6th Easter
John 14: 1-31
“Let
not your hearts be troubled. Trust in the power that leads you to the Fatherly
Ground of the World and to me. In my Father’s house there are many rooms. If it
were not so, how could I have said to you, ‘I go there to prepare a place for
you’? And when I have gone and prepared
a place for you, I will come again and take you up into the realm of my being
and working, so that where I work, you also may work. And you know the way
where I am going.”
Then Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How
can we know the way?”
Jesus answered, “I myself am the Way—the Truth— and the Life. No one
finds his way to the Father but through me. If you had really known my Being,
you would have recognized my Father as well. From now on you do know him and
have seen Him.”
Then Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father; that would satisfy
our deepest yearning.”
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long and yet you do not know
me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us
the Father’? Does your heart’s voice not tell you that I am in the Father and
the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. But the
Father, who lives eternally in me, continues to do his works in them. Build
your faith on the power of my Being that lets you know: I in the Father, the
Father in me. Or at least learn to trust through looking at the works
themselves that have arisen.
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| Ascension, Sombart |
I will not leave you desolate—I will come to you. Yet a little while,
and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live,
you will live also. On that day you will truly know what it means that I am in
the Father, and you in me, and I in you.
Whoever bears my spiritual goals within himself, and brings them to
revelation in his working, is one who truly loves me. And whoever truly loves
me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal myself to
him.”
Then Judas, (not the Iscariot) said, “But Lord, how is it that you will
reveal yourself to us and not to the people who are in the world?
Jesus
replied, “Whoever truly loves me reveals my Spirit, and my Father will love him
and we will come to him and prepare with him a dwelling in the everlasting [an
eternal dwelling]. Whoever does not love me cannot reveal my Spirit. And the
spirit power of the word that you hear is not from me; it is the speaking of
the Father who sent me.
These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the
health-bringing Spirit, the Counselor whom the Father will send in my name, he
will teach you everything and will bring to your remembrance all that I have
said to you.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I
give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled nor let them be afraid.
You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you’.
If you loved me you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for
the Father is greater than I am.
I have told you now, before it happens, so that when it happens you may
find trust. I no longer have much to say to you, for soon the ruler of this
world is coming. He has no power over me.
But I act in accordance with the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted
to me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Do the same. Arise,
let us be on our way.
6th
Easter Sunday
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| Cedar Pollen, Japan |
John
14: 1-31
This
is the time when the pollen begins to rise from its home in the blossom. Great
clouds of it float high into the air, to be kissed by the life energy that
streams down from the sun. It returns to earth gravid with new life.
We
are days away from Ascension, when Christ expands His being again out into the
cosmos. And in the Gospel reading He tries to prepare His disciples for a
leave-taking, for His going, as He calls it, to the Father. He goes, He says, to
prepare a place where each of us can live with Him and with our Father. He
promises not to leave us orphaned. For just as the pollen returns to earth full
of new life, so does Christ’s working return shortly to earth, in the form of
an enlivened Spirit, an inner Counselor of Truth who will always be with us.
Perhaps
the room for each of us in the Father’s house is not just in some distant
heaven, to be occupied after our death. Perhaps the Father’s house is also the
temple of the human body. Perhaps the room in the Father’s house, prepared by
the Father and the Son, is the interior of the human heart. In this heart space
there is room inside for many, for family, for friends and strangers – possibly
even for the infinite.
In
the Sunday Service for the Children, we hear: Christ died; He becomes alive
again within those who give Him a dwelling in their hearts.
He
becomes alive in those who give Him a
dwelling place in their hearts. The
interior of the heart becomes the room in the Father’s house through Christ’s
indwelling. For His Spirit has returned to earth, gravid with New Life. His
Spirit can live in infinity of the open heart space, now, and into all the
future.
The
poet Rumi says:
Wherever Jesus lives,
the great hearted gather.
We are a door that is
never locked.[1]
The
hearts in which He dwells are generous, magnanimous, open. It is through His
indwelling that He prepares rooms for us in the realm of His being and working.
Such open hearts become the Door through which He enters and works on, out into
the world.
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