To the City of Peace and Wholeness, Unfamiliar

(a homily)

Those who can give up their native place will be open to making room for the other for they recognize their own displacement. Rejected, we can become accepting people, which is to love the enemy, the estranged and the stranger. Prophets have no honor in their hometowns. Miracles are performed in neighboring communities; the water is made into wine, the unfamiliar is familiarized and all the more made mysterious and beautiful.

This is newness of life; a new home, a new way of living in the City of Peace and Wholeness, the Kingdom of God. Past wrongs are forgiven and forgotten. Bitter tears are transformed into joyous exaltation. Wine is pressed from abundant grapes, the fruit of labor done not in vain. All work becomes a prayer, our practice becomes praise of God.

Let us continue journeying together toward Jerusalem, the city where we will meet our fate. It is where we have been heading in this Lenten season, following Jesus to the cross, His glorification. Today, feasting on simple bread and wine transformed by the Holy Spirit into transforming spiritual food, we taste the bitterness of Christ's broken body, Christ's death; but, we also receive a taste of the celebration to be had in the new city, a celebration that begins even now. Here, the new heaven becomes present, and we are made seed for the new earth.

As we near death this very hour, at just this time we too are told and we come to know that we will live; the Holy Spirit, the Breath of God, dwells in us. We may have to leave the place of our original comfort, but in so doing we walk towards the City of Peace and Wholeness.

(Isaiah 65:17-21; Psalm 30; John 4:43-54)