of the big and powerful judge… of some kind of impersonal force that wants to control us. “Do what I say or go to hell.” I mean, God does judge us, and he does tell us we have to obey him, so how is that not the case? Well, just because it’s technically true doesn’t mean it’s the best way to understand what’s going on. What’s wrong with that picture?
It misrepresents what it actually means to be in heaven and what joy really means. So many problems come from using words without thinking about their meaning. Do you know what heaven is? It’s the place where God’s will is always followed perfectly. If someone doesn’t like doing God’s will, why would they want to go to heaven?
But why is it always about God’s will? How is that not just another way of saying God wants to control us? Because “control” implies selfishness… it implies taking away freedom. And what Jesus says here seems to make it worse: “I no longer call you slaves.” If we were slaves before, it meant we had no freedom, right? But how do we move from being slaves to being friends? “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” So, first we’re slaves, which means we have to do what our master says, but the way to stop being slaves is to… do what the master says? How does any of this make sense?
The key is this next line: “because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.” The difference between obeying God as a slave and obeying him as a friend is simple, yet also hard for us to fully grasp. The difference is love. As a slave, obedience is about external compulsion. It’s doing what I say because you have to. As a friend, obedience is about internal transformation; it’s about doing what Jesus says because we love him and trust that it will make us free and joyful.
Joy is not a reward. It is not an add on. God doesn’t hand us joy like a boss hands us a paycheck. God doesn’t send people to hell because they didn’t pass his test or because he’s being stingy. It’s not like he can just give us heaven and joy the way grandma gives us candy. Heaven is not something we get, it is a way of being. Joy grows from inside. It comes from being a certain kind of person. Being in heaven, where joy is eternal, is more about who we are than what we have. And who we are comes from two things: how we’re made and what we choose to do. We inherit human nature by God’s design, but then we choose who to become by our habits and by accepting grace.
This is why obeying God is not about taking away our freedom. God is love. What is love? It is to will, to choose the good of another. It is an objective reality, choosing what is good, not just what feels good.God’s commands are literally for our own benefit. God’s nature is love. He cannot help but want what is best for us. It has nothing to do with ego or control or insecurity. Simply because he exists as love, he wants what’s best for us. And what is best for us? What is best for a human being? To be happy, to be full of joy… to be what we’re meant to be.
And what human beings are meant to be is in relationship. A human being who refuses to be in a relationship with God goes to hell not because God is petty and mean, but because being in heaven is by definition a relationship with God. Being joyful is, by definition, the fruit of a relationship. Giving someone a piece of paper that says they’re a doctor doesn’t make them a doctor. What makes them a doctor is being a person who both knows how to heal others and chooses to do so. What makes a person joyful is both knowing how to love and choosing to do so. To be in heaven is to do this perfectly and eternally. If someone refuses to learn what love is and refuses to act on love, then they can’t go to heaven because they themselves choose not to.
The reality is that God designed the universe and he designed human beings. Because he is love, he designed human beings to love. St. Peter visits a pagan roman centurion in the first reading at says “God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.” Cornelius fears God – he prays. He acts uprightly – he gives alms to the poor. But Peter is not content with that. He orders him to be baptized, to move through reverential fear into a deeper and more personal love. To become a friend of Jesus who obeys him not to get a reward, but because he knows Jesus wants what’s best and because he wants it too.
This is why we insist that being Catholic is the way to go to heaven. We have the most knowledge of who God is because he told us. We have the sacraments that enable us to not only know God, but to imitate him, to become like him, to be transformed by grace from slaves into friends. “I have told you this so… your joy might be complete.” Only love begets joy. God is love. See who God is and what he’s done. Choose to do the same, choose to love as he does and you will know joy.