5th Sunday after Easter 18th May 2014
Sung Eucharist in The Parish Church of St. James, Louth
This morning’s Gospel reading – something of the unknowability of God.
The fact that the full depth of the reality of the God who creates and sustains all that is, is beyond our understanding.
God the Father – who brought into being life itself, who sustains that life and longs for the fulfilment of creation in love – is something that we will forever struggle to understand.
This is reflected in the responses of the disciples – of Thomas and Philip – who, when confronted by Jesus’ statement that they will come to know God fully (indeed already do know God fully), react in disbelief.
But the point of this Gospel reading is not to send us into a circle of depression – that we know there is a God, but a God that we will never know and never understand. The point of this passage is that – in human terms at least – we already know God. We have seen the true nature of God revealed fully in Jesus of Nazareth. In human terms we can see the reality of a God who is love – for this reality is revealed in the teaching of Jesus, in his life, and in his death.
So it is that we find God revealed as absolute love – the God who created all that is (heaven and earth) longs for it to be fulfilled in his image – in the image of perfect love. This love is a love that knows no bounds, it is a love that gives absolutely of itself, it is a love that we are called to seek and imitate in our lives as we play our part (with those disciples) in God’s purposes for us – and for his world.
So we have a God who brought into being all that is, who longs for its perfection – a God who is (in fullness) beyond our knowing.
But this God is revealed to us in fully human terms in Jesus, the Christ, and we are called to follow him.
But the message of this reading doesn’t end there – for as well as making clear that God is revealed fully to his disciples by the life he led, by all he taught, and by the example of God’s love he revealed on the Cross and in the empty tomb – Jesus goes on to say that that work of revealing God’s love continues.
It continues not in some removed way – not by some distant God – not even in some time far away. God’s love is revealed by each of us. Jesus calls us, with Thomas and Philip (and all the apostles), to not only follow him but ‘do works greater than those he has done’.
This is no mean challenge – but a challenge that lays before each of us. We are to let that love that is God, that love revealed to us in Christ echo in our own hearts. We are to let it shape our own lives. We are to do no less that bring about the transformation of God’s world so that it fulfils his purpose of complete love.
But we are not alone in this task – we travel as fellow disciples – we can learn from each other, we can share our joys and hold each other in our sorrows. We can recall together the teaching of Christ that reveals God’s love to us and we can share together in the memory of that love that was revealed in the very life of Christ as we follow his command to gather in fellowship and share in bread and wine. But we are also not alone in a broader sense – that God is with us, and if we open ourselves to his presence we are touched by his very self – the Holy Spirit that we will remember in a few weeks time.
But here perhaps is the greatest challenge – not to know God fully, not to see his love revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, not even to share with each other the joys and challenges of following Christ in today’s world. But to open our hearts to God and let ourselves be shaped fully by his call on our lives, a call that (like Stephen in our first reading) may take to uncomfortable places, but a call that if we answer it will take us to the very love that is God.