Revealed by Love

Last day on the road, three siblings’ smiles freshened in our minds, we’re happy to be coming back home today.  And all the way home we’ll have this song echoing in our ears, or at least the repeated refrain…”revealed by love….”  I like to think of this as the season of Jesus showing up, appearing to his followers less and less frequently and reminding them of what he hoped they’d learned from him in a couple of weeks, he’ll complete the mission, and breathe into them the Spirit, and be on his way out of their physical world forever.   In yesterday’s Good story from John, he reminded us that people would know his followers by their love for each other. 

By last night we had left our brother Bob up in the woods of Wisconsin where he is making a simple new home from three acres and a 600 square foot cabin.  We’d taken the four hour drive up to see him, walked around his place, taken him to lunch, and driven the four hours back down to my sister Dar’s place here outside of Chicago, to the fiesta celebrating her birthday.  We pulled into her driveway and into the love that surrounded us – food on the grill, music, and laughter.  Our nieces and nephews talked with wisdom about their worthwhile struggles to live in an economic rebalancing that they see as good and overdue, a move away from the “too-much-of-everything” way we lived for too long.  They’re happy for the struggle, and trusting in “the way they were raised”.    

By last night, My bother Dave and his wife were on their flight back to Phoenix, after coming out to spend the weekend with Kathy and me, drive up to Bob’s with us, crash in Dar’s extra bedrooms with us before and after the Fiesta, and go to Mass with us yesterday to hear the Good Story, Jesus telling his followers that people would know them as his disciples by their love for each other.

So last night, we sat with Dar and her husband Joe, who had welcomed us and cooked for us and enjoyed us for these three days, and Kathy was telling Dar about Mass.  She told her that when we sat down in the church, she felt an overwhelming sense of love, the love that we had felt from our family here, the joy of their love for each other.  She described how moved she was when she heard Jesus telling his followers that showing this very love would be the way they would be known as his followers, recognized for who they were, who they wanted to be.  She was telling her how the priest had this great homily, about how when Jesus addressed his followers as “My beloved” that the Latin word"carissimi"gave a sense of what he meant:” My dearest.”

This weekend as we considered Jesus, and how as he came closer and closer to leaving, his message became simpler and simpler, I remember my dad in his last days, lying in his bed at home near Dar’s house here, and the kind of things he said to the six of us siblings and the fifteen of our kids as he said goodbye.  They were simple things like this.  Take care of your mom.  Believe in yourself.  Love each other.  And so Joe and I watched Kathy tell Dar how here in their house we saw Jesus show up, again and again, not in flowing white robes and wounded hands, but in the love that we showed for each other.  He was revealed by our love for each other.  He not only showed up, but hung out with us.

In a little while, Dar and Joe will be up and showering and dressing and off to work.  Kathy and I will be up and packing and on the road.  And when in a couple of weeks Jesus breathes the Spirit into us and hits the road himself, we know he’ll still be showing up.  We’ll smell the food.  We’ll hear the music and laughter.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.