Welcome back … welcome home…A reflection for Easter 7
Have you ever wondered what the homes were like in Jesus’ time?
We are often told that people went to each others’ home but we are not told about the corner spa, the wall paper or the front fence.
For example
Jesus heals Peter’s Mother in law at Peter’s house.
Or perhaps a little more on the up market side of town.
Matthews house when Jesus goes to the dinner party.
Did it in fact have 3 bedrooms, flushing loo, extensive manicured garden, swimming pool and room for a pony?
And there was the upper room of a house where the Eucharist was given to us.
I’m beginning this inspection of real estate because today’s gospel is all about where you live. In fact if you had to reduce today’s gospel today down to just a couple of pertinent words on the self cleaning oven in the shiny newly renovated Masterchef kitchen you would probably be left with two words
Indwelling and unity.
When you read today’s gospel carefully you begin to understand an awesome, terrifying and boggling truth.
That the closeness and the love that Jesus has and enjoys with his Father is the very same closeness and love that you and I are called to have and to enjoy with God.
Furthermore, it is the very same closeness and love we are called to have with our brothers and sisters. Now when it happens it is marvellous and exhilarating.
But… when we fail to have that unity, or we fail to show it to the world, then we let our brothers and sisters down, we let God down,
and most painfully of all we let ourselves down
For John nothing was more important than this unity, this indwelling business. He is writing against the backdrop of the internal divisions within the Church and he is writing about the persecution on the church from without.
So you and I, must live the same unity that Jesus and his Father have.
That sets the bar dizzyingly high and there have been times when we have blundered, fizzled and fallen over well before we even got to the bar. When this has happened our community is quite right to call us out.
A long time ago we might well have thought of those who happened to grow up in another denomination as pesky Presbyterians or those revelling Roman catholics.
I wonder might happen if we began to think of them as our separated brothers and sisters… or if we are very courageous, thought of ourselves as the separated ones. Wouldn’t that turn things on their head and what would it call us to do?
The work of reconciliation begins with us and it does not begin by trying to sort out our theological niceties and academic intricacies. Rather it begins by building relationships, getting to know each other and discovering with joy that there are things we can easily agree on. Then we begin the very important and vital work to discover how to support and encourage each other along the road.
Jesus prays today’s gospel reading just before he is arrested and taken away. He is about to break free from the constraints of time and space as we know them and he is about to embrace eternity and heaven.
When we know that unity with God, with our brothers and sisters and within ourselves, then we are truly indwelling with each other and God. Then we too break free from time, space, sin and disappointment. When we accomplish this very special type of unity and indwelling, we too will have already begun to embrace eternity and every part of us will be infused and bursting with divinity.
Jesus put it this way.
Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am.
So where are you? So where do you live? A street number, an avenue, a town, an RMB number. A house with four walls, loo, shower, kitchen and room for a pony?
Where do you live? Where is your true home?
The one you don’t ever have to leave. The one where you are most comfortable. The one where you can kick off your shoes, reach for a beverage and the remote.
Where is the place where you are most authentically yourself? The person you have always been and the person you are called to be.
The holiest and loveliest people are those who are relaxed and comfy in themselves. They already know they are at home with God. There is nothing to prove, or fight for, or get grumpy about. They are home and they are just them.
So where do you live? Where do you ‘indwell’?
Indwelling is a relational thing. It is living in relationship. It is not and can not, be confined to any one place, any one time, any one person. Indwelling is for all places and all time, for there is no place and no time where God is not.
We are so easily distracted, that it just took us a little while to catch up and catch on to this simple but profound and lovely truth.
We make our home in Him, because He has already made his home in us.
So we say to Him and we say to the person in the mirror.
Oh.. it’s you!
Welcome back… welcome home.