St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
May 18, 2025
Year C: The Fifth Sunday of Easter
Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35
An Ever-Widening Circle of Love
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Yes, it is still Easter.
And today, on the Fifth Sunday of Easter, in our Gospel lesson we back up to before the Resurrection, back to the Last Supper.
Judas has just departed to set in motion the plot that will lead to Jesus’s arrest and execution.
And Jesus, knowing that time is growing short, teaches another most important lesson:
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
“Love one another,” Jesus says to his friends.
We’re not told how the disciples reacted to this “new commandment.”
Since they had been with Jesus and had heard his teachings and witnessed his healings, surely, they weren’t surprised by this command to love one another, right?
Then again, let’s not forget that we’re talking about the disciples here, who so often missed the point, just like us.
We don’t know if the disciples were surprised by this new commandment, but there were certainly some big surprises ahead.
The first surprise was the Resurrection itself.
Although the gospels report that Jesus had predicted that he would rise on the third day, the disciples just didn’t seem to understand or believe that.
And really, who could blame them?
And the second big surprise was that Gentiles, non-Jews, were drawn to the message of Jesus.
This was an unexpected development and created a big challenge for Jesus’ first disciples, who were all Jews, and had all understood Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.
How exactly could Gentiles be included in Jesus’ community of love?
What would that look like?
Most of the disciples thought that the Gentiles who wanted to follow Jesus would have to become Jews first, would have to follow the Jewish Law – the men would have to be circumcised, everybody would have to follow the Jewish dietary laws.
Some disciples, especially Paul, strongly disagreed.
This question of what to do about the Gentiles was the first big dispute in the history of the Church.
And we hear some of that controversy in today’s first lesson, from the Acts of the Apostles.
The word gets around that Peter has been eating with the Gentiles, presumably eating food that was not kosher.
Peter explains himself by describing a vision he had, in which God declares all foods clean,
And then Peter says that the Spirit told him to make no distinction between Jews and Gentiles.
So, a big surprise for the early Church: God calls Peter and the first disciples to broaden the community, to widen the circle of love.
That all happened a long tine ago, of course, but I wonder if we are still surprised that God continues to call us to broaden the community, to widen the circle of love.
The Episcopal Church isn’t perfect, of course, but one thing we have going for us that we are very transparent when it comes to facts and figures.
Each year, every Episcopal congregation submits what’s called the Parochial Report.
It’s a total pain in the neck to put together, but it requires us to gather our financial information and to compile statistics about church membership and church attendance (that’s why the ushers count how many people are here).
I’m always most interested in attendance since I think that says a lot about the health of our church – if people are not here, if they’re voting with their feet out the door, then something has gone wrong.
But church attendance is only part of the story.
When a former bishop of mine visited congregations, he used to ask them if their church were to close, what, if anything would people out in the community miss?
To answer that very good question, in recent years, the Parochial Report has asked us to consider how many lives we touch beyond our congregation, outside of our church walls.
The church asks us if we are broadening our community.
Are we widening the circle of love?
Would anyone out there miss us if we were gone?
Of course, unlike Sunday attendance, it’s impossible to come up with a precise number of lives out there who are touched by St. Thomas’, but it sure is fun and inspiring to try.
There are the St. Thomas’ Preschool families, most of whom are not parishioners, but they are blessed with an outstanding school in a beautiful setting where the children learn most important lessons about love and kindness and generosity and creativity.
There are the children over at Owings Mills Elementary School who are being blessed by Owls First, and also their parents, and their teachers and the school administrators.
And there are the students from Owings Mills High School who have been serving as tutors in the program.
And then there are the guests at the Community Crisis Center, lined up along Reisterstown Road, hoping to receive food and toiletries and cleaning supplies, some donated by us.
There are the guests down at Paul’s Place, fed by the hundreds of sandwiches prepared every couple of weeks by our loyal band of volunteers.
There are our friends from Afghanistan who have received a warm and loving welcome from us, who have been cared for in countless ways, from help dealing with bureaucracy, rides to and from appointments, and invitations to dinner and fun outings, and very soon we’ll be offering them a home.
There are the people who haven’t been part of our church for a long time or who have no church of their own, who call us when a loved one has died, asking if they can have the funeral here and they receive the same kind of loving care that we would offer one of our own.
There are the people who watch and hear our live-streamed services – some people we know, like my parents back in Jersey City who are faithfully attentive viewers – and others we have no idea about and will probably never meet – people who are fed by our reverent worship and gorgeous music.
And there are the people who are simply comforted by this old building and the surrounding grounds, inspired by its beauty, reassured by our longevity, somehow touched by the prayers that have been offered in this place since 1742.
And if you think I’m just making this up, listen to a letter that we recently received:
“My son has been playing lacrosse games at Stevenson during the Mustang Classic for the past four years, and I found your church a few years ago. I enjoyed praying outside and had a great feeling while there. Since he won’t be playing there again, I wanted to send in this donation to show my appreciation. Your church seems to be a wonderful place, and I always found peace there and many prayers were answered.”
Amazing, right?
When time was running out, Jesus gave his friends, gave us, a new commandment, that we should love one another.
And down through the centuries, God has continued to surprise and challenge us, calling us to broaden the community, to widen the circle of love.
With each baptism, with each surprise, during the Easter Season and always, may St. Thomas’ continue to be an ever-widening circle of love.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Amen.
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