We continue reading from the end of Revelation. This is a book describing a vision that summarizes in symbolic form what the world can possibly be if the power of Christ were to really take hold.

Within that vision we are given a number: 12. No, it’s not the 12^th man we all became after the Seahawks won the Superbowl is 2014 (yes that was over 10 years now, and no, I still can’t get over what happened in 2015).

The number 12 represents the fulfillment of salvation history: the fullness of the people of God, the fulfillment of the 12 tribes of Israel, and the fulfillment of the mission flowing from the 12 apostles. 12 signifies God’s presence, but, today this vision is described as a city with no temple, “There is no temple in the city, for the Lord Himself is its temple.”

That is unusual, because for most of scripture, God’s dwelling has always been described as the temple. In fact, great efforts were made to build and protect the great Jerusalem temple. But now, under this vision of a world where Christ is fully present, we are told that the Lord dwells, not in the temple, but with the people of God. That is because our knowledge of how God is present in the world moves forward as salvation history moves forward.

In the Old Testament, when we came to realize there was only one God, the presence of God was revealed as dwelling in wind and fire. This was the wind that swept over the waters in Genesis as God formed creation. This was the wind that parted the Red Sea so Israel could be liberated from Egypt. This was the fire that Moses witnessed in the burning bush. This was the fire and the cloud that accompanied Israel in the desert. God was in the wind and fire, powers that can be felt but never contained.

Then as salvation history moved us forward, the presence of God came to dwell in the tabernacle, and later in the temple. It was known as the שְׁכִינָה‎ (Shekinah), which in Hebrew means “dwelling” or “filled by the glory of the Lord”.

However, though God’s glory dwelled in our midst, it was unapproachable. We through God wanted to be close not too close, so great effort was made to separate the holy from the unholy. Humanity was understood to be impure and unable to dwell directly in the שְׁכִינָה, ‎presence of God. Yet, God promised to be with the people of Israel, he made a covenant with them, and they had to wrestle with the tension of living with the near yet inapproachable presence of God.

That is what the word “Israel” itself means, by the way. It comes from the Hebrew יִשְׂרָאֵל (Yisra’el) which means “wrestled with God,” and that is much of what scripture is all about, the history of people wrestling with trying live successfully in God’s covenant but failing when they reduced God’s power for pure human purposes.

Have you ever wrestled with God? Struggled? Isn’t that how life is? We are constantly wrestling with God. We feel the tension of our will and Gods will.

The dwelling of God then begins to shift when God comes to dwell with the human race in the person of Jesus. In Jesus, the glory of God comes to dwell in humanity in a more intimate way than was ever possible before. God lives a human life amid the struggles of our daily existence, but once again we wrestled. Jesus is killed.

Then comes the resurrection, and we came to know Jesus Himself is God. That is when we realized we were wrong about God, that God did not want to be separated from us. If Jesus was fully God but also fully human, then God could dwell in our human nature too.

That is what the book of revelation is saying: that because God comes to dwell with the human race in Jesus, the old temple as the place to contain and separate the glory of God from humanity is no longer needed. In fact, it’s gone. God has completely transformed it, and now, as Paul says in Romans 3:38, nothing can separate us form the love of God in Christ Jesus. The Book of Revelation affirms that God dwells with the human race in the midst of our human struggles, to heal us and to transform us.

The Gospel of John says, “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.” In Greek the literal translation says, “The Word became flesh and templed among us.” But that was not enough. Jesus will pour out the Holy Spirit, and God will dwell in the people of God themselves.

Jesus says, “Whoever loves Me will keep My word, and My Father will love them, and We will make Our dwelling with them. The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you everything.”

God is a communion of persons, and if God is dwelling in us, then we can only share in the divine life when we too are in communion. This is important: the image of God is not in each one of us individually. The image of God is in the relationships of love that we share. In a culture that is highly individualistic we must be careful to realize that our faith is not. The image of God is not in you or me individually; it is in the relationships of love that you or I can develop and share with other people.

How is God dwelling with us today? We enter the life of God in baptism and share in the life of God in the Eucharist. What happens every time you receive communion? The Holy Spirit consecrates bread and wine as the sacrament of union with God. When we receive, Jesus comes to dwell in us in the most intimate way possible. Just as in your body your cells are constantly being replaced, renewing you, in the Eucharist Jesus constantly comes to you, renewing you. Then the power of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist and now in you consecrates us together, all of us, as the Body of Christ.

This is where God enters your reality. That is how we invite God to enter into our areas of struggle. That is where we wrestle with God.

Then we are commissioned—commissioned with Jesus—to extend this life of God out into the world.

This is the vision of Revelation, the big picture of salvation history continually moving us forward and overflowing. So that brings up an important question for us: are we allowing that to happen?

Jesus is asking us to keep his word, to love, to build the communion of love. The First Letter of John puts it very directly: “Whoever does not love a sister or a brother whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen. Whoever loves God must love others.” That’s about as direct as you can get.

There’s only one way to do it: to live in solidarity with one another, especially with those who are struggling to realize their human freedom in any way. We love the way Jesus loves when we use our freedom for others, not take freedom away from others. “Love one another as I have loved you. There is no greater love than this: to give one’s life for someone else.” God dwells in me when the love I receive sets me free to love freely, and love transforms.

The mission of the Church is to transform the world from within. We see this transformation beginning with the transformation of religion and laws.

Jesus said there where only two great commandments: Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. The Ten Commandments are an expression of the two great commandments, an expression of the basic freedoms essential to human life.

The first four commandments are about loving and worshipping God. The other six are about our life together and the need to respect the life and freedom of each person.But this is just the condition of the possibility of the freedom we need to be able to love one another in creative ways.The Ten Commandments conclude with the commandment: Do not covet.This is interesting because the greatest threat to our freedom is the desire to take from someone else what they have and to be envious of the gifts God has given each one of us.

A simple way to do our part in the transformation of the world through the command to love begins with the respect we show to those in our lives, our devotion to the one God as the source of all life, and the protection of marriage and family as the place where life is passed from generation to generation.

The Eucharist gives us the foundation that our love can really be built on. And that foundation is thanksgiving—thanksgiving that God alone is the source of all life and all blessing; thanksgiving that we can share the life of God; thanksgiving for the unique blessings given to each one of us.

Today, we live in a new covenant in which God dwells with us—not separated from us in a temple. The Church, the people of God, is the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

If I accept this as true, and God is dwelling in me, then I must also realize that I have received the capacity to love freely, and to share the life of God in me.