Mutual indwelling
Sunday after Ascension
St Mary’s. 10 am
As you came to church this morning you probably heard our bells ringing. Bells have been rung in churches for some 1500 years and we are fortunate at St Mary’s in having a very fine set of eight, one of them that dates from the time of Queen Elizabeth 1st. Bells ring to summon people to church, to toll a death or funeral and to celebrate some great occasion. The most famous lines on bells come from Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam with its theme ‘Ring out the old, ring in the new’. Each verse begins with an old evil we want to get rid of and the new we want to ring in
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
‘Ring out the old, ring in the new’. The word ‘New’ resonates for Christians. We talk about a new covenant, a new binding agreement between God and humanity. We refer to the second part of the bible as the New Testament. In the Eucharist we will hear the words of Jesus at the Last Supper. ‘This is my blood of the New Covenant.’ All this is thought of as a new creation. So when the bells ring it is to celebrate this newness. Not just the spring time of the year but the spring time of the spirit. Bells call us to lift up our hearts in delight.
Today’s Gospel takes us to the heart of what is new and why we should delight in it. In the passage we heard Jesus is praying. What is interesting first of all is that he prays not just for his immediate followers but for us centuries later. As he says:
I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.
What a remarkable idea-the mutual indwelling of God and humanity. God living in us and we living in God. ‘As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may ‘When we look at the sky and reflect on the outer edges of space expanding faster than the speed of light the mind boggles to think of the creator of all this. The human mind cannot get round the immensity of it all. But God as Augustine said, is closer to us than our own heart beat, our own breathing. The universal intimacy of God, that is the new thing.
Fish dwell in the ocean, birds soar in the sky, we live and breathe in air. So it is with us and God. He is our spiritual environment, our milieu, our natural medium. Not apart from the material, physical world for God meets us in and through all things. We dwell in God.
And God dwells in us. Deeper than our churning thoughts, deeper than our deepest desires and fears, there is a still pool, a pool of stillness. There God waits for us as we wait on him. As the psalmist says. Truly my Soul waits still on you O God.
Dwelling in the God who dwells in us. Why do we dare to make this astounding claim? Because this was the heart of Jesus’s life, one which we said he wanted to impart to us. He lived out his life as one in whom God his Father dwelt, and in whom he dwelt and he wanted to reproduce this in us. He said this would bring about a profound unity which the world would see. This unity is not first of all at the horizontal level, though it is reflected there. It is the unity we share as a result of God dwelling in us and we in him. As Jesus in the Gospel went on to say
The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
This is the new thing: the intimate relationship of God and humanity in Christ, which we are invited to reproduce and replicate in ourselves. This how Julian of Norwich put it in the 14th century
We ought to rejoice greatly that God dwells in our soul, and we ought to rejoice much more greatly that our soul dwells in God. Our soul is made to be God’s dwelling place, and the dwelling place of the soul is God, who is not made. And it is an exalted understanding to see and to know inwardly that God, who is our maker, dwells in our soul; and it is a more exalted understanding to see and to know that our soul, which is made, dwells in God’s substance; and through this substance-God-we are what we are. (Revelations of Divine Love, ch. 54; p.120)
So God is not just an incomprehensible immensity but an intimacy. This is an intimacy, that encourages us to bring before God what is on our heart and mind, what matters to us, what we might not share with anyone else. This is not an indulgence and is not for therapy, though there well may be a healing effect. It is simply being open to the ground of our being and the goal of our longing that his good purpose might be set free to work in us and through us.
So it is that at the Eucharist in what is traditionally called ‘The prayer of humble access’ before receiving Holy Communion we pray that we may so receive the body and blood of Christ ‘that we may ever dwell in him and he in us.’ What could be simpler and what more profound.