Homily – Fifth Sunday of Easter (A)

It is interesting from time to time to remember the texts that we listen to in the scriptures are all translations.  The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were all originally written in Greek.  We get so used to hearing them in our own language, and we probably have our favourite texts which we know so well that we can forget we are dealing with translations.  This week’s Gospel is one of those texts that has been translated in a number of different ways.  The text we will listen to is from John 14:1-12.  John 14:2 reads, ‘there are many rooms in my Father’s house.  It is the word ‘rooms’ that interests me.  In the Greek text the word is mone and it is translated in different ways.  Some translations say ‘My Fathers house has many mansions’.  Other texts say ‘In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.’  

Dwelling places makes sense to me.  It speaks not literally of a ‘house’ occupied by God but of an abiding presence that God has in our world and in our lives.  The context for this line in the Gospel is Jesus assuring his disciples of his ongoing presence with them into the future.  The dwelling places of God’s love are many.

Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to prepare a dwelling place for them too.  The dwelling places of God’s love are those places where we know that we sit in communion with others.  They are the places where we have a sense that we are not in this world alone.  They are the places where our hearts are stirred and our minds are inspired by the Spirit of the living God.  The dwelling places of God are places inhabited by solidarity, by healing, by faith, hope and love.  The dwelling places of God are the places that inspire us to look outward, and upward.  The dwelling places of God’s love take us to the shadow places of our lives, and our world, and shine the light of life and resurrection upon them.  The dwelling places of God’s love take us even to the shadow death and hold out before us new and eternal places of God’s presence.  We call them light, refreshment, peace and resurrection.

The dwelling places of God are many, John tells us.  The call of this week’s Gospel is to trust that those places will again and again present themselves to us and to our communities.

We find those dwelling places often when we stop and sit quietly.  We find them when we find the time and space to take in the places and faces that make up our daily lives and routines.  We can find them when we are interrupted by something our of the blue that changes our perspective or challenges our way of thinking.  The dwelling places of God are all around us.  I wonder if that is why John finishes his Gospel passage today by telling us that Jesus says “whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, s/he will perform ever greater works, because I am going to the Father.”  To enter into the dwelling places of God is to be in union with Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  That can lead to amazing things!

By Fr Brendan