John 14:15-23
A few weeks ago at our Wednesday online WAC gathering one of our parishioners, Jim Hart, shared a story about his family history that stuck with me. Jim’s grandparents, Veronica and John Hart, were immigrants from Hungary who had made a home in Ohio when the Spanish Flu hit in 1918. Veronica died that year. John died of the flu two years later leaving Jim’s father, Anthony, an orphan at the age of 10.
Jesus says, I will not leave you orphaned. He says it to his disciples on the night of his betrayal, but he is not just speaking to them alone but to the 10 year old boy, Anthony, and to all of us, across the ages, who have experienced the feeling of being orphaned. Times where we have felt abandoned or left behind. Times where our sense of stability or security is lost. Times where our personal world has been changed forever. In any and all such times - times like we are experiencing now - Jesus tells us, I will not leave you orphaned. That is the promise which is fulfilled by the coming of the Spirit who not only is with us but actually in us - abiding. dwelling, connecting us to God’s presence.
I will not leave you orphaned. Those are words of comfort, but also words of challenge. The challenge of love - the challenge to keep Jesus’ commandments, which is really only just one. I give you a new commandment, he says to his disciples a little bit before our reading begins, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another (John 13:34). Keeping that commandment to love others and, what sometimes is even more of a challenge, to let others love us, is the way that we can fully experience the promise that we are not left orphaned. But keeping the commandment of love does not earn us heavenly gold stars nor does it make God love us more than we already are. Rather keeping the commandment of love helps us to get in touch with what already is. For as we practice loving - both in the giving and receiving of love - we open ourselves up to the reality that always is but sometimes, particularly in stressful situations we forget, that is, that we are intimately connected to one another and to God. If you’re not feeling that right now be mindful of keeping Jesus’ commandment. Reach out to someone in love and let someone love you. The more we practice doing that the more we will know the mystery of which Jesus speaks, that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. It’s a continuous loop, a never ending flow of love and connection in which we live. It is the promise that no matter our circumstances we will not be left orphaned.
I pray that young Anthony, even in the midst of his great loss, had some sense that he was never completely alone. From what I heard, following the death of his parents, Anthony was taken in by his extended family and was raised in their homes until adulthood. He was not left orphaned. And neither are we. That promise is ours to claim with love. And as we do Jesus has another promise for us, Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Which sounds to me as if we all need to be about making some extra room in our homes because God and Christ through the gift of the Spirit are moving in!
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