Sixth Sunday of Easter
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Readings: Ezekiel 37: 1-14 and John 14: 23-29
In today’s collect we ask “Grant, that as by Jesus’ death he has recalled us to life, so by his continual presence with us he may raise us to eternal joy.”
From the prophecy of Ezekiel, we have the famous vision of the raising of dry bones. Now Ezekiel lived in the black-hole experience of exile in Babylon, following the Fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC. Exile did not just mean loss of national identity, but it provoked a crisis of faith. Where was the Lord now? What Ezekiel had been hearing from the people all around him was a despair like death. “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost,” they moan. They were incapable of change or growth because they did not believe in the possibility of life.
And God agreed with them. They were lifeless, and spiritless, with no home except the shadowy grave. So God takes Ezekiel to the valley full of bones, and makes him prophesy. It’s a vivid picture – the bones collecting themselves, taking on flesh and beginning to be alive again, invigorated by ‘ruach’ in the Hebrew, if I’ve pronounced it correctly : God’s wind, breath, Spirit. I was reminded of the dramatic painting by Stanley Spencer of the Resurrection; people coming out of their graves in his home village of Cookham.
This life did not come from the bones themselves, but from God. And the same was true for the people of Israel. They had lost the ability to live, but God was going to give them his own breath, so that the life they lived would be God’s life. Their total absence of life and hope was to be remedied by God’s gift of his own presence, which is life.
Jesus is talking about absence and presence in the Gospel reading. After Easter, the disciples were overjoyed to have Jesus with them. But that couldn’t go on for ever. The gospel prepares us for Ascension Day, which would mark the end of Jesus’ physical presence with his disciples. “I am going away” he says “and I am coming to you.” It seems contradictory, but a message of Ascension and Pentecost is that Jesus’ spiritual presence with his disciples is just as powerful, maybe more powerful, than his actual bodily presence.
Today’s reading actually starts off as an answer to a question put earlier in the chapter by Judas, not Iscariot. “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?” That was the question, but Jesus appears to by-pass it, speaking instead of the love that is to reign in the Christian community. He speaks, too, of the peace which he will leave as he departs from his disciples. Now in John’s gospel there is no account of the Ascension, so the ‘going away’ that Jesus speaks of is the separation caused by the crucifixion and resurrection. And yet it will not be separation, because the Holy Spirit, also referred to as the ‘Advocate’, will bestow Jesus’ presence on them in a different, but eternal way.
The Spirit, Jesus promises, will ‘teach you everything, and remind you of all I have said to you.’ Now many times in the gospels, the disciples seem to misunderstand Jesus’ teaching. Romano Guardini, an influential Catholic priest-thinker of the mid-20th century, in his book ‘The Lord’ suspects that the disciples’ misunderstandings were not so much to do with the difficulties of Jesus’ teaching, but because of “the faultiness of their relationship to him ; they did not really believe.”
They only really come to believe after they have witnessed the crucifixion and resurrection, and have been drawn into that victory by the Holy Spirit. Romano Guardini says that ‘One does not believe from a distance. One cannot consider Christ and his teachings and decide to join forces with him and cross over to him. He must come and fetch us.”
I recall a retired hospital chaplain saying that he’d given many talks and seminars and much advice on bereavement, but it wasn’t until his wife died that he really knew what bereavement was and felt in any way qualified to talk about it. In our increasingly automated and impersonal world, I fear many people know about lots of things and are maybe proficient in much, but are spiritually barren, isolated and empty, aware only of their own needs and unable to recognise the reality of other people. Jesus shows us that our neediness cannot be met by grasping at what we think will satisfy us. We should turn away from ourselves and to the love that already embraces us.
John chapter 14 is part of the discourse Jesus has immediately before the Last Supper. So at the point at which he faces utter exclusion and rejection, he assures us that the divine persons – he speaks in the first person plural – make their home with those who believe. And he promises ‘peace’ – not a peace that the world would understand, but the peace of assurance that God comes to be at home with, and even in, those who love God and keep his word.
David Adam likens the indwelling of Christ’s peace to the effect of a gyroscope on a ship. I wouldn’t begin to understand how a gyroscope works, and even when I read a simple explanation my non-scientific mind didn’t benefit much. It is described as a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of rotation is free to assume any orientation by itself. If you get all that, I’m impressed. But certainly the introduction of this device revolutionised travel by sea. People were completely at the mercy of the wind and waves, but now the gyroscope maintains the balance of the ship. David Adam asks, ‘We have been offered the power of peace and calm in our lives through the presence of Christ. Do we accept this offer or neglect it at our peril?’
So these readings, in different ways, encourage us to recognise God’s power working within us and through us, and in that power, to make him known to others. When we do this, we find that God is already there, ready to prosper all good work done in his name.