Never, ever alone [Easter 6A - John 14:15-21]
The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
John 14:15-21
Never, Ever Alone
Church of the Messiah, Glens Falls
I have a little sister.
She is two years younger than me.
When we were children, she had a favorite movie. We watched it all the time. I could recite all the lines; I knew the
catchy songs. I enjoyed the dumb
dog. I appreciated that the male lead
was bald.
Annie, set during the Great Depression, was about the eponymous little orphan
girl, remembered for her bright red afro, who is adopted by that wealthy bald
man, Daddy Warbucks. She lived a
hard-knock life, in a smelly orphanage, with the great Carol Burnett, until, in
the end, she finds her happily ever after.
It is little Annie whom I picture when I imagine an
orphan. I do not imagine eleven grown
men – all free range, some with wives and children, some with parents who are,
in fact, explicitly mentioned in the Bible doing things that the living do,
like catching fish.
Today’s Gospel is a small portion of a larger
conversation. It is often called Jesus’
farewell discourse. After washing feet
and eating a Last Supper with his best friends, Jesus dismisses Judas to be
about a betrayal. He then says what
needs to be said. He spends four of
John’s twenty-one chapters imparting words of wisdom to his closest friends –
before he leaves, before he dies.
During this extended presentation, Jesus says some wonderful
things. He says, “Do not let your hearts
be troubled.” He says, “I am the vine,
you are the branches.” He says, “Peace I
leave with you; my peace I give to you.”
He says, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” He says, “I am the way, and the truth, and
the life.”
And then also Jesus says, to his peer group, to his guys, to
other adult men, “I will not leave you orphaned.” Like he was their mom. Like they were just little kids.
It is a peculiar phrase – one that the Monty Python guys
could have had a lot of fun with. I’ll
bet it could make an amusing imagination in your own brain, if you simply
imagine it. But the silliness doesn’t
stay silly if you stay with it and think about what Jesus is saying. Like a phrase that at first feels like a joke
until you realize it isn’t. Like a quip
that becomes the very thing that exposes everything we try to hide inside.
It is not only children who are scared to be alone. Adults are too. Like these adults. Like those disciples. It was Maundy Thursday, and there standing before
Jesus, were these tough laborers, adults, with calloused hands and weathered
skin, skin wrinkled by sun and worry. Grown
men with full bellies and clean feet.
And Jesus is telling them that in a little while they will no longer see
him. And they can’t live like that. And Jesus can see that they are wearing their
sudden heartbreak on their dusty sleeves.
The pain is escaping from their eyes in stubborn drops of saline,
betraying their stoic bravado. Because
they too, like children, and also like all of us, are scared to be alone.
They just want to be with Jesus. And he just keeps talking about leaving. And they just keep interrupting, hoping to
get directions. Peter interrupts and
asks, “Lord, why can I not follow you now?”
And then Thomas interrupts, with poorly concealed panic in his voice,
“Lord, we do not know where you are going.
How can we know the way?” They do
not want to lose Jesus because if they do, they will be lost and alone.
In 2023, the US Surgeon General declared loneliness a public
health epidemic. In doing so, he, and
his advisors, equated its mortality risk to smoking fifteen cigarettes daily. The study explained that social isolation can
increase the risk of premature death by up to 30%. It further explained that loneliness triggers
a chronic stress response which damages internal organs, fragments sleep, and
suppresses the immune system.[1] We are not made to be alone.
And God knows that.
God has been telling humankind that it is not good to be alone since the
very beginning, since the Garden of Eden.
And so, Jesus tells his disciples, those of old and those of now, “I
will not leave you orphaned.”
And he didn’t. Jesus
left us a Comforter and a Community: both burning with the unquenchable flame
of Divine Love.
I am reminded of the great Holy Spirit hymn, Come Down, O
Love Divine: “O Comforter draw near, within my heart appear, and kindle it,
thy holy flame bestowing.” The Holy
Spirit, Jesus’ gift to us, does comfort us in our loneliness; and also companions
us in our isolation. So that we are
never alone, but live, and move, and have our being the presence of the Divine.
And that Holy Spirit binds us to and fills us with the Love
of our Ascended Jesus. Us in Jesus and
Jesus in Us. It is that same Spirit,
that holy flame of love, that allows us to keep the final and greatest
commandment Jesus commanded. As Jesus
says in this same farewell, during that first Maundy Thursday: “I give you a
new commandment, that you love one another.
Just as I have loved you, you should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my
disciples, if you have love for one another.”
And it is this love, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that
makes us a Community. So that we are
never alone. The Body of Christ: us in
Jesus and Jesus in us. Jesus did not
leave us alone. He got closer. His Spirit lives in each of us. So, there is both Jesus in you and Jesus
around you. Jesus in each face, looking
at you through the eyes of your friends and neighbors and even strangers.
There are more than eight billion people in the world, and
many of them are dying of loneliness. There
are children and seniors, moms and dads, students and laborers, fragile humans:
afraid to be left alone and lonely on this vast island home. And Jesus sees us, sees our brave faces and
our trembling souls. And he loves us,
with a burning passion and a tender heart.
And so Jesus makes this promise: I will not leave you orphaned. And he didn’t. He left us a Comforter and a Community so
that we will never, ever be alone.
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