6th Sunday in Easter

While aimlessly trawling the net, I recently stumbled across an article entitled “Don’t force your happily ever after.” It was by a young woman named Kelsey, who takes us through the vicissitudes of her love life and then tries to draw a lesson out of it. When she was in university, she had a boyfriend. He was a great guy. He loved the Lord. Her family liked him. But something was off. Whenever she tried to picture herself marrying him, she couldn’t. They dated for six months but she couldn’t really see herself with him long-term. Six months quickly turned into a year, and still, she didn’t see a future with this guy. A year turned into two and, as badly as she wanted to, she couldn’t picture herself walking down the aisle and him standing at the end.

So she finally took the risk and broke up with this boyfriend. She released control of her love-life and gave it over to God. Without knowing what was ahead and she believed God had something better for her. As it turned out, God did have someone better for her. Shortly after breaking up with her first boyfriend, she met Kyle and as soon as she met him she knew there was something different about him and about their relationship. It wasn’t that he was perfect or that he matched her “list” completely. It was a peace in her heart. It was the way he loved others and the way he loved her. It was just a reassurance she felt from the Lord that this was a guy she could marry. This was a guy she could imagine a future with. This was a guy she could see standing at the end of the aisle, and so she ended up getting married to this guy.

In today’s gospel, Jesus is trying to convince his disciples that they should be happy that he is going, he is trying to convince them that they need to let go of him, that they should not cling to him. Sometimes in our lives we find ourselves settling for a false peace because we are scared that if we let it go, we will be left with nothing. Kelsey finally took the risk of breaking up with her first boyfriend, trusting that if she did, God would lead her to the man for her. Jesus tells his disciples that if he does not go, they will not receive the Holy Spirit.

Jesus promises his disciples the gift of peace, a peace that the world cannot give. The peace that the world offers is the peace of compromise, it is a false peace, because it is a peace that shies away from conflict and suffering. The peace that Jesus offers us is a peace that faces the suffering and conflict head on and knows that real peace will only be achieved if we refuse to put up with second best and if we fight for what we believe in. In order to obtain real peace, we must be prepared to let go of that which is most precious to us, just like the disciples had to let go of Jesus in order to receive the Holy Spirit. This is where I think Kelsey’s story can be misleading to us. Because I think that Kelsey’s story is somehow too perfect, and this was put brilliantly in one of the comments under Kelsey’s story, a comment made by a very wise young woman named Britt. This is what she had to say:

“Ok, here’s the thing. This is incredibly sweet and inspiring and I am so happy for Kelsey and her happy story. But as a young woman in her 20s who is still single, it sounds to me like not much more than that. My experiences have taught me that there is no such thing as a happy ending. Relationships that last are about sacrifice and making the other person a priority. I have surrendered my future to the hands of God, but its a daily struggle. And God is not a wish-granter concerned with making me happy. My job is to bring Him glory and be in relationship with Him. The point? Surrender your future to God just like Kelsey said, but understand that you may be giving up your chance to be married and have children. Surrender does not equate to happy ever after ending. But God is faithful and His plans are so much bigger for us then we could ever imagine. Let Him be enough.”

Many Christians have an image of God as a wish-granter – and kind of super fairy-god mother who is there with her magical wand to grant us our every desire if we just are prepared to pray to trust and pray to God. The thing is that for many people this image of God works – because they do, more or less, manage to get most of what they expect in life – a happy marriage, a good job that puts food on the table and ensures a comfortable life-style, they get to grow old and see they grandchildren, and their lives have happy endings, like Kelsey’s. But other people do not have happy endings to their lives. For an example of this, we need look no further than the apostles themselves. By our standard measure of a fully-lived life, the apostle’s lives did not have happy endings. I would wager that none of the apostles ever got to see their grandchildren, because all of them were dead long before their grandchildren were born. The Church’s tradition tells us that all of the apostles died as martyrs – we have it on good tradition that Peter was crucified upside down. For people who don’t have perfect lives, I think looking to the apostles lives can be immensely consoling. It is only in the light of the resurrection that the apostles lives can in any way be considered as having a happy ending.

In one way, the apostles might have wished that Jesus would have just stayed on, would have never died. But if Jesus did stay with the disciples, they would never have grown up. They would have remained in their spiritual infancy all their lives, always relying on Jesus to sort out their problems. This is not peace, this is called tranquility – this is called spiritual childhood. If Jesus had never gone, they would have never received the holy spirit, they would have never become adults in their faith. Our first reading today shows the early Church, under the guidance of the apostles having to make difficult adult decisions – having to weigh competing visions of what the Church should be and then deciding to adopt one particular vision over against another vision. The apostles may have wished not to have to deal with such difficult questions. They would have at times wished they could just regress back into their spiritual infancy – when Jesus was alive and when he would be the one to handle all the curve balls that life would throw at them. But they stuck it out and carried on witnessing to the gospel until finally they were called on to witness to the gospel with their very lives. We will never recapture the simplicity, innocence and carefree abandon of our childhoods. Too much water has flown under the bridge for us to do that. Our own stories have twists and turns in them that we might wish were not there. The words of Mother Teresa would be apt to remember here: “God does not ask us to be successful, God asks us to be faithful.” The peace that Christ promises us that the world cannot give is the peace that comes with being faithful. It is the peace that, in the words of Britt, come with sacrifice and putting others before ourselves. It is the peace that comes when we are able to let go of our own dreams because we realize that God’s dreams for us are so much bigger than our own.

Questions for reflection:

1. What are the dreams that God might be calling you to let go off in order to find true peace?
2. Are you more focused on being successful rather than being faithful?
3. How might the light of the resurrection cast a sad ending in a new light for you?