6 Easter C May 22, 2022
Acts 14:8-18 Ps. 67
Rev. 21:22-22:5 John 14:23-29
The Gospel of John in many ways is the persuasive writing of the Johannine church, more than fifty years after Jesus. The writer is part of a community who believe themselves to be able to write in first person, words of Jesus with the following contradiction: My real absence is also my real presence.
From the doubting Thomas story to the promotion of Gospel writing as a means of coming to belief, the Gospel of John is about the reality of a different kind of presence than the physical body of Jesus in history; it is about the Real Presence of the Risen, Ascended, glorified Christ in the lives of people who want to realize it. The Real Presence of the Risen Christ is a different sort of presence than Jesus in his physical body. It happens because the Holy Spirit who was in Jesus is also the Holy Spirit who is in us. It is the Holy Spirit who makes the Christ Nature evident in us.
And if we call earth our home because it is where we live and have our roots, we could also call the earth, God's home, and God's body because the traces of the maker reside in all of what has come to be.
You and I know that home can used in a general sense, as in the earth and the universe as our home, but it can also be used in the very particular sense, namely the very personal places where we live. I think that most everyone who is happy, is so, because they can say that their home is a favorite place. What makes a home special? A place to sleep. A place of privacy. A place of comfort. A place to serve food. A safe place with people who tolerate one's habits.
The amazing thing about the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John, is the assertion that God, our heavenly parent wants to make a home in us. God's most specific home within the general home of the universe is within human people, who we believe to most distinctly bear the image of God because we, following Christ the eternal Word, bear on our lives the ability of language which is the essence of relationship, communication, and the differential labeling of everything in creation.
The words of Jesus indicated to us that God considers us to be divine dwelling places, homes for the divine presence. And how are we to know the divine dwelling? By the Holy Spirit. The same inner essence of the life of Jesus, is to be the essence of our inner lives. And what is the result? The result is the experience of peace, which casts out fear and relieves the troubled heart.
Each of us more than anything probably wants our homes to be peaceful. And what makes our homes peaceful? When each person realizes the peaceful interior life of the Risen Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.
And this is how the real absence of the historical Jesus can be known as the real presence of the Risen Christ within us. We are the tabernacle of the abiding presence of God if we can be persuaded to understand our lives in this way. The receptacle for holding the consecrated bread is called a tabernacle. It symbolizes the dwelling of the Risen Christ being made known under the special consecrated bread, but also symbolizing that each human being is made to be a tabernacle for the presence of Christ, signifying that God has made us as a home for the divine presence.
And if we can live this way, we can live the life of blessing as is expressed in our appointed Psalm. We can be those who offer the saving health of God to all people.
Lydia, who came to understand that God resided in her life, wanted Paul to stay at her home. The Gospel is a message which makes people want to practice hospitality and be at home with each other.
The Gospel is also the perpetual vision of futurism, as is seen in the writing of John the Divine. We always need a vision of a perfect city, a place where people live together well. We always need water, fruit, and healing. To know the homing of God within our lives is to be able to live from the perpetual vision of futurism of the better life of peace, healing, the sustenance of quenched thirst and well-fed souls with fruit from the tree of life.
Today, let us accept the Gospel of God making a home in us. And let us go forth to share the good news that God wants everyone to know that they can know themselves to be a dwelling place of God. Amen.
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