Stay Close - Sixth Sunday of Easter
Author: Pastor Carolyn Hetrick
May 05, 2024
Last
week I had the joy of seeing writer Kate Bowler speak on the campus of United
Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg. If you are not familiar with her, Kate Bowler
is an academic at Duke University whose career was on the rise. She was married
with two lovely young children when she found that she was diagnosed with stage
four cancer. A well meaning neighbor came to the door with a casserole and when
Kate’s husband opened the door she said, “Just remember, everything happens for
a reason.” And he said, “Really? I’d love to hear it.”
“Well, I mean, I guess.. God has a plan.” And he said, “Really? God’s plan is
that my wife not survive and be able to help me raise our family?” And at that
point the woman just set down the casserole and left. Sometimes the things we
say are not so loving after all. “Everything Happens for a Reason and Other
Lies That I Have Loved” became the title of Kate’s book she wrote as she
treated for cancer and is in remission.
I
told you had the joy of seeing Kate speak and she was speaking last week on the
topic of “where is God in the face of evil or struggle?” That might seem like
an odd source of joy. I mean, the readings today are all about love and singing
and victory. Why are you talking about evil and struggle? Because Jesus is in a
way in the gospel. Jesus is giving the disciples “The Final Discourse,” or what
I like to call “The Final “Pep Talk.” Before the walk to the cross. Before he
is resurrected but ascends from sight. Behind the talk are all those “other” days
when Jesus might seem hard to find or love seems in short supply. Because life
is so beautiful, and life can be so hard. And that reality means we often need
more courage than we thought as we live inside our days. Where Jesus is saying
me and to you and to all of us, to abide in him as he abides in us. Stay close.
One
of my favorite old hymns is “Abide With Me” where we sing about when darkness
deepens, when other helpers and comforts flee, when earth’s joys grow dim,
glories pass away and change is all around. Abide with me. Because then, I fear
no foe. Hold your cross before me. Shine through the gloom. Abide with me.
Jesus
hears us saying “abide with me, Lord” and responds in the gospel by saying to
us- “abide with ME.”
Let’s
pause there a second. If we believe that Jesus is always with us, we are being
called to draw close to the God who is already here, rather than assuming we
need to summon God to be present. But it’s not always easy is it? This is the
give and take of a living loving relationship. The one laid out in Jesus’ gracious
command to love. It’s a way of living that is borne out of our faith in him and
fervent love toward one another.
And
it seems easy to abide when life is beautiful. It is quite another when life is
not so much a celebration but a terrible storm threatening to take everyone
down. When things feel overwhelming we can barely see anything or anyone
clearly, much less Jesus. We need to hear “Abide with me.”
I
think about that a lot these days when it surely seems like our collective soul
is struggling to abide with each other in this time. When a “commandment” can
feel less like loving guidance and more like a weapon to be wielded. In the
hands of some it leaves people not so sure that the word “Christian” and “love”
go together. I despair that in those times the way we try to love gets lost in
the noise.
Our
days are neither all beautiful, nor all terrible. Often we are holding aspects
of both at the same time, hoping to make sense. We all are. So I want to share
with you a different gospel passage Kate Bowler mentioned she draws upon when
she was asked last week what scripture passage she holds onto in times where
there seems to be evil or struggle.
It’s
a story I have heard so often, but her reframing of it now allows me to see it
as abiding with Jesus. It’s the passage that tells us that when evening came,
Jesus said to his disciples in the boat, “Let’s go over to the other side
of the lake.” And a furious squall came up, and
the waves are breaking over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. The
disciples are almost underwater and yet Jesus was asleep on a cushion in the
stern of the boat. They wake him saying, “Teacher, don’t you care if we’re
drowning?” Jesus stands up and rebukes the wind and
commands the waves, “Be still!” And then it was completely calm.
I
confess to you I have often been a little peeved about this gospel because
people feel like they are drowning, and it seems like Jesus is just asleep. But
Kate Bowler said that in her life’s storms she has come to see that her hope is
that she can curl up next to Jesus on the cushion and sleep in a storm too.
It
is still a storm, but when she stays close to Jesus, she knows she is loved and
cared for and then also ready to love however Jesus calls her to in abiding
with Jesus. And I want to have that level of trust.
You
see, those first disciples heard the pep talk before they knew they needed it.
Jesus was preparing them for a new way of abiding and remaining with him, when
he will no longer walk among them, but they are still the ones he has chosen to
produce the fruit of the Kingdom in the world. Just like us.
They’ll
need to learn to turn to the Father in prayer, they’ll need to receive the Holy
Spirit, and they will need to keep themselves connected to how they have
learned to be and think from their teacher. Just like us.
Jesus
summarizes how this thinking and being is: love one another as friends of God. “Look
at the bond,” Jesus says, “I have with the Father and how that bond of love has
been shared with you.” Jesus modelled obedience-known through listening, doing,
and staying close.
Jesus
is not saying here that if we do not keep his commandments Jesus does not abide
in us. But, when we keep his commandments, we and all God’s children
experience the fuller joy of that connection more deeply. It’ abiding close
enough to hear Jesus’ heart beating with ours.
So
imagine how the disciples felt when Jesus returned resurrected. They knew they
had failed. Not once but twice Jesus comes and stands among them saying, “peace
be with you.” It’s the first things he does because he knows they are not at
peace and they haven’t been able to sleep in the storm. Or abide in love.
Because a heart in chaos is a heart in a storm.
They
cannot hear then beating of Jesus’ heart over the beating of their own. Yet
Jesus shows up with grace.
We
hear about this in the anecdotal writings beyond Scripture as well that fill in
a little more of this. Writings that were written in the same time as our
gospels, including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, where even after Jesus had
appeared to the disciples as I have described, there are again terrified,
saying, “they did not spare Jesus, how will they ever leave us alone?” It is
then that Mary Magdalene comes to them and embraces them. Physically drawing
them together into abiding in Jesus’ love and grace. Then she reminds them, “Do
not let your hearts remain in doubt, for his grace will be with all of you,
sustaining you and protecting you.” In this moment she is able to open their
hearts to remember the good news. There is still a storm outside the door, but
she draws them close to Jesus’ beating heart inside them and the Holy Spirit
takes their fractured hearts and makes them one.
In
the gospel of John, believing is an ongoing action. So is abiding. Just as we
hear this gospel so that we will come to believe and keep one believing in all
that is to come, today we are reminded to abide and keep on abiding with Jesus
in all that is to come. Because when we
get far from Jesus, we stop believing that we are loved by Jesus. And when we
stop believing in Jesus’ love, we find it hard to trust God’s word, or feel God’s
heart beating with ours. It is then that we ask, where is Jesus? And tt is then
that we do not love. And so Jesus reminds us again and again and again in
grace: “Keep on trusting my word. Keep on trusting what I have revealed to you
about myself and my Father and my work and love.” When we keep Jesus’ commandment
close, we are keeping God’s vision and God’s presence close to our hearts. And
then we see the world with the eye of that heart.
And
friends, our world needs us to keep believing in and speaking and embodying God’s
love language so that that love grows greater than anything else around it. May
it be so. Amen.
Gospel
Text: John 15:9-17
[Jesus
said:] 9 “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my
Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you
so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
12 “This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has
greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my
friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer,
because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called
you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from
my Father. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go
and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever
you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love
one another.”
Copyright Rev. Carolyn K. Hetrick, 2024 All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
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