Orphans No More (Easter 6A)

 

 

C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman

  Orphans No More

21 May 2017

Sixth Sunday of Easter Year A

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

8:00 a.m. Said and 10 a.m. Sung Mass

Acts 17:22-31; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21; Psalm 66:7-18

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.

Amen.

Loss.  Grief.  Regret for what is no more.  This is all part of time and life, just as much as joy, love, and growth: death, as much as birth.  But the experience of loss and grief can be overwhelming and drive out of our hearts and minds any sense of the moments of joy.  The worse part, I think, is the sense, overwhelming in its obvious truth, that things will never be the same again.  What’s past is past.  C.S. Lewis, grieving the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, wrote:

I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace. On any view whatever, to say, ‘[She] is dead,’ is to say, ‘All that is gone.’ It is a part of the past. And the past is the past and that is what time means, and time itself is one more name for death, and Heaven itself is a state where ‘the former things have passed away.'   Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.

Unless, of course, you can literally believe all that stuff about family reunions ‘on the further shore,’ pictured in entirely earthly terms. But that is all unscriptural, all out of bad hymns and lithographs. There’s not a word of it in the Bible. And it rings false. We know it couldn’t be like that. Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back. How well the spiritualists bait their hook! ‘Things on this side are not so different after all.’ There are cigars in Heaven. For that is what we should all like. The happy past restored.

And that, just that, is what I cry out for, with mad, midnight endearments and entreaties spoken into the empty air [from A Grief Observed.]

Loss.  Grief.  Regret for what is no more.  Loss is devastating, whether it is of a relationship, a job, or even the decline and death of a loved one.  Doubt, fear, and uncertainty take the place of the joy and comfort we once had.   Even when we expect it, loss can turn our lives inside out, breaking our hearts and dashing our hopes.  Sometimes the pain is so great, we shut down all feeling and seem to lose our humanity and life itself.   Elena and I have been watching the BBC series “Call the Midwife.”  In one touching scene where a major character has lost the one she loves, she uses the words of a patient recovering from catastrophic loss, “I must go one breathing until I can live again.”  But sometimes loss seems to take away even our breath itself. 

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus friends are afraid and more and more clear about his impending death.   Jesus says goodbye.  Everything they had hoped for—the in-breaking of God’s Reign, a close community with a kind and loving leader who stood by them, healed them, and gave them hope, who advocated for them, and for all—all this was evaporating before their eyes. 

How could they breathe?  How could they live?  How could they hope?  How could they do anything but howl? 

In this scene of loss and grief, Jesus tells his friends, “I will not leave you orphans.” His departure is not the end of the kingdom or the life together.  He is not abandoning them or the work they have been doing together.

Jesus says he is going away, but will come back.  “I will ask the Father, and he will send you another in my stead, whom you may call upon and who will stand with you no matter what.”  Parakletos is the word in John’s Greek, from para-kaleo to call to one’s side.   This idea is expressed in Latin as ad-vocatus, behind the word used in the translation we used today, advocate.  The King James expresses it as “comforter.”      

Jesus has been the one who has been comforting us, standing by us, defending us, proclaiming the presence of God’s Reign.   Jesus has welcomed all to his table, and healed the sick with no judgment.   Jesus has been not just a teacher and healer, but the very Spirit of Truth in our midst, the breath of life. 

Jesus promises us, in face of all regret, grief, and loss, that the Father will send us another advocate, a comforter, life and breath.  Remember, breath in Latin is spiritus, or Spirit.  When the risen Lord comes to the disciples three days later in John’s Gospel, in that closed room on the evening of Easter, he breathes upon them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  The coming of the Spirit is Jesus being made present to us once again. 

The Risen Jesus is not a replay from the past.  He is not present with us as he once was.  He has those scars from the cross.  He is new enough to be unrecognizable at first to the disciples on the road to Emmaus and to Mary in the garden tomb.  He passes through walls.  As Lewis said, “Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back.”  But he is the same Jesus, nonetheless.  And his presence in the form of the other advocate and comforter is just as real and affirming as he ever was in his mortal life.  He comforts and reassures us, and in this we recognize him and know him our own. 

Sisters and brothers, I have felt this comfort and this support of this one called to our side.  I believe many of us here have at different times.  The comfort and succor given by this holy breath is as real and vivid as that given by any flesh and blood companion or friend, in fact, more so. 

As he promised to return in this other comforter, Jesus reminded his friends what they must continue to do.  “Follow my teachings and example.  Love, really love, each other, just as I love you.”  That’s how the breath comes, how we keep on breathing until we find life and joy again.  Not the same old life and joy once lost, but new, deeper, and not touchable by death and grief at all. 

Thanks be to God.