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Institute for Homiletics

A Collaboration of The Catholic Foundation and the University of Dallas

Seventh Sunday of Easter

The End Is Near

The end is coming. 

Jesus senses it. He feels its weight. In today’s farewell discourse from John, he knows that he is leaving. What will life be like for his disciples? It won’t be the same. Will they remain in him and in the One he loves? Will they be so filled with the Holy Spirit that they stay together? He prays that it be so. 

The end is coming. 

St. Stephen knows it. He is about to die. Then what? Death is like driving toward the top of a big hill and you can only see sky.  After death, eternal life is not simply driving down the other side into the same-old-same-old, an unending life as we already know it;  that would be interminable hell. No, eternal life is more like the car coming to the top of the hill and then launching into the air. Stephen sees the heavens opened. He stretches out his arms toward life with  Jesus. Something new is coming. 

The end is coming. 

The author of the book of Revelation sees it. The verses that we read today are the finale of the Bible. And yet those final words are not “The End,” with the credits about to roll, as though the great drama of God with the human race has ceased. Those last words  open up a new world: “Come, Lord Jesus!” 

We are at the end of the Easter season, about to wrap up our celebration of the Resurrection on Pentecost. And yet . . . In the  Resurrection, God has done something new. In that one human death, God has altered the heart of the world, deeply transforming earthly life forever. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. What looks like the end is not the end. It is a new beginning. That is the alleluia of Easter! 

Consider/Discuss 

  • With our physical senses of touch and taste, sight and sound and smell, we cannot perceive the deep change at the root of the world; it is as though we only move about on the surface. We walk by faith, not by sight. Yet  on occasion, God strengthens our spiritual senses to give us glimpses of  resurrection. Look back at your experience of Easter this year. What has  God done for you? 
  • At the end of the Bible, it is as though the great drama of God leaves an  opening for “The Sequel.” We are now in the era of the Spirit, in which  God unfolds that drama in the church and helps us to be fully alive in  everyday life. But there is also more. An old spiritual sings, “I’m just a poor  wayfaring stranger, a travelin’ through this world of woe. But there’s no  sickness, toil, or danger, in that bright world to which I go.” Look forward  to the end of your life. What will that “sequel” look like? How do you  imagine eternal life? 

Living and Praying with the Word 

Lord Jesus, you know our troubles. You knew the squabbles of  the disciples. You prayed that all be one. You see how we humans fight with each other. We tell uncharitable, untrue stories about one another. We are not one. We cannot pull together by ourselves. Oh, help! Strengthen our love. Strengthen our hope. Strengthen our courage. In your resurrection, you have made all things new. You have offered to us a different way of life—a fresh vision, a glorious outcome, a loving future. Help us to live into that vision. We open  our arms to you. Come, O Prince of Peace!

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Scripture Study for

Stephen was the first deacon chosen by the apostles, and we hear that he was “a man filled with faith and the holy Spirit” (Acts 6:5).  We also hear that he was “filled with grace and power” and that he worked “great wonders and signs among the people” (6:8). This,  along with his preaching, earned him the distrust and ire of some powerful people, who incited others to accuse him of blasphemy  (6:9–15). His lengthy response to the charge ends with a reminder that his accusers’ ancestors had also persecuted the prophets (7:51– 53). He further infuriates the crowd with his claim to see “the glory of God” (that is, a visible sign of the presence of the unseen God)  with Jesus at his “right hand,” a position of power and authority.  This would seem to confirm the charge of blasphemy (which is why they cover their ears), the penalty for which was stoning (Leviticus  24:13–16). Stephen’s death conforms to that of Christ when he asks  Jesus to “receive my spirit” and he prays that Jesus will not “hold this sin against them” (see Luke 23:34, 46). 

The book of Revelation ends with the creation of “a new heaven and a new earth” and a new Jerusalem, “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (21:1–2). This city represents the church of God,  formed around the “God and the Lamb,” from whose throne flows  “a river of life-giving water” that waters the tree of life, bringing the biblical story back to its beginning in the Garden of Eden (22:1–2; Genesis 2:9; 3:22–23). Now the human race, banished from the source of life ages ago, can return home. The book also ends with the reminder that this vision, while trustworthy, is only “near” and awaits fulfillment with the final coming of the Lord of history, the  Alpha and the Omega. Both the Spirit and the church pray for this coming, and the author exhorts his hearers to do the same. Christ himself, who gives the testimony of this final victory, affirms that he will certainly return, bringing with him the fulfillment of all of God’s plans and promises for all of creation.

In the Gospel reading, John’s characteristic intertwining and repetition of themes is on full display, a rhetorical device that mirrors the close connection among those themes, which are “abiding,” faith,  and witness. In the first place, Jesus prays that his followers “may all be one,” just as he and the Father are “one” because they are  “in” each other. In this Gospel that means not only an ontological identity (being of the very same nature) between Jesus and the Father  (1:1), but also a union of wills and a sharing of the bond of love  (15:9). Jesus thus prays that the church will “abide” in him and so also in the Father through the bond of love, manifested by, among other things, a visible unity. This unity is a sign of the divine origin of the church because it is a sign that Jesus was sent from the Father.  Christian unity thus has a crucial function for evangelization, giving plausibility to Christian claims about Christ. Division and lack of love among Christians makes it impossible to accept their testimony about Christ. Thus the mutually “abiding” in love of the Father, the Son, and the church is a witness to the truth, and so a firm foundation for belief and faith.

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