Sermons by Fr Guy Nicholls (Cong Orat), our Chaplain, and Fr John Greatbach, plus one or two others

What does Scripture tell us about God and how he relates to us? When God met with Moses on Mount Sinai and made a covenant with the people of Israel, he revealed the nature of his character and his personal love for them.

"The LORD passed before him, and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy and faithfulness'" (Exodus 34:6).

God is all-loving, faithful, merciful, and forgiving by nature. God's love is supreme because it directs, orders, and shapes everything he does.

Scripture tells us that God is all just and all loving. How does his love and justice go together? God opposes sin and evil with his just wrath (his righteous anger) and right judgment - and he approaches sinful people and evil doers with mercy ("slow to anger" and "ready to forgive") and discipline ("fatherly correction" and "training in righteousness"). John the Evangelist tells us that the Father sent his Son into the world - not to condemn but to redeem - not to destroy but to heal and restore. St Paul the Apostle tells us that "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). God does not desire the death of anyone (Ezekiel 18:23,32, Ezekiel 33:11, Wisdom of Solomon 1:13). Instead he gives us the freedom to choose between life and death - good and evil.

When we choose to sin and to go our own way apart from God, we bring condemnation upon ourselves. Sin draws us away from God and leads to a spiritual death - a death that is worse than physical loss of life because it results in a hopeless life of misery and separation from God's peace and joy. Jesus was sent on a rescue mission to free us from slavery to sin and death and to bring us the abundant life which will never end. His death brought us true freedom and abundant new life in his Spirit - as well as pardon, reconciliation and adoption as sons and daughters of God.

Jesus took upon himself all of our sins and nailed them to the cross (Colossians 2:14). His death was an atoning sacrifice for our sins and a perfect offering to the Father on our behalf. We can find no greater proof of God's love for fallen sinful humanity than the cross of Jesus Christ. "To ransom a slave God gave away his Son" (from an early Christian hymn for the Easter vigil liturgy). Jesus' mission was motivated by love and obedience. That is why he willingly laid down his life for us. Jesus told his disciples that there is no greater love than for a person to willingly lay down his or her life for a friend (John 15:13). Jesus loved us first - even while we were captives to sin and Satan - in order to set us free and make us friends and beloved children of God.

Do you believe that Jesus personally died for you - for you alone - simply because he loved you? Scripture tells us that God knew each one of us even before we were knit in our mother's womb (Psalm 139:13, Jeremiah 1:5). We were created for a purpose - to be united with God and to share in his love and glory now and forever. St Augustine of Hippo wrote: "God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love." God's love is complete and perfect because it is wholly directed towards our greatest good - to make us whole and to unite us in a perfect bond of love and peace. That is why God was willing to go to any length necessary to save us from slavery to sin and death.

How does God's love bring healing, pardon, and wholeness to our lives? God's love has power to set each one of us free from every form of bondage to sin - whether it be bondage to fear and guilt, pride and greed, envy and hatred. We can only know the love of God and experience his healing power to the degree that we put our faith in him and surrender our lives to his will. Faith is the key that opens the door to Christ and to his healing power in our lives. But for faith to be effective we must act and do our part. That is why faith requires repentance and obedience - turning away from unbelief and disobedience - and turning to the Lord with a believing heart and listening ear. That is why Jesus said, "whoever believes in me is not condemned" (John 3:18).

To believe that Jesus is the only Son of God who died for our sins is the key that opens the door to his presence and work in our lives. Jesus said, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me" (Revelation 3:20). The Lord Jesus knocks at the door of your heart - will you listen today and open at once?

The Lord Jesus has revealed to his disciples the great mystery of our faith - the triune nature of God and the inseparable union of the eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus' mission is to reveal the glory of God to us - a Trinity of persons - God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - and to unite us with God in a community of love. The ultimate end, the purpose for which God created us, is the entry of God's creatures into the perfect unity of the blessed Trinity.

The Jews understood God as Creator and Father of all that he made (Deuteronomy 32:6) and they understood the nation of Israel as God's firstborn son (Exodus 4:22). Jesus reveals the Father in an unheard of sense. He is eternally Father by his relationship to his only Son, who, reciprocally, is Son only in relation to his Father (see Matthew 11:27). The Spirit, likewise, is inseparably one with the Father and the Son.

The mission of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit are the same. That is why Jesus tells his disciples that the Spirit will reveal the glory of the Father and the Son and will speak what is true. Before his Passover, Jesus revealed the Holy Spirit as the "Paraclete" and Helper who will be with Jesus' disciples to teach and guide them "into all the truth" (John 14:17,26; 16:13). In baptism we are called to share in the life of the Holy Trinity here on earth in faith and after death in eternal light.

How can we grow in our understanding and experience of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? It is the Holy Spirit who reveals the Father and the Son to us and who gives us the gift of faith to know and understand the truth of God's word. Through baptism we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Lord renews the gift of the Spirit in each one of us as we open our hearts with expectant faith and yield to his work in our lives. Jesus promised his disciples that he would send them the Spirit of truth who would be their Teacher and Guide. Ask the Lord Jesus to renew in you the gift of the Holy Spirit who strengthens us in the seven-fold gifts of wisdom and understanding, right judgment and courage, knowledge and reverence, and holy fear in God's presence (Isaiah 11:2-3).

Do you know and experience in your own life the gift and power of the Holy Spirit? After his death and resurrection Jesus promised to give his disciples the gift of the Holy Spirit. He said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit! (John 20:22) Jesus knew that his disciples would need the power of the Holy Spirit to carry out the mission entrusted to them. The gift of the Holy Spirit was conditional upon the ascension of Jesus to the right hand of the Father. That is why Jesus instructed the apostles to wait in Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high (Luke 24:49). Why did they need power from on high? The Gospels tell us that Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit when he was baptized at the Jordan River:

"And John bore witness, 'I saw the Spirit descend as a dove from heaven, and it remained on him... this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit'" (John 1:32,33; Mark 1:8; Matthew 3:11).

"And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness... and Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee" (Luke 4:1,14).

Just as Jesus was anointed with the Spirit at the beginning of his ministry, so the disciples needed the anointing of the Holy Spirit to carry out the mission entrusted to them by Jesus. The Holy Spirit is given to all who are baptized into Jesus Christ to enable us to live a new way of life - a life of love, peace, joy, and righteousness (Romans 14:17). The Holy Spirit fills our hearts with the love of God (Romans 5:7), and he gives us the strength and courage we need in order to live as faith-filled disciples of the Lord Jesus. The Spirit helps us in our weakness (Romans 8:26), and enables us to grow in spiritual freedom - freedom from doubt, fear, and from slavery to our unruly desires (2 Corinthians 3:17; Romans 8:21). The Spirit instructs us in the ways of God, and guides us in living according to God's will. The Spirit is the source and giver of all holiness. Isaiah foretold the seven-fold gifts that the Spirit would give: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:2).

The gift of Pentecost - the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the spiritual gifts and blessings of God - are made possible through the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus. After his resurrection Jesus "breathed" on his disciples and gave them the Holy Spirit. Just as God breathed life into Adam, so the gift of the Holy Spirit is an impartation of "new life" for his people. With the gift of the Holy Spirit a new creation begins. God recreates us for his glory. Jesus' gift of peace to his disciples was more than an absence of trouble. His peace included the forgiveness of sins and the fullness of everything good. Do you want power to live a faith-filled life as a disciple of Jesus? Ask the Father to fill you with the power of his Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13).

St Basil the Great (329-379 AD), an early church father, explains the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives:

"The Spirit restores paradise to us and the way to heaven and adoption as children of God; he instils confidence that we may call God truly Father and grants us the grace of Christ to be children of the light and to enjoy eternal glory. In a word, he bestows the fullness of blessings in this world and the next; for we may contemplate now in the mirror of faith the promised things we shall someday enjoy. If this is the foretaste, what must the reality be? If these are the first fruits, what must be the harvest?" (From the treatise by Basil on The Holy Spirit)

The Lord Jesus offers each one of us the gift and power of his Holy Spirit. He wants to make our faith strong, give us hope that endures, and a love that never grows cold. He never refuses to give his Spirit to those who ask with expectant faith. Jesus instructed his disciples to ask confidently for the gift of the Spirit: "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:13). Do you thirst for God and for the abundant life he offers through the gift of his Spirit?

Dear Sisters, dear Brethren in Christ, the Gospel we have just listened to is a remarkable passage by any reckoning. Each year, on the Sunday following the Ascension, we are given a portion of the 17^th chapter of St John’s Gospel to hear. Let me briefly introduce this chapter to you in the context of the whole of St John’s Gospel. This Gospel passage marks the climax of our Lord’s Last Supper discourse. The first part of this, beginning in chapter 13, tells of the washing of the feet and continues from there with three more chapters of teaching by our Lord concerning His relations with them, with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Altogether there are no fewer than five entire chapters devoted to one event out of a Gospel consisting of some twenty two chapters in all. From this fact alone we should realise how centrally important the Last Supper was. It was far more than a farewell meal with His friends, it was our Lord’s last Will and Testament or to use another word meaning the same thing as Testament, it was His New Covenant, it contained His final instructions to His apostles before His passion, and of course it was the occasion of the institution of the Mass, of the Blessed Sacrament of Holy Communion and of the sacred priesthood.

Chapter 17 is the final part of all this, and it is well chosen for this Sunday. Let me explain. In this chapter our Lord is no longer speaking to His apostles, but only to His heavenly Father. This is why St John begins so pointedly with the words, ‘When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven…’ These words, when St John uses them of our Lord, often describe a special moment of prayer, when God the Son turns to His Father in heaven in intimate prayer and spiritual communion. We are told that before the feeding of the Five Thousand Jesus did the same, raising His eyes to heaven before praying to the Father. In the Canon of the Mass, just before the Consecration, the narrative of the institution of the Blessed Eucharist opens with these words: ‘On the day before He was to suffer, He took bread in His holy and venerable hands, and with eyes raised to heaven to you, O God, His almighty Father, giving you thanks He said the blessing, broke the bread and gave it to His disciples, saying, “Take this, all of you and eat of it, for this is my Body, which will be given up for you.”’

So the raising up of His eyes to heaven is a sign of raising His heart and soul to the Father in prayer. After the long discourse given to the disciples at the Supper, Jesus now finally turns in prayer to His Father. All is now complete, all His instructions have been finished, and all that remains before He hands Himself over to His Passion is to make this most special prayer to His Father, a prayer which will encapsulate all that His forthcoming Passion and Death will mean and achieve for us. Throughout the Gospels we are told that Jesus would often take Himself off in private to pray, and no one knows what passed between the Father and the Son in those moments of intimacy. But on this occasion we are allowed to listen in as Jesus prays to His Father, both for His own forthcoming passion and for all His followers and indeed for all mankind. It is a wonderful prayer which we are given the enormous privilege to hear. But it is also very long, and we only hear one third of it today. The other two parts will be heard on this Sunday after the Ascension next year and the year after.

So what do we learn from this, the opening part of this great prayer of our Lord? It is, in the first instance, a prayer for glorification. Jesus prays that He may be glorified by His Father, so that He may in turn glorify the Father Himself. Now at last has arrived the hour, the hour for which He has been preparing all His life. At Cana, some three years before, He had said to His blessed Mother: ‘My hour has not yet come’. Well, now it is here. The hour of our Lord is, of course, the hour of His suffering; but not only His suffering, for it is also the hour of His glorification. What is this ‘glorification’? It is to show, even in and through those terrible sufferings he is about to endure, that all this, the agony in the Garden, the arrest and trial, the scourging and the crowning with thorns, the carrying of the cross, the stripping and the nailing and horrible death, are in fact nothing less than the finishing of the work which He has been sent by the Father to do.

In return for enduring all that, the Father will reward the Son with the glory of the resurrection, which is not only in the return to heaven of the Son of God as He always has been for all eternity, but the new entry into heaven of the Son of Man, the Son of Adam, the Son of Mary. In all His years on earth He has already made God known in His teaching, His miracles, His mercy, his parables; now He asks for the glory which He had before the world was made to be given to Him in His sacred human nature too, and to be given Him by means of willingly enduring His Passion for love of the Father and of us.

So He now prays to the Father having manifested or revealed the Father to His disciples. He has shown them that all He is and has done has come from the Father. He has been sent by the Father to complete a vital work – the work of showing who God really is, and of bringing fallen mankind back to unity with God who made man in His own image, who made Him for the purpose of knowing Him, loving Him and serving Him, in order to be happy and glorified in His presence for all eternity in heaven after this life. So it is that our Lord’s prayer to be glorified is also a prayer for us to be glorified. He prays to the Father in these words: ‘I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world... Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you; … and they have believed that you did send me. I am praying for them; I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours; all mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.’

This prayer means that we can come to know God insofar as we come to know His Son, Jesus. And we know Jesus by accepting His teaching and putting it into practice. ‘And this is eternal life’, He says, ‘to know you, Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’

He is now about to depart from the world which He entered as man through His Mother’s womb. This prayer is the prelude to that departure and the key to understanding what that departure means. It is about His glory, and ours; His knowledge and love of God, and ours; His going to the Father, and ours. This is why we hear this passage of the Gospel on the Sunday after the Ascension. For Jesus’s entry into heaven which we celebrated last Thursday on Ascension Day, is the opening up of the way to glory for all who belong to our Lord. In the meantime, before He returns to call us to Himself, He prays for us because He will no more be in the world while we ourselves are still in the world.

But if He is not ‘in the world’, does that not mean that He is no longer with us? Has His going to the Father left us like orphans? He has told us that is not the case, because of something of mighty importance and grandeur: it is the pouring out on us of the torrent of life and love that is the Holy Spirit of the Father and the Son. Our Lord has returned in glory to the Father not to separate Himself from us, but to send us the Spirit who will make Him present in a new way.  That new presence will give us a joy which no one will take from us, and that outpouring, that new presence, that foretaste of heavenly glory we will once more celebrate anew next Sunday in the magnificent solemnity of Pentecost, the crowning glory of Eastertide and the pledge of future glory for us who belong to Him.

Dear Sisters, dear Brethren in Christ, in the Collect prayer of today’s Mass we prayed that ‘we may celebrate with heartfelt devotion these days of joy which we keep in honour of the risen Lord.’ Since Easter Day itself, just five Sundays ago, we have indeed principally been celebrating the Resurrection of our Lord, His appearances to the Apostles after His rising from the dead, and His teaching given to the Apostles, mainly at the Last Supper, but recollected after Easter in the light of the Risen Lord. Well, these precious days of Eastertide are about to take a different turn of direction. On this coming Thursday, which was as St Luke tells us the fortieth day after His resurrection, we will celebrate the day on which our Lord was taken up into heavenly glory. Thereafter He would no longer be seen by His Apostles as He had been seen by, say, Mary Magdalene in the Garden, Cleopas and his companion at Emmaus, Thomas and the other Apostles in the Upper Room, John and Peter and the others by the shore of Lake Galilee. All that is about to come to an end with His Ascension. Having made Himself visible to the Apostles after His rising from the dead, He will henceforth become invisible to them and, of course, to all of us in all later ages.

But there are two important reasons for us not to think that in leaving the Apostles visibly, He was abandoning them. We have just heard Him say to them in the Gospel: ‘I will not leave you orphans; I will come back to you.’ Although He is about to leave them, He says, He will be with them still. But how? How will it be the case that the last three years, and the recent forty days since Easter, will be more than a memory?

The first reason for us to recognize that our Lord has abandoned neither His Apostles, nor us, lies in what He says a few moments before promising not leave them orphans: ‘I shall ask the Father, and He will send you another Advocate to be with you for ever, that Spirit of truth…’ This is the first mention we have heard of the coming of the Holy Spirit as a distinct event, an event at a particular moment but also an event without an end. Last Sunday we heard a very important pronouncement  about the relations between two persons sharing the divine nature: Father and the Son. Now our Lord introduces a thrid Person into His discourse: The Holy Spirit. This Spirit, also called the Spirit of Truth, our Lord describes as the ‘Advocate’, which is a translation of the Greek word ‘Paraklitos’. That word, which we also have borrowed into English as ‘Paraclete’, means many things; defender, counsellor, friend, supporter, assistant and consoler. Consoler, by the way, does not mean merely someone who says comforting words when you are sorrowful, but rather more. It means one whom you call to your aid, who comes to strengthen you, who gives you the courage and confidence to carry on in otherwise impossible circumstances. Think, for instance, of the martyrs of the Church over the two thousand years since Pentecost; none of those could possibly have endured all that they were made to suffer were it not for the strengthening and joyous comforting of the Holy Spirit. We should take comfort from that ourselves, too, should it at some time be our lot to be treated by the world in the same way. Who knows? At least we have the assurance of our Lord that the Advocate will not abandon us. That is the first reason why we should not think that the Ascension of our Lord is His complete departure from our world, the world of our faith and its practise.

Here comes the second reason: that our Lord will also come to us in the Holy Spirit in a new way. No longer visible to our eyes as before in His own body, He will become visible in a totally new way, and if I may say so, a better way than even when He was with the Twelve in the days of His public ministry. Such a claim may sound like false boldness or just hoping against hope, trusting to the power of imagination as a substitute for reality, but in truth it is not. For the Holy Spirit ensures that our Lord is present to us in the wonderful manner that we call the Sacraments and the Mass.

Admittedly this will seem pretty unreal to those who do not believe in His words, but to those who do believe, this is revelatory. As Pope St Leo the Great, one of the greatest fathers of the Church, said of the Ascension, in the Ascension of our Lord, all that He was in His incarnation passes over into the sacraments. What was visible before in the flesh now becomes visible in the sacraments. This is a different kind of ‘seeing’ from normal. Often in the Gospel our Lord has spoken about ‘seeing’ and ‘not seeing’ as more than just what our eyes can do. It is a matter of inward sight and understanding. So did the man born blind come to see Jesus as the Messiah, by the eyes of faith. So did St John see the truth of the resurrection at the empty tomb, and he also saw by faith the Lord present on the seashore by the Lake of Galilee after the miraculous draught of fish.

And then we remember how three Sundays ago we heard how Cleopas and another disciple came to see our Lord, not because they recognised Him as He walked with them on the road to Emmaus, but rather because they recognised Him in the ‘breaking of the bread’. But at that very moment, paradoxically, although they recognised Him, now they saw Him by faith as it were, and they no longer saw Him with their bodily eyes. This is why the Emmaus event is so important for us now. It is not about an event in the past, but about an even that had begun with the resurrection and was being made known in a new way.

This new way of seeing cannot be learned other than by obeying the commandment of love as God loves. Then we will ‘see’ our Lord in the sacraments, and most of all in the Eucharist. For us, every Mass is Emmaus, and the more we love as our Lord loves, the more powerfully will we see Him present. This is the Holy Spirit’s work and furthermore it is He, the Holy Spirit, who makes known to us the presence of the Father and the Son.

This is the ‘showing’ or revelation of God in His very innermost self and nature. This is the doing of the Holy Spirit. The event of the Resurrection and the event of the Ascension are not lost in the remote past, but continue ever present in the life of the Church, in the life of the Mass and of the Sacraments. Easter is about now and about the future, a future beyond this world and this life. Two Sundays from now we will celebrate the great solemnity of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit who enlightens the eyes of our faith to recognise the hidden yet real presence of God in the Mass and the sacraments, and the following Sunday after that we will pause to reflect on the wonderful revelation that has been steadily going on throughout these Sundays of Eastertide: the revelation that God is three co-equal persons: Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and the three share exactly the same divine nature. God has in this way revealed Himself to us as the Blessed Trinity, one eternal God, to whom be all glory and praise for ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Dear Sisters, dear Brethren in Christ, we have just listened to virtually the same Gospel as that which we heard yesterday, in which St Philip the Apostle makes one of his rare appearances in the Gospel. By coincidence, if today were not the 5^th Sunday of Eastertide, we would be celebrating on this date, the 3^rd of May, the feast of St Philip and St James, Apostles.

We have, in this Gospel, a reason to be greatly thankful to St Philip, just as on the Second Sunday of Easter, three weeks ago, we had similar reason to thank St Thomas, who also has an important appearance today as well. It was St Thomas’s challenge that he would not believe in the risen Christ unless he first not only saw, but plunged his finger and hand into the Lord’s side, and when he did so at the Lord’s command, his wonderful reply was, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Thomas comes over on that occasion and again today as a rather hardheaded and sceptical type, not easily persuaded of something as incredible as the resurrection of a cruelly killed man from the dead. So today he has a similarly hardheaded reply to our Lord’s statement: ‘I go to prepare a place for you. I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.’ We can almost see him challenging our Lord with these almost cynical words: ‘We don’t even know where you are going, so how can we know the way there?’ Our Lord’s reply is one of His most familiar and profound statements: ‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me.’ Yet again, it is because we have heard this so many times that we may not necessarily stop to ponder, what does our Lord mean by adding this utterance about coming to the Father? Why should that follow after ‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.’?

We should begin by recalling that we do not know God as ‘our Father’, much less actually dare to call Him by that name, without our Lord teaching this to us. Our Lord is the way that God has chosen to show us the Truth about Himself and His Son, and about the Life that God alone has of Himself. We, for instance, do not have life of ourselves. We were brought into life without a word from us. Our identity, our parentage, was something we had no power whatever to choose. Our Lord, however, is Life itself. The difference between Our Lord’s life and ours is that we do not own ours. It has been lent to us for a time on earth and will come to an end with death. Our Lord’s life is not like that. Although He did become a man like us, and lived and died as we too live and one day will die, in His case this was all by His choice and at His Father’s will, all for us men and for our salvation, as we say in the Creed. His life is not restricted to what happened to Him on the earth; it far exceeds earthly life. And that life He now lives in heaven where He has gone ahead of us to prepare a place for us to live with Him when this world comes to an end. But I don’t want to jump ahead too quickly.

Let me say this too: there is something quite mysterious and wonderful about His being, too, about what kind of existence He has. It is one with God the Father’s being. In the Creed in a short time we will proclaim our faith in the only-begotten Son of God, consubstantial with the Father – that is, the same being as the Father, the same God, though not, of course, the same person. It is hard for us to grasp how significant this is. For us, to be a different person from another is to be a different being. We are not only different persons from our fathers and mothers, we are separate beings. We share the same nature but in different entities. That is why we can continue to exist even when our parents no longer do. But with God it is unimaginably different. The Father cannot exist without the Son and the Son cannot exist without the Father. But we should not make the mistake of thinking that this means that somehow God is limited by this. On the contrary, the co-existence of Father and Son is totally liberating. It is what makes God truly God.

Dear Sisters, dear brethren, every year on this, the fourth Sunday of Eastertide, we hear in the Gospel a passage from the tenth chapter of St John’s Gospel in which our Lord speaks of Himself as a shepherd and as a gate to the sheepfold. Hence this Sunday in Eastertide has usually been known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’. Today we have just heard the opening part of this discourse, the part in which our Lord refers to Himself not as the shepherd, but as the gate to the sheepfold, through which the sheep pass safely out to pasture and into protection at night, and which guards against enemies gaining entry.

But why does our Lord use this imagery? We are explicitly told half way through this passage we have been listening to, that ‘this figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them’. Who are they? It is only if we read on in our bibles that we will find out at the end of the discourse, but this detail is never included in any of the extracts that are read over three years on this Sunday of Eastertide. But it is helpful for us to know. Our Lord did not simply decide one morning that He felt like talking about Himself as a shepherd or as the gate of the sheepfold. This discourse, not understood by many who heard it, was spoken by our Lord immediately after one of the great miracles or signs He worked. Back on the fourth Sunday of Lent, six weeks ago, we heard the Gospel passage that immediately preceded today’s Gospel reading. It was the giving of sight to the man who was born blind, who was expelled from the synagogue because he dared to claim that Jesus must be the Messiah, since nobody who did such a great and good work as giving sight to a man born blind could possibly be anything other than a great and good man. But there was more, for at the end of the narrative, Jesus found the man who now could see, but was excommunicated from the synagogue, and He asked Him, ‘do you believe in the Son of Man?’ The man replied, ‘tell me who he is, Lord, and I will believe’. Jesus said to him, ‘I who am speaking to you, I am he.’ And the man bowed down and worshipped Jesus.

On that occasion, those who had expelled the man from the synagogue were the Pharisees who objected to what our Lord did on the Sabbath Day. They regarded it as ‘work’ which contravened the third commandment. Our Lord’s response to them was to tell them that, because they refused to see the hand of God at work in what He was doing, they were blind – that is, spiritually blind. Their blindness is not of the eyes, of the ordinary vision, but of the soul, of the spiritual vision – making it impossible for them to recognise God working in their midst and recreating the sabbath day in a new way by His own authority which He has as the Son of God in person.

Immediately after this our Lord begins to speak as we have just heard Him doing, desciribng the sheepfold and the gate, and Himself as the gate, and finally of Himself as the shepherd, the Good Shepherd. It is only at the end fo this that we hear our Lord’s opponents disputing among themselves; some are saying, ‘he is raving, he has a devil in Him’, while others said, ‘How can the devil be in Him? Can a man possessed by the devil give sight to a man born blind?’ So we know that they are the same people listening to Him today as witnessed the healing of the man born blind.

In his Last Supper discourse with his beloved disciples Jesus speaks of his glory and the glory of his Father. What is this glory? It is the cross which Jesus speaks of here and the willing offering of his life for us. How does the cross reveal this glory? In the cross God reveals the breadth of his great love for sinners and the power of Jesus' redemptive sacrifice which cancels the debt of sin and reverses the curse of our condemnation (Romans 8:1). Jesus gave his Father the supreme honour and glory through his obedience and willingness to go to the cross for our sake. In times of defence the greatest honour belongs not to those who fought and survived but to those who gave the supreme sacrifice of their own lives for their fellow citizens. The Lord Jesus freely and willingly offered up his life out of obedience to his Father and love for us.

Jesus speaks of the Father bringing glory to the Son through the great mystery of the Incarnation - the eternal Word who became flesh for our sake (John 1:14) - and the Cross of Christ which won for us pardon, freedom, and new life in the Holy Spirit. God the Father gave us his only begotten Son to set us free from slavery to sin, guilt, and condemnation. His sacrificial death brings us new life - the abundant life of peace and joy which God wishes to share with each one of us. There is no greater proof of God's love for each and every person on the face of the earth than the Cross of Jesus Christ. In the cross we see a new way of love - a love that is merciful, sacrificial, and generous beyond measure.

Jesus offers us eternal life. What is eternal life? It is more than simply a life without end or an eternal state of being. Science and medicine look for ways to extend the duration of human life - but God offers us something vastly greater and more surpassing than a simple extension of physical life. Eternal life is qualitative more than quantitative. To have eternal life is to have the very life of God within us. When we possess eternal life we experience here and now something of God's majesty, glory, and holiness which he shares with us. Through the gift and working of the Holy Spirit, God fills us with the abundant fruit of his peace, joy and love.

Jesus also speaks of the knowledge of God. Jesus tells his disciples that they can know the only true God. Knowledge of God is not simply limited to knowing something about God, but we can know God personally and be united with God in a personal relationship of love and friendship. The essence of Christianity, and what makes it distinct from Judaism and other religions, is the personal and experiential knowledge of God as our eternal Father - the one who knew us before creation (Ephesians 1:4 and Romans 8:29) and who knit us in our mother's womb (Psalm 139:13 and Jeremiah 1:5). Jesus makes it possible for each of us to personally know God as our Father. To see Jesus is to see what God is like.

In Jesus Christ we see the perfect love of God - a God who cares intensely and who yearns over men and women, loving them to the point of laying down his life for them upon the Cross. Jesus is the revelation of God - a God who loves us completely, unconditionally and perfectly. Do you hunger to know God personally and to be united with the Father in his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, through the unity of the Holy Spirit who dwells with us? The Lord Jesus invites each of us to enter more deeply into a personal relationship of love and oneness of mind, heart, and spirit with the eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who created us in love for love.

Why did Jesus leave his disciples forty days after his resurrection? Forty is a significant number in the Scriptures. Moses went to the mountain to seek the face of God for forty days in prayer and fasting. The people of Israel were in the wilderness for forty years in preparation for their entry into the promised land. Elijah fasted for forty days as he journeyed in the wilderness to the mountain of God. For forty days after his resurrection Jesus appeared numerous times to his disciples to assure them that he had risen indeed and to prepare them for the task of carrying on the work which he began during his earthly ministry.

Jesus' departure and ascension into heaven was both an end and a beginning for his disciples. While it was the end of Jesus' physical presence with his beloved disciples, it marked the beginning of Jesus' presence with them in a new way. Jesus promised that he would be with them always to the end of time (Matthew 28:20). Now as the glorified and risen Lord and Saviour, ascended to the right hand of the Father in heaven, Jesus promised to send them the Holy Spirit who would anoint them with power from on high on the Feast of Pentecost, just as Jesus was anointed for his ministry at the River Jordan (Luke 3:21-22, 4:1,18). When the Lord Jesus departed physically from the apostles, they were not left in sorrow or grief. Instead, they were filled with joy and with great anticipation for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Why did the Risen Lord ascend into heaven? The Father raised the glorified body of his Son and enthroned him in glory at his right hand in heaven. The Lord Jesus in his glorified body now reigns as Lord over the heavens and the earth - over all that he has created. The Risen Lord reigns from the throne in heaven as our Merciful Redeemer and Gracious King. He intercedes for us and he empowers us through the outpouring of his Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus gives us new life in his Spirit and he strengthens us in faith, hope and love so we can serve him and carry on his work as citizens of his kingdom here on earth.

Jesus' last words to his disciples point to the key mission and task he has entrusted to his followers on earth - to be his witnesses and ambassadors to the ends of the earth so that all peoples, tribes, and nations may hear the good news that Jesus Christ has come to set us free from sin, Satan, and death and has won for us a kingdom of peace, joy, and righteousness that will last forever.

How can we be effective witnesses for Christ? Jesus told his disciples, "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you - and you shall be my witnesses... to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8). Jesus gives his followers the same power he received when the Holy Spirit came upon him and anointed him at the beginning of his mission (John 1:32-33). The Gospel is the power of God, the power to release people from their burden of sin, guilt, and oppression, and the power to heal, restore, and make us whole. Do you believe in the power of the Gospel to change and transform your life?

St Paul the Apostle reminds us that we are called to be ambassadors for Jesus Christ. Just as ambassadors are appointed to represent their country and to speak on behalf of their nation's ruler, we, too are appointed by the Lord Jesus to speak on his behalf and to bring others into a close and personal encounter with the Lord and Ruler of heaven and earth. This is the great commission which the risen Christ gives to the whole church. All believers have been given a share in this task - to be heralds of the good news and ambassadors for Jesus Christ, the only saviour of the world. We have not been left alone in this task, for the risen Lord works in and through us by the power of his Holy Spirit. Today we witness a new Pentecost as the Lord pours out his Holy Spirit upon his people to renew and strengthen the body of Christ and to equip it for effective ministry and mission world-wide. Do you witness to others the joy of the Gospel and the hope of the resurrection?

What makes us both fully human and truly like God? Is it not unconditional love which is unselfish, undying, and wholly directed to the good of others? The love of God unites us in an unbreakable bond of fidelity, friendship, and community with others. Jesus loved his own until the very end of his passion and death on the cross (John 13:1).

From the very beginning of creation God said: it is not good that man should be alone (Genesis 2:18). We were created in love for love - to be a community of loving persons, just as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are inseparably united in a community of unbreakable love.

St John Henry Newman (1801-1890) said: We love because it is our nature to love, and it is our nature because God the Holy Spirit has made it our nature. Jesus speaks to his disciples of the inseparable bound of love between himself and the Father, and of their love for mankind. In Jesus we see the fullness of God's love and how God's love is directed to our well-being. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might have life through him (1 John 4:9).

How do we know that God truly loves each one of us? In the cross we see the proof of God's love for each of us and the incredible price God was willing to pay to redeem us from slavery to sin, death, and Satan. Jesus gave up his life that we might have life - abundant, everlasting life with God - a life of love and unity with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit forever.

Through the cross Jesus opened a new way of relationship for us as the adopted sons and daughters of God - his beloved children (Romans 8:14-17). Jesus calls his disciples to walk in his way of love through obedience to the will of the Father. True love is more than sentiment, emotion, or good intention. As important as these may be they are not the proof of sincere love. True love for God is expressed in obedience and obedience is expressed in love.

Jesus promised to give his followers the best of gifts, the Holy Spirit as their Counsellor and Helper. How does the Holy Spirit help us as the counsellor? Counsellor is a legal term for one who defends someone against an adversary and who guides that person during the ordeal of trial. The Holy Spirit is our Advocate and Helper who guides and strengthens us and brings us safely through the challenges and adversities we must face in this life.

The Holy Spirit is also the Giver of life - the abundant life which comes from God and which sustains us forever. The Holy Spirit also guides us in the way of truth, wisdom, and goodness. We can never stop learning because the Spirit leads us more and more into the knowledge of God's love, truth, and goodness. Jesus also promised his followers the gift of peace. Peace is more than the absence of conflict or trouble. Peace includes everything which makes for our highest good. Trust in God, faith in his promises, and obedience to his word lead us to peace and security in God's presence. That is why a Christian need not fear or be troubled by anything. The love of Christ brings immeasurable joy and consolation even in the midst of our trials and suffering. Paul the Apostle states,

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?... For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:35,38-39).

Ask the Holy Spirit to fill you with the knowledge of Christ's immense love and with his gift of peace.

Do you allow any troubles to rob you of God's gift of peace? As much as we try to avoid it, we inevitably encounter challenges and trials that can shake our confidence and our trust in God. Jesus knew that his disciples would be put to the test when their Master was taken from them during his suffering and passion - his arrest, trial, and rejection by the leaders of his own people, and crucifixion by the Romans. Jesus encouraged his disciples to put their faith and hope in God the Father and also in himself.

When adversity or trouble comes your way, does it make you lose hope or give into fear and despair, or does it press you closer to the Lord Jesus and to the strength and help he offers you? When the people of Israel became discouraged and grew weary during their 40 years in the wilderness, the Lord assured them that he would personally bring them safely into the promised land.

"It is the LORD who goes before you; he will be with you, he will not fail you or forsake you; do not fear or be dismayed" (Deuteronomy 31:8).

This land of promise was a sign that prefigured and pointed to the true heavenly homeland which God offers to all who accept his gift of salvation through his Son, Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus, through his victory on the cross and his resurrection, has opened the way for each one of us to live in peace and friendship with our heavenly Father.

During Jesus' last supper meal with his apostles, he spoke in plain words to them about his approaching departure. He tells them that he is returning to his Father to prepare a place for them in the Father's house. Jesus not only goes to secure for his disciples a place of refuge, peace, and security, he secures for them the best the Father has to offer - intimate communion, friendship, and joy with the Father at his table (Luke 12:37, Matthew 8:11) and place of rest and refreshment.

Jesus promised his disciples - and each one of us - that he would return again to personally bring us to the Father's house. Are you ready to follow the Lord Jesus wherever he wishes to lead you now and in the future? And do you trust him to bring you safely to your home with the Father in his kingdom? – Remember, we are in the last throws of time!

Paul the Apostle reminds us that nothing in this world can compare with the glory of feasting with the Father in his house. "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Romans 8:18). Is your hope securely placed in Jesus and his promise to raise you up in glory with him?

The disciples were surprised that Jesus was going to his Father's house and would return to take them with him. And they were even more surprised when Jesus said he expected them to know the way to the Father's house. Jesus' answer to there question, "show us the way", was both a reminder that his disciples should trust their Master and Teacher to show them the way, and a challenge for them to recognize that Jesus had intimate knowledge of God and where God came from. Jesus made a statement that invoked the very name which God had revealed to Moses, "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14), and he made three claims which only God could make. He stated unequivocally to his disciples: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" (John 14:6)

Jesus proclaims: I am the Way (John 14:6). He alone knows the way to the Father because he has been with the Father from the beginning - before time and creation ever existed. The Lord Jesus gives us more than a road map and guide book. He personally is the way to the Father's kingdom, and we cannot miss it if we follow him. He accompanies us on our daily journey and watches over us as the good shepherd who leads and sustains us each and every step of the way. Are you in step with the Lord and do you trust in his guiding hand for your life?

Jesus proclaims that he is the Truth (John 14:6). Many can say, "I have taught you the truth." Only Jesus can say, I am the Truth. He possesses in himself the fullness of truth. Jesus claims to be one with the Father and to speak the truth which proceeds from the Father. Jesus promised his disciples that if they continued in his word, they would learn the truth and the truth would set them free" (John 8:31). The truth which Jesus proclaims has power to set us free from ignorance, deception, and sin. The words which Jesus speaks are true because there is no lie or falsehood in him. Moral truth requires more than mere words or ideas because the person who speaks them must be true - true in thought, speech, deed, example, and action. Jesus embodies the truth in his person.

Jesus proclaims that he is the Life (John 14:6). He not only shows us the path of life (Psalm 16:11); he gives the kind of life which only God can give - abundant life that lasts forever. Is there any trouble, fear, or distraction that keeps you from the perfect peace and joy of a life surrendered to Jesus Christ?