Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Sixth Sunday of Easter 2026

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

At table, after Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet and given them the new commandment to love one another, he told them that he would be leaving them. He told them rather bluntly ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ Needless to say that met with some pushback, especially from Peter.

In John’s gospel there then follows the farewell discourse, part of which we heard in today’s gospel reading; three dense chapters in which Jesus reassured the disciples that this would not be the end—there would be an ongoing relationship with him through the agency of another Advocate—the Spirit of Truth—the Holy Spirit. They will not be orphaned, left alone and comfortless—but neither will there just be a return to the status quo.

In a little while the world will no longer see me, - Jesus told them - but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.

The resurrection will not just turn back the clock, allowing them to continue the relationship as they had it before. They will indeed see him and know him, but in a new manner and with a new intensity, through the Spirit. They will see and know him no longer as an object of their seeing or knowing (as the world sees)—but as an intrinsic and inseparable part of their own identity.

Jesus said: On that day you will know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you.

Of course, this isn’t just about the disciples and their relationship to the risen Christ—this is ours too; theirs is the template for the relationship of God to his Church, in Christ, by the Spirit, until the end of time.

You in me and I in you.

So what kind of seeing, what kind of knowing is this? Is it all about the kind of heightened emotional experiences that go with some forms of contemporary Christian piety, and that our culture seems to crave? Well, not necessarily.

St Paul shows us a different approach when he is questioned on the Areopagus, in Athens, the cradle of western philosophy. As a well-educated Pharisee, Paul clearly felt he needed to say something about the plethora of altars and images he encountered—he needed to make the case for aniconic Jewish monotheism—but he did so with the utmost discretion. It was almost as if he had heard the epistle of St Pater that was read earlier:

Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.

Peter and Paul didn’t agree on everything in life, but on this they were clearly aligned, and, rather than rubbishing the Athenian’s piety, Paul looked for a point of connection; a way in. He found it in the altar that bore the inscription; ‘to an unknown god’. Scholars differ in their evaluation of this, whether it indicated a degree of intellectual humility among the learned of Athens; an acknowledgement of the limits of philosophical enquiry; or whether it was simply a catch-all to make sure they didn’t accidently forget to keep one of the gods happy.

Either way, Paul praises them for their religiosity and encourages them to focus-in on what is, to them, unknown. Here, he feels, they are on the right track, because this is perforce a god that cannot be depicted—there would have been no statue. Without the limitation of an image, an idol, Paul can open-up to them the sheer cosmological scope of

The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth.

Equally, once the theology is untethered from the constraints of human imagination and artistry, Paul can speak of the intimacy, the immanence, the closeness of God,

For "In him we live and move and have our being"—says Paul, quoting, most probably, the sixth-century BC Cretan poet Epimenides—again a point of cultural connection with his audience; with perhaps just a hint of Paul showing-off his learning—few preachers can resist!

We know from other letters that, for Paul, the concept of being in Christ—ev Christo—was crucial for him. In Christ even the words of a long dead pagan poet are fulfilled:

"In him we live and move and have our being", or, as Jesus put it: You in me and I in you

Through what is unknown, Paul suggests not just some new data for them to chew over—we are told, slightly disparagingly, that the Athenians liked nothing more than novelty; some new ideas to try. Well, who doesn’t? Who can resist an infinite scroll of novelties? But Paul is not offering something more to know, to see, to entertain them or to make them cleverer, but a whole new way of knowing, and of being known.

You in me and I in you.

In the end, this kind of seeing, this kind of knowing, cannot be the kind of cool, detached, objective knowing—a kind of circling around, uncommitted, keeping all the options open approach. That kind of seeing and knowing may be useful for the scientific method, but it is less useful in matters of identity and meaning.

Neither is this kind of seeing and knowing a complete surrender of all critical faculties—a wholesale loss of objectivity, an uncritical embrace of subjective experience, in religion or anything else, as the only locus for truth—‘my truth’ to be exalted over any shared or common truth. This kind of seeing and knowing might be important for individual freedom, but it is less helpful to understand our intrinsic connectedness to others and to creation; ‘my truth’ is not a good basis for politics or ecclesiology, for that matter.

The seeing and knowing that Jesus promised his disciples, though the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, comes through an abiding—a being at home with the idea that our subjectivity, our identity is not something we and only we must define and defend. It is being at home with the truth that we will not know or see everything; that treating other things, other people, as extrinsic objects, ignoring or denying or resisting all the ways in which we are connected and dependent, is a serious limitation on our seeing and knowing; a kind of idolatry.

Instead, Jesus calls his disciples, calls us, to abide in him, as he abides in the Father—being at home with an identity that is both individual and relational—you in me and I in you—being patient with what we do not yet know or see of ourselves, or others, or the world. Being at home in a universe that we cannot master or control, but in which we are given agency, the opportunity to manifest our created potential; the commandment at the core of our being; the commandment to love even as we abide in the loving communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You in me, and I in you.

We will not see or know Jesus the way the disciples did before his death and resurrection. We will not see or know him as some object, some data of our knowledge or experience. We will see him and know him as we abide in him, in his love; making our home in him who calls us now to his table.