Sixth Sunday of Easter – Series C
The preacher will want to make sure that he has the Law firmly in hand for this sermon. I believe it is best articulated in the final verse of this passage where Jesus resolves the Law’s problem – He offers us peace through his own triumph over the world. The opposite of that peace will be what you are preaching against. The OT idea of Shalom is helpful here. It involved far more than simply a cessation of hostilities. It was health, success, life, harmony, and joy. The opposite then of that peace is the anxiety, guilt, death, sickness, poverty, and terror of life.
If last week acknowledged the tension of the now and not yet of Christ’s kingdom, today we are given the blessing of that same tension. Jesus again acknowledges the tension, but he also tells us why. He is here with us, and he is in heaven with the Father as well. We need Him to be in both places. Being God, he pulls that off rather nicely. Building on the theme for last week, we now get to speak of why we want Jesus to be in heaven, seemingly absent from us. He is here by the Spirit, but He is there as well, ruling the cosmos for us. He serves therefore as the link between us and God. Nothing stands between us now. We are in the Father’s presence because we are in Christ. The Father is with us because Christ is with us.
