I will not leave you orphaned ... (Sunday, May 17, 2020)

Fifty United Church At-Home Morning Worship: Sunday, May 17

Settling in:  Making time for God

This is God’s wondrous world: the birds their carols raise;

the morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker’s praise.

This is God’s wondrous world: O let me ne’er forget

that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.

Taking note of where we are

Re-opening!  What a magical and powerful word that has become for us.  Phase One of re-opening has begun in Ontario, and we’ll see how it goes. 

How does re-opening make you feel?  Relieved?  Hopeful?  Anxious?  Afraid?

In so many ways we’ve been learning how much we are not in control of.  How powerless and vulnerable we are – all of us together. 

This week while cleaning a long-neglected corner of my study, I found a copy of part of a poem called “God Knows,” written in 1908 by Minnie Haskins, a British poet and sociologist, quoted by King George VI in his 1939 Christmas Day broadcast.  It’s a thought worth dusting off.

“I said to a man who stood at the gate of the year,

‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown,’

and he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness

and put your hand into the hand of God. 

That shall be to you better than light

and safer than the known way.’”

Opening prayer

(From David Adam, The Edge of Glory: Prayers in the Celtic Tradition)

I weave a silence on to my lips

I weave a silence into my mind

I weave a silence within my heart

I close my ears to distractions

I close my eyes to attractions

I close my heart to temptations

Calm me O Lord as you stilled the storm

Still me O Lord keep me from harm

Let all the tumult within me cease

Enfold me Lord in your peace

Scripture Reading:  John 14:15-21 (Common English Bible)

In the Gospel of John, when the time comes for Jesus to be arrested, tried and put to death, five chapters – chapters 13-17 – are devoted to a long good-bye between Jesus and his disciples, in which he reminds them of how deep his love is for them (and for all the world, really) and he prepares them for moving on (still with him actually) after he is taken from them. 

Depending on the translation, the passage we read today is sometimes titled “Jesus promises the Holy Spirit” and sometimes “I won’t leave you as orphans."

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. I will ask the Father, and he will send another Companion, who will be with you forever. This Companion is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world can’t receive because it neither sees him nor recognizes him. You know him, because he lives with you and will be with you.

“I won’t leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Because I live, you will live too. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them loves me. Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” 

Reflection on the Reading

Apart.  But not alone.  You see the slogan everywhere these days.  On the street as the name of a community chalk-art project sponsored by a church youth group, in a newspaper ad for an Apart But Not Alone bracelet being sold as a fund-raiser for a local charity, in a TV ad urging people to reach out online for mental health support and resources.

Every time I join a United Church Zoom webinar about Ministry in a Time of Pandemic, I hear the refrain that “we’re not all in the same boat, but in our separate little boats we’re all on the same sea, and together in the same storm.”

Do you feel alone these days?  In the little boat you are in, do you feel too distant from others?  Or maybe overwhelmed some days by all the things you’re now expected to do, and take on and do for others – by all the weight of anxiety and care your little boat is loaded with?

When Jesus was preparing to be taken from his disciples, one thing he told them as he prepared them for that was, “I will not leave you alone – or as our translation this morning puts it – I will not leave you orphaned.  I will come to you.  You will know me, and together we will know that we dwell together in God.”

Being orphaned back then was a terrible thing.  Society was so totally tribal and familial in structure and expectation, that if ever you were cut off – orphaned in any way – from family and from your natural household, were really were alone, without any means of support, and without any place to be.

It’s not surprising that in their history and in their Scriptures the people of Israel are commanded over and over again to notice of, and to take care of – how does the phrase always go? – “the widows, the orphans, and the aliens” (the exiles, the refugees and the immigrants) among them – three groups of people with no one else on their side, who God’s people are to reach out and give special care to.  “Because,” God says, “you were once like them – alone, without help, and with no place to be.  I took care of you; now you take care of them; give them a place and a way of being and living well with you, as was done and given for you.”

Do you feel especially alone or orphaned these days by not having a computer, or an email account, or some of the social media connections that others have? 

Or does being disconnected from the noise of the world allow you to find a deeper connection and bond with those who are closest to you?  With your own higher self?  With God?

“I will not leave you alone and orphaned”, Jesus says.  “I will come to you.  You will know me, and together we will know that we dwell together in God.”

It’s not just now, and not just because of COVID-19 that people feel alone or somehow suddenly orphaned.  Even in “normal” times, all kinds of people feel alone and outside the circle of our basically comfortable society.

I think of people and families living in poverty year after year.  Of people whose home is either a shelter or the street.  Refugees, immigrants – legal or otherwise.  I think of my own father’s family who came here from Germany in 1929, legally but then also a little bit illegally when they left south Ontario and hopped a train out to western Canada, where for at least 15 years through the Dirty Thirties and the war years they were outsiders, aliens, and made to feel afraid by people who didn’t want them to be there, didn’t want to have to accept them.  Thank God for those who did, and who were as Christ – were as Jesus to them, helping them to know we all dwell together in God.

As I shared some of these thoughts with people this week in preparation for today, I received an email.   I’m glad you’re focusing on the image of being orphaned, it said.  “I have spent most of my life feeling like I was alone so I really relate to … being orphaned.  Feeling adrift in the world, cut off from supports and caring community … not really accepted for who I am and need to be.  There is no worse feeling than being in a crowd - maybe even a family - and feeling totally alone.”

Jesus says, “I will not leave you alone and orphaned; I will come to you.”  I wonder in how many ways, through how many lives, by way of how many little human gestures of support and care Jesus comes to each and every one of us.

“You will know me,” he says.  I wonder if we sometimes need to remind ourselves of just how, and how often Jesus is present to us.

“And together we will know that we dwell together in God.”  I wonder how often we – how often you – are the presence of Jesus to someone else, reminding them and helping them know that they are not alone, not at all orphaned, but held always in God’s care as well.

We want to know we’re not alone.  It’s the very first line, in fact, in our Creed: “We are not alone, we live in God’s world.”  And the last line, too: “In life, in death and in life beyond death, we are not alone; thanks be to God.”

Closing Hymn to Read as a Prayer

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.

Melt me, mould me, fill me, use me.

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.

Spirit of the living God, move among us all;

make us one in heart and mind, make us one in love:

humble, caring, selfless, sharing,

Spirit of the living God, fill our hearts with love!

Blessing

Go now in peace; never be afraid;
God will go with you each hour of every day.

Go now in faith -- steadfast, strong and true;
Know God will guide you in all you do.

Go now in love, and show that you believe;
Reach out to others so all the world can see:

God will be there, watching from above.
Go now in peace, in faith, and in love.