5-18-25- 5th Sunday of Easter
One day, when a beggar in shabby clothes entered a very popular bakery, all the customers around held their noses with contempt. Nevertheless, the bakery operator still welcomed this beggar warmly. The beggar took out coins from his pocket carefully and whispered to the operator that he wanted to buy a small cake. The operator then picked a small but cute cake from the shelf for the beggar and bowed to the beggar to thank him for his patronage. After the beggar left, the operator’s grandson was perplexed as to why his grandpa had treated the beggar so nicely. So, he asked him about his behavior. The grandpa said: “His money is what he begged from others little by little, day by day, and was as such more precious than the money others have. And his patronage means, he genuinely loves our cakes.” The grandson continued: “Then why did you accept his money if he had so little to spare?” The grandpa said: “He came to our shop to buy the cake; we should respect him. If we did not charge him for the cake, it would be an insult to him.” After that, this bakery became increasingly popular. Before the operator retired, the bakery had become a well-known enterprise, simply because of the way it respected everyone who entered its doors.1 This story is about treating people equally and reminds us of the need to respect others. If we want to learn how to love others, especially those who are different from us, then we first need to learn how to respect one another in our friendships, in our family, and in our neighborhoods. Also. this call for respect also must extend to all of God’s creation, the land, the water, the fields, and the forests. For when we disrespect any part of that creation, we are disrespecting God. Our first reading today and for some of the weeks following, talks much about the explorations of the early disciples, especially Paul and Barnabas’ journeys, to reach out to foreigners, what he calls the “gentiles,” and to offer them salvation and to tell them that Jesus' redemption of mankind is for them also. For these first century Jews, Paul, and Barnabas, to have anything to do with non-Jews was unheard of. Such relationships, in fact, were considered, in some respects, to make the Jewish person who reached out to a non-Jew in such way, as unclean and defiled. Constantly throughout the gospels we hear of accounts where treatment or relationship with foreigners was frowned on, even by some of Jesus’ disciples. Remember the Samaritan woman at the well- “The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink? For Jews have nothing in common with Samaritans”) (John4:9). Or, the woman who was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, who kept chasing Jesus to heal her daughter and how the disciples and even Jesus seemed to not to want to have nothing to do with her. (Mark 7:24-30). Such was the attitude and the world that Jesus entered when he came among us. In the gospel Jesus tells us, through his first followers, that we are to “love one another.” And only in that way will we be known as his true believers, and true followers of Jesus. In this commandment, he invites his followers to have respect for all peoples no matter the status of where they came from, who they came from, no matter if they are poor, rich, drug- users, or a saint. Each person is incredibly special to God, and therefore to Jesus. That is the message we were sent to bring. But sometimes we must learn how to respect others, for who they truly are, before we can eventually love them as Jesus has asked of us. Even our responsorial psalm this weekend echoes that truth when it says: “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. The Lord is good to all and compassionate toward all his works” For from the beginning of creation, as God made each of his pieces of creation, the land, the water, the field and forests, the animals and insects, the man and the woman- each God pronounced as Good after He created them. in the book of Numbers, we read how a non-Jewish prophet, Balak, is asked by the Moab King to curse the Israelites, but responds, “How can I lay a curse on the one whom God has not cursed? How denounce the one whom the LORD has not denounced? (Numbers 23:8). How true is this statement for us as followers of Jesus' today? In the second reading John sees through the book of revelation, a new Jerusalem, a new Kingdom of God. A kingdom in which God will dwell with all humankind, and all will be His people, and they will recognize that God is their God. That is the message Paul and Barnabas carried to the gentiles and the Jews, that God, through Jesus was now dwelling among them and that they were God’s people, and God was their God too. A new message for all to hear. Good news for the world to understand. And while the world has yet to understand it fully, it is same message we as followers of Jesus are sent to bring. The sharing of that message has not changed. This is the call, the mission that Jesus left to us, to love one another, to respect and value one another because each of us was made “good” by virtue of being created by God. That does not mean that any one of us has not made, at times, bad choices in terms of our behavior. But that intrinsically, in the very core of our being, we are “good” because God said so. Such a message when lived our and conveyed to our world is truly Good News. And we convey such a message whenever and wherever we respect what God has created. Our mission once we have accepted this commandment of Jesus, to love one another, is to call all creation to realize its goodness by the way we treat it. For it is a goodness that is intrinsic in its being because God made them such and because Christ redeemed us, to repossess that goodness and to live as such with each other.
