Sunday 7th May 2023 - Fifth Sunday of Easter

Acts 6:1-7/ Psalm 32(33)/ 1 Peter 2:4-9/ John 14:1-12

In the season of Easter we ponder on the things that Jesus went through. He lived a human life, he suffered pain and torment just as we can, he died as a human being just as we all must die one day. He then rose from the dead leading the way for us to do the same. The readings today cut to the heart of who Jesus is and outline the very human nature of the Church. In the extract from the Acts of the Apostles we encounter one of the first disputes that arose among the first Christians and see the attempts to solve it. Disputes like this are nothing new and through prayer and consideration are not only resolved but allow the Church to grow and develop. In the second reading Jesus is described as the living stone on which his church is founded. We are called also to be living stones building up the spiritual house of God. The Gospel gives us one of those occasions when Jesus points us to his divinity, his oneness with God the Father. Something that has been argued over from then to the present day.

The renown writer and theologian, C S Lewis, famously described Jesus as being either, mad, bad or God. In his writing Lewis was attempting to move people away from thinking of Jesus as merely a great moral teacher or generally good person, while not accepting his claim to be God. The Lewis argument generally goes, ‘A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic, on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg, or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.’

The Gospel reading today gives one of those occasions when Jesus makes the claim to be one in the same as God. This claim is one of the reasons that Jesus was rejected by many in his day and down the centuries. Jesus is the living stone rejected by the builders but is in fact the keystone. If even the people who had been closest to Jesus during his ministry, notably Philip and Thomas, could not easily accept him as God it is hardly surprising that many others have this difficulty as well. The response from Jesus to Thomas and Philip is the same as it is to us, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’ and ‘To know me is to know my father…I am in the Father and the Father is in me’.

Jesus and God the Father are united as one God with God the Holy Spirit proceeding from them making up the Holy Trinity. Although they are three distinct persons, they are one God, a concept that our earthly limitations cannot hope to fully understand. We achieve nothing by trying to separate Jesus from the Godhead and limiting him to being a mere human. Jesus was and is fully human but also fully God. If we see and know Jesus, we see and know God. God became human in the person of Jesus so that we can have a flesh and blood relationship with God, a relationship that would not be possible with a God who is outside of the physical world we inhabit and are limited by. This does not mean that in Jesus God has also limited himself by being trapped within his own creation but that he transcends both the physical and the spiritual. Jesus displayed his Godly nature, his divinity, by demonstrating his mastery over creation through the miracles he performed, curing the sick, raising the dead, changing water into wine and calming the storm to mention a few. Along with these acts that could be seen by the people Jesus also stated his divinity by claiming authority to forgive sins, claiming to have existed for all time, and promising to return at the end of time as the supreme judge overall.

It is not easy to ignore Jesus altogether when each day we live is counted from his life on earth. Once we accept Jesus as existing, we then must consider who he is and who he claims to be. The entire Gospel leads us to the conclusion that C S Lewis came to, that Jesus cannot be just a good moral teacher but was and is who he claimed to be. To know Jesus is to know God, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, the living keystone on which the house of God is built. Through our baptism we are all stones laid on the keystone building up the Church which is the House of God, but are we living stones? A stone can be cold and inanimate, but we are called to be living spiritual stones active in the building up of God’s house.

Like Stephen and his deacon companions we are all called to serve. When we see God the Father in his son Jesus we see the same Jesus in the poor, suffering and needy of our world today. By serving Jesus in those who need us we will become the living stones building up God’s house on earth.

God Bless

Brendan