EASTER VI

Vision of St Paul - Nicholas Poussin

• Acts 16:9-15  • 
• Psalm 67  • 
• Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5  • 
• John 14:23-29 or John 5:1-9

​In a profound way, the readings for this Sunday summarize and connect the origins, work and goal of the Church. In the Gospel, Jesus gives his followers an early indication of what will happen when he is no longer an earthly presence among them. He promises them a ‘Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name’ and who ‘will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you’. It is here, of course, as Jesus talks about himself, his Father and the coming Holy Spirit, that we find a Gospel basis for the strange Trinitarian theology – three Persons, and yet one God -- that has been, and remains, the truly distinguishing mark of the Christian faith. Its principal importance, however, does not lie in intellectual cogency, but in the felt assurance that we, who never experienced the historic Jesus, can nevertheless through him encounter God by a Spirit of life that is perpetually accessible to people in every age and place.

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Churches of The New Jerusalem - Lentulev (1917)

It is this same Spirit that prompts, and enables, Paul’s response to the dream recounted in the Epistle. An unknown person  in far off Macedonia calls on him to share the Gospel, thereby indicating that its power and relevance must break all geographical and ethnic boundaries. In short, the Gospel Paul preaches speaks to the human soul that lies within everyone.
           
Between the Gospel promise and the missionary Acts of Paul the Apostle, lies Revelation’s compellingly beautiful statement of the ultimate goal in which the work of the Spirit will culminate. What is striking is just how God centred it is. The picture of the ‘heavenly’ Jerusalem that it paints, is not a paradise in which all our desires and needs are met, but one in which they are transformed and transcended within the Person of God. In the world to which we have been raised, we no longer need sunlight, or clean water, or political security, or even places of worship. God’s presence will be so immediate that everyone ‘will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads’. This vision is no promise, of course, for those whose hearts are set on wealth and power as the world understands these. But to those who long for a full realization of the spiritual nature that God has planted in us, no more wonderful prospect could be imagined.

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