NKCC

Fifth Sunday of Easter

Reading I – Acts 14:21-27

Reading II – Revelation 21:1-5a

Gospel – John 13:31-33a, 34-35

Transformation -  When we clean, repair, or otherwise restore things in our possession, we often say “good as new” or “just like new.”  This, according to the Book of Revelation, is what happens to anything that is filled with the glory of Christ.  When Scripture uses the word “new” it doesn’t merely mean “a different one, a replacement” (as our advertisements do), but it carries the sense of something being transformed so fully and completely that it is now almost unrecognizable.  Our world is filled with tears, death, pain, thirst, darkness; but the new world—the new heavens and new earth brought about by Christ’s resurrection—is filled with joy, everlasting life, glory, living water, and light.

As Paul noted in his Second Letter to the Church at Corinth, if we are in Christ, then we are a new creation.  And disciples who are a new creation, who live in the new heaven and earth brought about by Christ, are also daily practitioners of a new commandment:  to love one another with that transforming, re-new-ing love that Christ bestowed on us.  - Copyright, J.S. Paluch Co.