Just as, just so

4^th Week of Easter (M): Acts 11.1-8 and John 10.11-18
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

One of the most striking features of John’s gospel is Jesus’ dogged repetition of what I have come to think of as his “Just As” teaching. In one form or another, Jesus repeats for us the phrase “just as the Father loves me and I love the Father, I love mine and mine love me.” We can replace “love” here with “know” or “sent”—“just as the Father knows me/sent me”—and we still get a clear picture of the correlation between our relation with Christ and Christ’s relation with the Father. Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the father knows me and I know the Father…” Just as, just so: how does the Father know his Son? And given that answer: how does the Son know us?

Luke reports in Acts that Peter is confronted by “circumcised believers” who chastise him for eating with the Gentiles. Peter defends himself by telling them how he was given a vision of the “four-legged animals of the earth” and heard a voice telling him that these animals were now clean to eat. He reports that over his objections to this revelation, a voice said to him: “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.” This vision, though obviously about the kosher laws, has a much broader application. Peter is called to a household recently visited by an angel. The angel promised that if the members of the household summon Peter, the words he speaks to them will save them all. The Holy Spirit came upon Peter and he has another revelation: God’s flock has expanded beyond the Jews. Those with Peter conclude: “God has then granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles too.” Peter must have heard ringing in his head the words from the previous vision: “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.”

We are lead back to the original questions: how does the Father know his Son? And given that answer: how does the Son know us? We know that the Father knows His Son because the Son himself tells us that he, the Son, and the Father are one. When we see the Son, we see the Father. Two persons: Father and Son; one nature: divine. The Son knows us through the Holy Spirit, who is one with the Father and the Son. Also, a person; also divine. But how do we know this trinity of divine persons, this One God? We look at our Shepherd, the Christ. Just as the Son knows his Father because they are one, so we know the Christ and the Father “in the Spirit.” We are not divine, of course, but we are made clean, made holy by the Christ and his sacrifice for us. The fifth Easter preface says it plainly: Christ is the priest, the altar, and the lamb of sacrifice. Our Shepherd became a sheep and died for us so that we might know the Father just as he knows the Father.

Peter heard the voice from heaven says, “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane” and thus the Way is open for all of the Father’s two-legged creatures—Jew and Gentile—to come to Him perfectly clean. And we must hear this clearly so as to avoid appointing blame where it does not belong: Jesus says, “…I will lay down my life for the sheep…This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own.” When our Lord took up his life again on Easter morning, he took us with him; and now, we are His sheep saved from the slaughter, fiercely loved by Love Himself; just as He loves His Son, just so are we too loved.