NewCreation

Homily for Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year C

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the sixth Sunday in Easter. Before we start today, slightly differently from usual, a little logistics announcement. I'm afraid to say that on Monday last my noble sturdy MacBook Pro of four and a half years died suddenly on me. It is even now in the hands of Mac tech magicians to see whether they can resuscitate it, so I should hear about that within a couple of weeks. But meanwhile I'm attempting to keep this going on my iPad, and one of the things about the iPad which is wonderful is that the software that I use to make these videos — the iPad version — has much fewer bells and whistles, filters, ways of editing things than the computer version has. So I'm afraid there will be a probably notable decrease in my already low quality production values, at least for the next couple of weeks, which is the time estimated by Mac to let me know whether my machine is rescuable and to get it back to me. So having said that, thank you for that, just to explain in advance why you may notice alterations of quality. Today's gospel is from John 14. One of the things about today's gospel is that it's our last Sunday before the Ascension, so we're moving towards Jesus' saying goodbye. And this is his farewell speech. It's modelled to some extent on Moses' farewell speech. There are apparently lots of resonances between this and Moses' farewell speech in Deuteronomy. But here, Jesus' farewell speech teaches us some very important things for the future and takes us actually back to the days after Easter when Jesus first appeared to the disciples. So I want to — as with John, we're always dwelling in the same reality which is revealing itself in our midst in different times. It's like a sort of a spiral. We suddenly go back to the same place, and you'll see that in today's gospel. So our passage doesn't give us a key element that makes it comprehensible, I'm afraid, which is that immediately before our passage — the verse before our passage — has one of Jesus's disciples, Judas but not Judas Iscariot, saying to him, "Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?" And it's that question that Jesus is answering when he says, "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them." So that's rather odd, because the question is, "How is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?" — and the Greek is "to us" — but Jesus's answer is not "I will reveal myself to you" but "I will reveal myself in you. Effectively, you will have become me. You'll know it, and you will be living my life. It will be within you. Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them." This can be read in a moralistic way, as if he's saying if you love me, then you will do this, and then my Father will come. But I really don't think that's — I mean, the Greek word for "if" can also mean "as," and I think that it's in this demonstrative sense that Jesus is saying this is what's going to happen. In the process of loving me, you will find yourself keeping my word. That's what loving me looks like: keeping my word. And at the same time, you'll find that my Father will love you, and we will come to you and make our home with you. In other words, Jesus will be revealing himself in us as we go through the process of hearing his word, allowing ourselves to be inhabited, indwelt by the relationship between him and the Father. He's of course preparing us for the giving of the Holy Spirit. And that, I think, is a very important point. He's talking about a process of indwelling. One of the things that has been going along in John's Gospel, as in all the others, is are being taken out of top-down God, big outside God, and into sideways and within God. And here this is displaying: yep, you will become a dwelling. The Father and I will dwell in you. It's as your relationship is changed with others around you, you will be loving me, you will be becoming like me in terms of self-giving towards others. Your relationship with others is changed, and that's the sign that my Father and I are dwelling within you. Instead of there being a "they" who is outside you, who is a wicked and frightening "they" who is trying to control you, and an "I" who is a cowering individualist "I" who is frightened and constantly in a tug of war — on the contrary, the Father, who is pure generosity and love, will be turning your "I," who is Jesus, into a receiver of grace and one capable of giving themselves away. That's what this is going to look like. And this is a process, and in that, Jesus will be revealing himself in us. So he's answering Judas — not the Iscariot's — question in a really quite particular way, which is hugely important for any of us to understand. This is the shape of what it's going to look like to know Jesus, to be known by Jesus, to find ourselves becoming Christ. He then says, for the reverse: "Whoever does not love me does not keep my words." In other words, they won't recognise me. They're not interested in me. They're not going to look for the sort of person who is giving themselves away as I am. It's simply not going to be. I will not be visible to them. They will not be able to see me, because I will not be in them. They do not want me in them. And he says: "But the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me." In other words, the act of communication that we are becoming part of is something which is being produced in us by the Father. We're all being held in something much bigger than ourselves as we learn this process. So we don't need to be frightened of the people who don't want to recognise him, don't pay any attention to him, because someone much, much bigger than us — the Creator — is holding all this. In me there is a strange and apparently invisible safety in our being held. "I've said these things to you while I'm still with you, but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you." Now why is this important? The Advocate, the Holy Spirit — this is the word which means the defense counselor. It could be the great angel, the one who goes before you. It's the one that is hinted at in the Hebrew scriptures as the one going before you, the angel going before you, the great angel. It appears in Deuteronomy as the prophet who will come after Moses, who will go before you. So this is that one. But the language of advocate goes back to the Hebrew goel, which was the defender, the redeemer, the one who is in the old Hebrew world. In the old Hebrew world, if there was some sort of legal dispute or rive, it would happen at the gates of the city, and whoever was, as it were, being tried without a case to plead would plead it in the presence of a defender and an accuser — not very different from ours. We have a defense counsel and we have a prosecuting counsel; that's where these things come from. But the defense counsel in those days was called goel, or redeemer, and the prosecuting counsel was called a satan, or an accuser, from which we get Satan. It's why in the Christian understanding the accuser of the brethren has been thrown down. That's from the Book of Revelation: there is now no longer the accuser; he has no power. The defense – the Spirit – is that a defense: it loves us whatever we may have done, and is trying to bring us into being, to enable us to enter the new creation. So the Holy Spirit, the advocate whom the Father will send in my name – in my person – in fact he's saying that all the things that I have done, the whole dynamic of what I've been doing, is going to be made available to you. The whole dynamic of my life, my intelligence, what I have been doing is going to be made available, so that it will be able to become your dynamic, your intelligence. You will be able to be me because of this in-between, this love in-between the Father and me, that is going to come into your midst. And it will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you. So this dynamic is actually going to open things up in a way that's even greater than what Jesus said. And it's one of the things he's told them in his farewell discourse: that because I go to the Father, you will do greater things than I. This is because Jesus has gone to the Father, has entered the place of death, having conquered – if you like, conquered it from within – so as to remove its sting from running us, and having demonstrated to us how the voice of the victim is the one that tells the truth, and that we are able to learn from that, and we needn't be frightened of enemies and oppression. So, having taught us all that, that dynamic is going to be made alive and kept alive in our midst for always. "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you." Now, interesting here is exactly what he says when he comes back on the morning of Easter. And the next few verses really are like a run-through of his discussion with the disciples, and then with Thomas, on that Easter. Because he talks about "my peace I leave you" – so my farewell to you is peace – "my peace I give to you; I do not give you as the world gives." The world makes peace by throwing somebody out, but I'm the one who has already been thrown out, and I did it deliberately for you, so that you don't need to be worried about those things anymore. "Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid." You heard me say to you, "I'm going away and I'm coming to you." And I suspect that we normally hear that in a chronological sense: first he's going away, and then he's coming to us. I think that with John it's even more stunning than that. I think it's simultaneous. My going away is my coming. I think that in the resurrection appearance, the fact that he says "Peace be with you" at the beginning, and then shows himself, shows the arms, shows the scars in his hands and his side – And then says "Peace with you" again — it's indicating that this is both his going and his coming. As it were, God is known in his being expelled; that's what it looks like in our world to be God. But it's known in a loving occupying of that space. And then he says, as if answering Thomas, "If you loved me you would rejoice that I'm going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I." In other words, "I'm saying goodbye to you, but I'm doing something on your behalf by going to the Father, so that the Father can give you all this, and you will be me. You don't need me to be me. You can be me. You will have direct access to the Father. I will have made it possible for you to be sons and daughters of God." In other words, while I'm with you, there's still some room for rivalry. When I'm gone, there's absolutely no way for rivalry at all. I can give you absolutely everything. So don't be sorry that I've gone. Rejoice, because everything of mine will in fact already be given you, and more besides, because the Father is greater than I. The Father can give this to you by the hundreds and thousands and millions over time, which is what we are living in and celebrating. "And now I've told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe." Why am I doing all this? So as to open up the possibility that you can believe. Believe all that I have told you is true. That you needn't be scandalized by anything that happens. You can trust being taken into an entirely new creation. The sort of thing that we couldn't understand at the time. And we still keep on making discoveries. Things that would be too frightening in a sacred world. In a closed down, sacrificial world. All these things can begin to be opened up. And that is where our Gospel leaves us, just before next Sunday and the Ascension. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.