In today’s Gospel (John 20; 19-31), Jesus emphatically stated that we should cease in our unbelief and believe. He poured out his spirit on the apostles in that upper room as he breathed on them. He also gave them the authority (forgive, not forgive, bind and loose) over the social and economic affairs of his new church; this new association of members of the Kingdom of God. Jesus gave us his assurance that sin would not prevail against the church, because the bedrock of the church (first acknowledged openly by Peter) is the individual’s acceptance of the reality that God is our father, Jesus is his son and that humankind are true children of God, and thus through our spiritual DNA, brothers and sisters. Our freewill understanding and acceptance of this eternal reality is the work of the Divine Spirit within the soul of each individual.
The church, in its institutionalized state, will come to an end; but the true church, the kingdom fellowship of believers, will remain. This evolution back to the future is something we may not see in our lifetime, but its beginnings are certainly perceivable to those who can read the signs of the times. True, many people are leaving ‘the church’ but their faith and spiritual hunger is still there, yearning to be satisfied. The new breath of life that Jesus poured out onto humanity is perhaps prompting this exodus out of the bondage of a clerical patriarchal elitism into the Promised Land of the Kingdom, overflowing with the milk of divine sustenance and the honey of brotherly love.