4th Sunday after Easter 28 Apr 2013 Sermon

4th Sunday after Easter 28.4.13 Christ within us


We are disciples of Jesus Christ. We are supposed to resemble Him in the way we live, the way we think, speak and act.

We are immediately conscious that we are not enough like Him as we should be.

How can we be like Him? It is not enough that we imitate Him. We should imitate Him certainly, but we will not be able to do that just by our own strength.

We need Him to be inside us, in the control room, thinking for us, acting in us. Then we will see some progress!

We must ask Him to dwell within us, such as we do when we receive Him in Holy Communion. The more we ask Him, the more seriously we seek Him, the more of Him we shall have.

We tend to ask for ‘things’ that we need but it is far more important what sort of person we are than whether or not we get the particular thing we are asking for.

So it is better to be humble, kind, generous etc (Christlike qualities) than to have lesser blessings such as health or food or employment (important as these things are).

In the Last Supper discourse (from which today’s Gospel comes) Our Lord is promising us some very rich blessings, but they are blessings which may take a while to understand.

He is promising to send the Holy Spirit, which is effectively His own Spirit, His own nature, His goodness, power, love - everything about Himself which we are capable of receiving.

This is better than getting just food and shelter and having our basic needs met.

The Holy Spirit will enable us to be what we need to be. The more of the Holy Spirit we have the more like Jesus we become. The answer to every prayer is be more like Jesus, to possess more of Him. This will solve all our problems in one hit. If we are like Jesus the rest becomes easy.

So Our Lord tells the Church: I am not leaving you. It may look I am gone but in fact I will be closer to you than ever. I will be dwelling within you. My Spirit will tell you everything you need to know and enable you to do everything you need to do.

He is forming the Church, a slow steady process. See His patient build up of the apostles over three years. While He does want the Church to grow quickly He also wants that it be a solid structure on strong foundations, not about to collapse under the winds of persecution or change.

There has to be at all times this connection with the identity of Jesus, with His actual person. He is not just a leader giving out orders. He is the head of the Body, giving us His life blood, the very stamp of His personality.

The Church can never be itself unless we have this sense of identity stamped on everything we are and do. We are not just an organization doing a job.

We always need to go back and derive a little more of the presence of Jesus (or Holy Spirit) to be more who and what we are.

He forms us; smooths off the rough edges. How worldly we can still be; how unperceptive of spiritual realities.

We wonder why He hides Himself. But He is leading us to a greater self-understanding.

What you see is not what you get, in this case; we get a great deal more than we see!

People are so cynical about the Church, and even we can be cynical, seeing only the faulty human side of things. But if we draw deep on our real identity we become what we are, the Body of Christ, enlivened by the Spirit of Christ.