This morning a dazzling excerpt from the Last Supper Discourse in John’s Gospel, something we usually hear in Eastertide. “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. ..I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete…love one another as I love you.” Jesus invites us to remain with him, in him, in the Father. This remaining and abiding have been enabled by God’s enfleshment in Christ, this “utmost gesture of his self-surrender and self-donation” which will reach its culmination on the cross. There on the cross, Love’s Sacred Heart will be pierced and the gushing spring of his love fully revealed.
We are invited simply to remain, to be drenched beneath this spring, remarkable in its immediacy, overwhelming in its immensity and beauty. Such is the passion of the Word, the eternal Eros of his self-emptying love. God has fallen in love, espoused us to himself, given himself over to us completely, irrevocably and welcomed us into the eternal Embrace of Father with Son in the Spirit. It’s unfathomable, and it’s very real. We are the beloved of God. Our response can be nothing less than awe and wonder and effusive thanks, along with the promise to try to love one another just as we are being loved. This is what the Lord God asks, even demands of us. And it is, of course, impossible, impossible for our puny, frightened hearts, but God who gives all things is with us empowering us to move forward- to love as he loves. And once again this morning Jesus’ desire situates us in the illogic of divine love’s immensity.
My brothers and sisters, the Lord’s invitation to remain and to love requires, I think, courage and great humility to endure the illogic of its immensity, and to believe ourselves infinitely, endlessly lovable. So a question. How did we learn to love and to allow ourselves to be loved? Who told us we were lovable? Did we learn it? Do we believe it? Who refused not to love us even when we were at our meanest? Who stood by? Who wouldn’t give up on us? Who thought we were worth it? Was there someone, even just once? Even a small kindness still remembered that still has its effect on us? A love that changed us, made us feel secure? Who showed us that love, compassion, swallowing a hurt was a better way? How did we learn to love and to receive love? For we didn’t get here alone.
Here's a story, about a man named Charles Plumb, a US Navy jet pilot during the Vietnam conflict. After 74 combat missions, his plane was blown out of the sky by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected. And he parachuted - into enemy hands. He was captured and spent six years in a Prisoner of War camp. Providentially, he survived the ordeal. Many years later, Plumb and his wife were sitting in a local restaurant. And a man at a nearby table came over and said, “Hey, you’re Charlie Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You got shot down!” Plumb asked this stranger, “How in the world did you know that?” The man replied, “I was on the Kitty Hawk too. I am the guy who packed your parachute.” Plumb sat there stunned, unable to say another word, as the man shook his hand and said, “Well, I guess it worked!” Plumb finally replied, “It sure did. If it hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here today.”
That night, Charles Plumb couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about the man at the restaurant. Plumb recounts, “I kept wondering what he might have looked like in a Navy uniform…. I wondered how many times I might have seen him and not said, ‘Good-Morning, or How are you? or What’s up?—because you see, back then, I was a cocky, self-absorbed, hotshot Navy fighter pilot, and he was just a sailor after all.” That night, Plumb thought about this man and about how many hours the sailor had spent standing at a long wooden table deep in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving and folding the silks of each parachute so that they would work perfectly, if ever needed.
This random encounter at a neighborhood restaurant changed Plumb’s life forever. He now travels around the country as a motivational speaker. After telling his story, he concludes his presentations by asking his audiences one unforgettable question: “Who has packed your parachute?”
We identify ourselves almost exclusively through the naming of relationships: we are sons, brothers, sisters, daughters, mothers, fathers, monks with fellow monks in a monastery. Sometimes we think we want to be alone, but that never works. Like it or not, it’s always about connectedness, bonds of love, interdependence. We need each other. Haven’t each of us, like Charlie Plumb, had someone, someones, behind the scenes, covering our back, packing our parachute, so that we could get where we are today? Right here. Connectedness, bonds of love, interdependence that’s what it takes. And that’s who God is - a Trinity of relationships, three Persons “each marked by the capacity for self-emptying love.” The impossibly good news is that Jesus is inviting us to enter fully into this divine, Triune interrelatedness.
God is with us, his goodness and love mediated immediately, refracted through millions of moments and real persons who have helped us on the way to loving, teaching us to remain, teaching us that love is worth it. “Remain in my love,” says Jesus. And once again he will give us a pledge of his abiding in this Most Holy Sacrament. Oneness, relationship par excellence, at fever pitch, solidarity with our God in Christ and with one another, with our forebears and friends, those who loved us into life in great and often tiny ways? They are all here with us around table, as we celebrate a Eucharist - a Thanksgiving feast. So much has been given, so many parachutes of fine silk have been given to us. Best of all, most of all, Christ Jesus our Lord is himself the great Parachute, his Love, strong and fine as silk, opening and expanding endlessly, helping us glide to safe landings in Him, over and over. Let us rejoice and give thanks, for perhaps, as Saint Ignatius of Loyola has said, the greatest sin would be lack of gratitude.
