Sunday, May 2, 2021
We’re used to thinking of ourselves – and all other living beings – as separate individuals. Isn’t it true that our births are uniquely our own, our lives are uniquely our own and, most certainly, our deaths are uniquely our own? No one else can actually do any of these things for us. And, if we’re honest about it, no one can actually do any of these things with us, either. All anyone can do for another person is to be present and share some of these experiences with them from the outside. Even a mother has no idea what the child she’s giving birth to is experiencing. A husband of wife can live through the same experiences as their spouse, but even then, their experiences are parallel and never identical.
Our life experience is grounded in our physical existence. Our bodies both define us as individuals and they separate us from every other human begin – living, deceased, or yet to be born. Our bodies provide us with our identities, and, at the same time, they block everyone else out. If we want to let others in – to know us more deeply – we have to invite them in. We have to reveal ourselves to them. But, even then, what they know is only a shadow of our true selves. To live is to live alone.
What if there exists a life that transcends physical limitations? In our Lenten series, I asked those of you who were present a couple of questions: Is the universe alive? and Is the universe conscious? We’re tempted to answer, “No,” because we’re used to looking outside ourselves at the planets and stars and galaxies that surround us. We forget to look inside at the universe that exists within us. We are not separate from the universe. If we are alive, then the universe is alive. If we are conscious, then the universe must be conscious. There is a Life permeating the universe that transcends our individual lives and a Consciousness that transcends our individual consciousnesses.
We tend to think of God as a consciousness like our own: unique, individual, and fundamentally unknowable except through the intermediary of his creation. It’s the same as trying to know someone by looking at his or her picture. Like us, if God wants us to know him on a deeper level, he has to reveal himself to us. And that’s not a problem with God, it’s a problem with us It’s not easy for us to bridge the abyss between God’s revelation and God himself. Even our human language collapses when we try. Our words don’t mean the same when we apply them to God. In order to start bridging that gap, God came among us as one of us. The Eternal Father sent his Son into our world so that, in knowing the Son, we would come to know the Father as never before.
That’s truly miraculous, but it doesn’t really solve our existential dilemma. We’re still isolated. We’re still alone in this life. But Jesus’s coming among us – even his life, death, and resurrection – is not the end of the story. There’s more. In a few weeks, we’ll be celebrating the feast of Pentecost. That’s our celebration of the sending of the Holy Spirit to those who believe. It’s the coming of the Holy Spirit that has transformed our existence in this universe. Today’s gospel explains how.
Jesus presents himself to his disciples – and to us – as a grapevine. Think about that image. Consider what it means. Jesus is telling us that the life force of God himself – the force that created the universe and raised the Lord Jesus from the dead – is within us. In the Holy Spirit, not only is our human life transcended and made eternal because we share God’s life with him, we also share that life with one another. The isolation that keeps us apart is overcome by the lifeforce of God, which we refer to as the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is the vine, living with the life of God himself, and we are the branches that draw our life from the vine as we share it with one another. We become, not only members of one family – with all the closeness and difficulties that entails – but we become, rather, one body. When we are united with one another spiritually, we communicate on a wholly new level.
A few days ago, when we were walking around the rim of the Grand Canyon, Craig said to me, “Isn’t it amazing to be in a place where so many other people are all here for the same reason?” Even that is a taste of what a spiritual life should be. We share the same source, the same life, the same goals, the same destiny. When we connect spiritually with one another, as in prayer, no words are necessary. What flows between us and makes us one is love. God so loved the world that he shared his own life with us, grafting us, as it were, onto the vine of Christ and grafting us onto one another as branches on the same vine.
This morning, once again, we celebrate the Eucharist where we are invited to share the body and blood of Christ – the essence of his life – with him, with the Father and with one another. Let us recognize in the breaking of the bread the new life to which we have been called and which we are privileged to share with one another in the unity of the Holy Spirit.