God Lives In You

6th Sunday of Easter

Today's Readings: Acts 17:22-31; John 14:15-21

Grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This morning we hear from the book of Acts about the time the Apostle Paul visited the great, ancient philosophers of Athens, Greece. He was disturbed by all of the gods, shrines, and idols he found there, but then he came across a shrine labeled: “To an unknown god.” Then Paul proceeded to explain to them just who this ‘unknown God’ is - well the God who created heaven and earth and all that exists, of course! The God who cannot be contained in a neat and tidy little box, the God who does not live in shrines we build, but is the one who lives IN us. This is the God ‘in whom we live and move and have our being!’ The God who created us and calls us family. (Acts 17:28)

We are God’s offspring and in our gospel reading we hear Jesus, God in the flesh, say to us, “I will not leave you orphaned.” (John 14:18) Jesus reassures the disciples and us today that he will never leave us, for he forever abides with us and IN us. Furthermore, although he is physically leaving us, he is leaving the Holy Spirit, so that we can truly rest assured that we are never alone.

But as I’m constantly asking my confirmation kids.. what does this mean? Why does it matter? What difference does it make that God has given us the Spirit or that in God we live and move and have our being? I think that part of being a human is to question ‘Who am I and what is my purpose/what am I doing here?’ This statement, that the God who created you, lives in you and works in and through you, is where we as Christians find our identity. In God we have our being. We cannot exist apart from God. Being a child of God IS our identity; the very essence of who we are, the core of our humanity, our life! This is the foundation, the solid ground on which we stand and build our lives on!

So what does it mean to build your life on this rock? Jesus says keep my commandments… love one another… do as I have done. If God is love, and Jesus is God, and Jesus says he will not leave us orphaned, perhaps we too are called to the purpose of leaving no one orphaned. What might this look like? Perhaps it looks like forgiveness, compassion, washing one another’s feet, feeding the hungry, inviting the outcasts and exiled back into the arms of community. Perhaps it looks like refusing to live by the status quo, choosing not to condemn or throw stones, but to love our enemies, speak up for the voiceless and embrace the condemned.

If God is love and God has made God’s home IN and among us, then we too must be love. When Jesus came his love was so expansive, so unconditional, that he appealed to the oppressed, the outcasts, the ‘sinners,’ NOT the religious elite or those with the most power and money in the community. Jesus created around him a community of HOPE. His love, the lived reality of GOD’S LOVE, gave hope to the hopeless and a voice to the voiceless.

I love what Rev. Dr. Nancy Ramsay says about this, she says, “(Jesus’ love) is also seen in his fierce protests against those who abuse this vision of the value of each person and the importance of an ethic of mutual regard and care. Instead of power as domination, Jesus invites those who meet him to imagine power that has as its goal the well-being of all persons regardless of social status.”

She goes on to say that the hope Jesus gives this community allows them to “dare to wonder if the power of love that Jesus embodies is more REAL – more TRUTHFUL – than the subjugation and humiliations of the Roman rule.”

God’s love has been revealed to us in Christ Jesus, who came to ‘bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, return sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ (Luke 4:18-19; Isaiah 61) This is the work to which we have been called as people whom God remains to live in and move in here on earth. God is our identity and God’s purpose is our purpose. God has promised we will not be orphaned and has entrusted us to continue the work of Christ, pursuing God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. Christ is no longer with us, but God’s love is still a lived reality – through us!

We don’t HAVE to do anything for our salvation. We don’t have to love and serve our neighbor in order to be saved. We love and serve our neighbor because we are people through whom God lives and works. We are people who’s very being, very existence has been created and shaped by God who lives IN us. If God is love and God is the core of who we are, then we are free to also BE love. When we step out of the way, when we empty ourselves of our will and make room for God, who already lives inside us, living a life of love becomes effortless. It’s simply who we are and what we do. And in this way we encounter God face to face in our neighbor. We are able to say, ‘The God in me honors the God in you.’

This is the rock on which we stand.

Amen.