EASTER 5 2014

18^th May 2014

“The Father is in me”

Readings: 

1 Peter 2: 2-10 - out of darkness into his marvellous light

John 14: 1-14 - I am the Way...

I love Thomas, because he gets to be the fall guy, if you like, our fall guy, and he asks all the awkward questions we would maybe have asked if we’d been there, and maybe the questions we still ask now. So Thomas will be the one who says: Unless I see the prints of the nails I will not believe (subtext, what kind of credulous person do you think I am?) And now, Jesus utters these wonderful, moving, comforting words – I go to prepare a place for you and you know the place where I am going. Only up pops Thomas, and maybe coughs gently and says: actually Lord, no we don’t.

And as in that upper room where Thomas will get his answer, his evidence, and not just for him but for all of us who come after him with all our doubts, so now, Jesus’ answer isn’t just for him. It’s a bit of a Gospel set-up, because he’s asking the question that needs to be asked. And he gets an answer that Thomas and any of us, all of us, have to go on working with and living with for the rest of our lives: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. If you know me you know the Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.

What a claim! But it’s almost so enormous that Philip doesn’t get it. So here he plays almost tag team partner with Thomas because now it’s his turn to ask something: Lord, show us the Father (clearly what Jesus has just said has sailed right over his head) and we will be satisfied. And you can almost sense the sigh in Jesus as he replies: Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and still you don’t know me?

I find this breathtaking. It’s almost as if God himself breathes these words through Jesus in this moment. The union of Father and Son couldn’t be any closer. Do you still not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. The world should stop in its tracks at such a claim. Creation should hold its breath, because this Jesus is either, like someone said of Lord Byron, mad, bad and dangerous to know, or he is who and what he says he is. But Jesus then goes on to make further stupendous claims. The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Here it is again: The Father is in me, the Father is in me... It’s a wonder the disciples remain on their feet.

Jesus says: These words, these works are the Father living in me. Believe because the Father is in me and I in him; or if that’s too difficult for you yet, believe because of the works – my works which are the Father’s works. Believe because of my words and my works. The words of love, the words of challenge, the words calling us into life, the words of promise; the works of healing, the works of mercy and forgiveness, the works of facing up to evil, unmasking it, calling it by its real name, letting it do its worst on the Cross, then conquering it once and for all – because, he says, I go to prepare a place for you, and I can be trusted and I know, because the Father is in me and I in the Father and I came from him and I will go back to him to be with him for ever and to pray for you.

It should take our breath away. But a bigger miracle even than that is on offer here. Because Jesus says the life of God is going to breathe in us and through us just as it did and does through him. We are a God-bearers. Yes, earthen vessels, clay pots, as Paul would say, to contain such a treasure, but that’s what’s on offer. You will do greater works than these because I am going to the Father, and I will send the Spirit to blow through your life whether you’re old or young, rich or poor, whoever, whatever you are. So get ready to be filled with the life of God.

Because God is at home in you. You can be at home in God. No special arrangements needed. No frantic tidying up in case he catches you out somehow. It should be like breathing out and breathing in. God is in you, by creation – Lord, before you formed me in the womb you knew me, says the psalmist. And he’s in us by baptism, marked as Christ’s own for ever: cleansed, refreshed, revived by living water.

This is why he is for us the cornerstone of our lives, chosen, precious. He knows the sufferings of your very flesh, the detail of every single thing that makes you unhappy or keeps you awake at night, takes it to the Cross, then transmutes it into risen life to show us the Way. That’s new life for all the children of God, new life beyond all that we suffer now. But not only that, new life even now, because he lives in us, constantly calling us into life – even on those days when you’d rather stick your head back under the covers. So this is a cornerstone not to reject, but to cling to. St Augustine says: Lord, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. If he is our Way, if he’s the Way we walk in, step by step – even when we fall and have to get up again – then our hope will be renewed time and again, day after day.

This is the God to whom we’re precious enough for him to make his home in the very deepest places of your heart. That’s what it means to be called out of darkness into his marvellous light.