An Abidina Presence

Rev. Charles Lewis May 13, 2007 Snohomish P.C.

John 14: 15-29 Isaiah 43:1-7

Introduction

When a young seminary student called his preaching professor in a panic Uust a few days before Mother's Day?) and asked, 'What shall I preach about?" the wise professor answered: "Preach about God and preach about twenty minutes." Not bad advice. However, this morning I'm preaching about Jesus and the Spirit and for only about 13 minutes.

If you read the gospel of John straight through, things slow to a crawl around chapter fourteen, where I begin reading today. "The last supper is over and Judas has fled the room like a hive of yellow jackets were after him. Everyone's feet are clean and Jesus' hands are still dripping with water from washing them aiL" Then he begins to talk: "Don't let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. I'm going to my father's house to prepare a place for you. Then I'll come back and take you with me." He goes on like this for four more chapters, telling them not exactly that he's going to die, but that he's heading off for a family reunion of sorts. His father is going to be there, but no one else is invited until he returns to take them all to join the reunion.1 Meanwhile, while he's gone, he's leaving them in charge. ''''Just a little while and you'll see me again," he tells them. But a little while becomes a long while and by the time John's Gospel is written, 65 years have passed since anyone had seen Jesus. Where had he gone? When would he be back? Why hadn't he returned after all this time? Starting in chapter fourteen, John's Gospel tries to give an explanation to these questions.

Sermon

One of my most memorable early childhood experiences occurred when I was six years old. It happened after one of my swimming lessons in the neighboring town of Selah, fifteen miles from my home in Naches. For a couple weeks straight, my mom had been daily loading up my two sisters, younger brother, and six other kids in our 1964 county sedan station wagon and driving us to the nearest pool for swim lessons. She'd pile three kids in the front seat, four in the back seat and three more in the back end - the days when seat belts were not required by law. After everyone was loaded, we'd be off.

One day, my mom loaded up the car with kids to leave the pool for home, and in a last second decision, I decided without telling anyone to run back into the pool locker room to use the bathroom. I darted in for just a minute, but when I came back out, the car was gone. You can imagine the sinking feeling in the

] Barbara Brown Taylor "Good News For Orphans" from Gospel Medicine p. 79. Much of the sermon is credited to her.

heart of a six year old who's been left behind in a strange town, miles away from home. What made it worse was that our car was the last to leave and I was left there staring at an empty parking lot.

Fortunately the lifeguard - our swimming instructor - had hung around to lock up. She was just finishing that job and getting ready to leave herself when I showed up at the front desk in tears. "My mom left me," I said, choking back the tears. She tried to comfort me, "How about if you and I go wait in the parking lot, she said. I'm sure she'll be right back when she realizes your not with her. Well, we waited. No mom. We waited some more. Still no mom. "Tell you what," she said, "let me finish locking up and I'll take you home. We'll look for your mom on the way." To the ears of a panicked little kid, that brought some real relief. "I'm not going to be left here all alone." "Someone is here to help."

We left for my home in Naches with me straining to see over the dash board, looking for my mom's car which I was sure would be coming the other direction at any moment. We got nearly all the way to Naches before we spotted my mom's car barreling toward us in the oncoming lane. "There she is," I said with great relief, as the lifeguard flagged her down. I can still see the look of fear on her face that is indelibly imprinted on my memory. After a reunion hug, my mom explained how she had seen me get in the car at the pool and thought she had all ten kids loaded up. It wasn't until the last of the other kids were dropped off that she asked, "Where's Charlie?" and got the response, "Oh, he hasn't been with us since we left Selah."

If you haven't had the childhood experience of being left somewhere by a parent, then maybe you've have had the experience as a parent leaving your child somewhere unintentionally. I've called a couple parents after church before when each left in separate cars and thought the other had the kids.

Being left behind by a parent is not a pleasant experience. This Mother's Day, for the first time, I join many of you who celebrate this day with a mother who is not here any longer, a parent who has left me behind again. It's the fourth loss out of eight in my family of origin, which makes me appreciate the words Shirley Feik said to me after my mom's death, "You know, I think a lot of life is about learning how to live with loss."

Little children begin this life lesson with a game we love to play, "peek-a boo. Child psychologists say that the reason babies and toddlers love "peek-a boo" is that, for the young child, when you're out of sight you're out of mind. When she can see you, you're there. When she can't, you're gone. You no longer exist. So when you reappear a moment later, saying, "Peek-a-boo", the child cackles with delight at the unexpected reappearance. We soon learn, as we grow older, that just because someone is not standing there in front of us doesn't mean the person no longer exists. We learn to deal with their absence.2

When Jesus announces to his disciples: "I am going to leave you now," it is not unlike us hearing news about a loved one from the oncologist: "It's cancer and it's terminal." This ishard news to swallow. Jesus had been with them for three years. He had lived with them, eaten with them, walked from village to

2 Referenced in a sermon by William Willimon.

village with them, he'd counseled them, taught them, strengthened them and ministered to them and served alongside them. Jesus helped them to cope and grow in all kinds of situations. Did this mean that they were going to be left alone, orphaned and set adrift in life with nothing to rely on but their own resources?

I vaguely recall a time when my parents went out to some event and could not find a babysitter so they left my older two brothers in charge. My parents told them where they would be, put the telephone number of the place by the phone, instructed them, "no fighting while we're gone," and let them know they were entrusting them the responsibility for their four younger brothers and sisters, (though it was my older sister who took most of the responsibility). When they left, we managed fine at first, playing games, watching T.V., and trying to be civil with one another. But as the time wore on civil kids became cantankerous kids and when parents didn't return, it became clear that older brothers are no substitutes for parents. We needed mom and dad, not a big brother to watch over us. We got anxious. Where are mom and dad? Why aren't they home yet? Let's call and see if they're O.K. When you're child at home waiting for your parents to return and they don't, you start to fear, "did they have an accident?" Are they ever going to come home? You wonder that as a kid. Are you going to be left alone, an orphan?3

"I bet you know what I mean, not only because some on you were babysitters too, but because you are Christians. You and I are called to be Christ's babysitters in the world, the ones he's left in charge. We're the ones he's trusted to carry on his name and everywhere we go we see the faces of those he's given to our care. Some are still anxiously waiting for him to come back, some are not. Some are still open to his return, some have closed their hearts and given Up.,,4 Some jumped out of bed when they thought they heard the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, others know better and go back to sleep.

Where is he? Where did he go and when will he be back? It's hard being in charge here all alone. Or are we all alone? Are we left here to nothing but our own resources? Jesus said he was leaving us ... but, thank God, he also said he was coming back again, only not at the end of time.

"Those who love me will keep my word," Jesus said before he left. As they keep my word and hold on to my promise, "my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them (14:23)." Four different times in less than thirty verses Jesus tells his disciples that if they love God and one another, Jesus and the Father will come and make their home with them. Not to visit. Not to pass through from time to time. Not to send a postcard, but: 'We will come and make our home with them.' A little earlier in the chapter he'd talked

3 Reference to Barbara Brown Taylor who was the oldest sibling in charge of babysitting.

4 These and the following quotes are from B.B. Taylor who I credit for the second half of this sermon.

about going ahead of them 'to prepare a place for them.' Not a temporary place, but a permanent one, a home large enough to accommodate the love that binds him to both God and to us, a Jliant heart of a place with room enough for everyone whom love unites."

Barbara Brown Talyor comments that "it's John's idea of heaven to move in with the God who has moved in with us - only the address changes between the first time he writes it down and the last. The first time it is somewhere out there, somewhere beyond and in the future. A place we'd have to wait for him to come back from and take us to. By the last time John writes it down, Jesus is no longer going but coming. The place is not out there somewhere but right here, a place in the present where God dwells with those who love Jesus and keep his word (and trust his promise). 'Abiding,' he calls it, 'staying put.' 'We will come to them and make our home with them.'" 6

"Whatever else this is, it is very good news for babysitters like us, people in charge, people with responsibilities on our shoulders. It's very good news because it means we're not left to be in charge of this house alone. There is someone else at home, someone who lives with us and in us and in those for whom we care," someone who comes alongside us to help us?

"It's also very good news for orphans because we do not have to be alone.

Those who truly love us live inside us, and no one can take us out of their hands nor can they be taken from us. We may have to learn a new way of communicating with them, since they are inside us now and not outside where we are use to hanging on to them in the old way. If we want to talk with them, we may have to sit down someplace quiet and listen carefully for the sound of the wind blowing inside of us or the birds singing in the trees, or the any number of ways the still small voice speaks in silence now more than in words. But now there can be no doubt about where home is for them and for us." Coming or going, God leaves us notes all over the place: "Love one another. Believe in God. Believe also in me."a

When I made a conscious decision to invite Christ into my life, I was eight years old. When an initial conversion takes place, some people experience a very significant life change, some discover a growing feeling of compassion for others, some experience a heart warmed, some sense for the first time being genuinely accepted and unconditionally loved. For me, that initial invitation was marked by a powerful sense of God's presence. Everywhere I went with, anyone I was with, I sensed God's presence. It was under me, over me, beside me, around me, within me. My mother helped reinforce that. God was with me everywhere. I can't explain it. I can't understand it. I can't get away from it.

5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid.

Even when I sense God's absence - as we all may do at times - it's only because I've experienced so much his presence.

God's strong presence is what another eight year old named Danny Dutton, also knows so well. Several years ago, now, this kid from Chula Vista, California wrote:

One of God's main jobs is making people. He makes them to replace the ones that die so there will be enough people to take care of things on earth. He doesn't make grown-ups, just babies, I think because they are smaller and easier to make. That way, he doesn't have to take up his valuable time teaching them to talk and walk. He can just leave that up to mothers and fathers.

God's second most important job is listening to prayers. An awful

lot of this goes on, since some people, like preachers and things, pray at times besides bedtime. God doesn't have time to listen to the radio or TV because of this. Because he hears everything, there must be a terrible lot of noise in his ears, unless he thought of a way to turn it off ...

If you don't believe in God, besides being an atheist, you will be very lonely, because your parents can't go everywhere with you, like to camp, but God can. It's good to know God's around, when you're scared in the dark or when you can't swim very good and you get thrown into real deep water by big kids.

Yes, it's good to know God's always around. Listen to the testimony again of the gospel. "I am leaving you, but I will not leave you desolate, alone. I'm sending you another Counselor, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. The Father and I are coming to make our home with you."

Then Jesus said: "I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe (14:29)." Believe this, in all our challenges, in every battle to be a faithful follower of our risen and living Lord, you are not left alone. God is with us, under us, over us, beside us, around us, within us. We are not left alone. God has come along side of us. God is with us.

Prayer: Dear God, we are grateful today for family relationships, thankful especially for those who loved us into existence, nurturing and caring for us. We're grateful for ongoing relationships of support and encouragement through mothers, fathers, grandparents, and friends and for your creative love that is behind it all and binds us all together. As we worship together, touch us again with your gracious presence. Remind us that we are not on our own, not let to our own devices, but that you are with us through Jesus Christ who lives among and within us. Amen.