The World Within Us

“On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”

Those may be the most profound words ever spoken, the most profound words ever put in print.

Those words describe the holiest of communions: Jesus in God, each of us in Jesus, and the Holy Spirit of Jesus in each of us.

Wow!

What a one-ness. A kind of resurrection on Earth within each of us.

The ultimate resurrection will come at the end of our lives. But, in the meantime, this holiest of communions is resurrecting our earthly lives every day, allowing us to be the best version of ourselves, our child of God selves.

In this world we live in, however, it becomes too easy to forget these words of Jesus, this transcendent truth he speaks to each of us. Not simply spoken by Jesus to his disciples 2,000 years ago but spoken within our souls every day.

But we have to listen to hear and feel this small, quiet voice. And in this world we live in, that can be very hard to do. There is so much human-made static, so many awful, terrible things going on. And all of them shouted at us by headlines, television newscasters and even the newsmakers, themselves.

Even if we’re able to drown out the noise by meditating, by contemplating, by going to a quiet place and just listening to these words over and over again, it can still be hard to comprehend the profound truth of it all.

Jesus in God, you and I in Jesus, and Jesus in each of us.
The goal is to find and touch that place within us—to dwell there—and that journey to do so fully and consistently can, and probably does, take a lifetime.

When I saw these words were in today’s Gospel reading, I knew I had to preach. The only reason I am standing here, or standing anywhere, is because the words Jesus spoke, and speaks, are true.

I have been journeying with these words ever since I found them in the Gospel of John back in 1980. Looking back on my life I can see and feel how the truth of Jesus’s words saved me over and over and over again.

I see Jesus and God in everything I have ever been able to do that has been of any worth. Without them, without the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised inside me, my life would have headed off in other directions.

Father David loved to include the words of famous poets in his sermons. I enjoyed that. The language of poetry is like looking through a different window at the same view but from an entirely different angle. I’ve been preaching here for 21 years and can’t recall using poetry. Until today. Not, however, a famous poet. In fact, only barely known.


Forty years ago, I published a collection of poetry, a sequence of 16 poems called The Ghost Behind Your Eyes. Legendary American Beat poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, told me he thought it was a very good book, which gives me the confidence to proceed with this sermon.

The Ghost Behind Your Eyes begins with the crucifixion of Christ on Good Friday and ends on Easter.

The entire book is meditation on the words Jesus speaks in today’s Gospel lesson.

We all have a ghost behind our eyes. The Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit of Jesus within us. Discovering that truth, understanding that truth, and then acting on it, trying to live that truth in and through our lives into the world, well, that’s what life is all about.

One of the poems by my younger self—titled “Secret Agent”—is about that journey of self-discovery:

“I shadow myself
in the long puddles from yesterday’s rain.
Bedouin clouds cross their blue desert;
the city loses its grip and the sand takes over,
seagulls singing as if they are deaf.
I will leave no tracks on the beach.
The wind and tide are my safehouse.
I have come all this way to watch waves
defect from sea.
They look like someone coming over
from the other side,
breaking cover at the last possible moment,
spreading their secrets on this countertop coast.
I cup a foam cipher in my hands
but it soon disappears
and I am left decoding palms,
my own wrinkles and veins.”

What Jesus tells us today can seem so huge and abstract and immeasurably beyond us, like standing on the shore and looking out into the ocean.
But Jesus stressed over and over again that the biggest and most important spiritual stuff is going on right inside us, not in some beyond somewhere. Right inside our wrinkles and veins.

And there’s help all around, if we can recognize that God is seeking us out with unconditional love all the time, desperate to get our attention, and often in the most seemingly mundane times and places.

I describe this in the very, very short poem titled, “God Came To Breakfast”:



“A star
fell in my cereal
this morning.
It left a hole
in the roof,
splattered milk
in my face,
and just lay
among the cornflakes,
waiting
for my spoon.”

God’s love is waiting to feed us.
Wherever we are. Whatever time of day or night. God never plays hard to get. God is a wooer who yearns to be won. A wooer who longs to be wooed.

And what happens when we do? The world becomes one inside us when we become one with the Holy Spirit of Christ within us.
When we embrace this holiest of communions and take it out and into the world through us more and more corners of the world can become one.

The Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus tried so hard to plant as a mustard seed within us has a chance to appear in your house, in your community, in Virginia, and in the United States of America and therefore in the world.

The final poem of The Ghost Behind Your Eyes is about this truth. It is called “Easter.”

“If I could
I would see the sun making sherbet in the sky
and children running along the edge of their lives,
wishing for bowls and spoons,
sand kicking up behind their heels like bullets
just missing.
Each second would be a museum
as I look into their eyes
and see Ulysses in the wooden horse,
feel Africa touching Brazil.

Camels sip Scotch through straws now,
trying to forget their humps,
but a whippoorwill calls its own name into the twilight
and the wind in the trees sounds like many hands
clapping behind a heavy door.
A dream kicks the wall of its womb.
The sky bends.
I feel pregnant with myself.

A herd of zebra lopes past me,
looking for the mountains of Peru.”

With Jesus in God, Jesus in us, and each of us in Jesus, anything is possible. When we believe with simple, literal faith, like an innocent child, then that sherbet in the sky—the Kingdom of Heaven—can come to Earth.
We’re all human. We’re going to make mistakes. Camels can’t get rid of their humps any more than we can shed the skin of our human nature.

But there is a ghost behind our eyes—the Holy Spirit of Jesus within us. A loving spirit for all seasons.

A loving spirit that leads us to a fifth and final season.

The Kingdom of Heaven season.

The season of forever love.

What a wonderful world that would be.

What a wonderful world it can be.

Beginning with the world within each of us.

The world inside you and me.