Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
Earlier in the
Gospel of John, in Chapter 14, Jesus offered this promise to the disciples:
18 "I will not leave you orphaned; I am
coming to you. 19 In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you
will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will know
that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 They who have my
commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be
loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them."
I am reminded of
these words, as I read from the Gospel lesson today:
12While I was with them, I protected them in
your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was
lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be
fulfilled.
To be orphaned.
Those words
struck me this week.
I was lucky over
the course of my life that both my parents lived to a ripe old age. My mother died a few years ago, my father
this last fall.
They were blessed
with a long life. They were with us long
after we left home and began lives of our own.
And yet there is
this sense now that they are gone that I am orphaned.
Left alone to
stand or fall on my own.
Dr. James
Nestingen, one of my seminary professors, used to describe the experience of
losing one’s parents as like removing the insulation from the north side of one’s
house. All of a sudden, you can feel the
draft of the cold north wind, and you recognize that you yourself are aging,
and that your’s is the next generation to face the end of life.
There are many
dimensions to the experience of losing one’s parents.
It doesn’t matter
whether we are young or old, there are times when we say “Mom, Dad, I need you
now.”
And there is the
significance of the fact that the people from whom we first experienced love in
our lives, can no longer offer it to us, leaving us with just a memory of what
it was like to have been loved by them.
Today we give
thanks for our mothers.
In a few weeks,
we will offer thanks for our fathers.
These are not
just “Hallmark” Holidays, designed primarily to sell cards and flowers, though
the florists will certainly be busy.
Mother’s Day and
Father’s Day are about gratitude for the love we have received.
For many of us,
there is another experience of being a child that we must face in one way or
another.
Our parents weren’t
perfect.
One of the
residual issues from my childhood was that I was abused by a band director
during my adolescent years.
Jesus says “I
protected them.”
From a very early
age, we trust in our parents to protect us, and when they are not able, or
simply are unaware of the difficulties we are facing, we feel abandoned. We feel orphaned. Where were you?
That was the
question I found myself asking as I looked back on those experiences of
childhood. How could they allow such
abuse to occur? Shouldn’t they have been
more cautious?
In my own
situation, my parents simply were unaware of what was happening with the band
director. Unaware. I really can’t blame them, for even I was not
able to recognize what happened as being abusive for a couple of decades.
And yet the
emotional scar remains. Whether through
ignorance or outright neglect, they allowed for a relationship to unfold in my
life that was abusive.
And so when I
look back on my childhood and my relationship with my parents it is a mixed
bag.
As with all human
relationships, there is good and bad.
And then the
promise of Jesus:
I protected them in your name that you have
given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost.
“David, I don’t
want to lose you.”
These were the
words of my bishop, Martin, during that most difficult time of my life when I
hit rock bottom with respect to my alcoholism, and was nearly destroyed by the
battle with depression.
Those same words
were on the heart of Karla, my children, and my parents.
I was at risk.
In many ways I
was at risk.
There were questions
regarding whether I could continue in ministry.
The struggles I
faced jeopardized my marriage and compromised my relationship with my children.
On numerous
occasions I was borderline suicidal. The
self destructive nature of alcoholism nearly killed me. At other times, I considered ending the
suffering as an option.
Hope had
vanished. And faith was fleeting.
Later I would
write that “it is not the desire to end one’s life that results in suicide, but
the belief that one’s life is already over.”
“David, I don’t
want to lose you.”
When Martin spoke
those words, he might have been thinking about losing me as a pastor in the
Church, or losing me to the effects of alcoholism and mental illness, or
ultimately, to death. Probably, all of
the above.
And likewise with
Karla, and my family.
Whatever their
primary concerns might have been, those words communicated to me a deeper
spiritual reality.
“David, I don’t
want to lose you,” are words spoken to us by Jesus.
The most
important thing Martin did, in speaking those words, was to bear witness to the
love that Jesus had for me in that moment, and in so doing to communicate to me
the promise Jesus offered to protect and guard me from all evil.
I will not leave you
orphaned.
I will protect
you.
I will guard you.
And I will not
lose you.
Promises for each
of us, from Jesus himself.
Last week you
voted to extend a Letter of Call for me to be your pastor.
What you probably
didn’t realize at the time, is the significance of that to me.
After all the
dust settled, that I might once again receive the Call of a congregation to
serve as pastor means for me, that indeed, Jesus did not lose me.
Not only that,
but I wake each morning with my wife at my side. I enjoy the relationship I have with my
children, and especially now, my grandchild.
And even more
than all that, I have hope and faith.
I protected them in your name that you have
given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost.
I was not lost.
Nor will I ever
be.
What a promise.
There is another
threat in the life of Christians today.
Jesus speaks to
this when he says:
I have given them your word, and the world
has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong
to the world.
The threatening
times we live in are not that we as Christians are under persecution and experiencing
violence against us.
The threat is
that we might be lost to the ways of the world in which we live, and no longer
abide in Christ.
“They do not
belong to the world.”
Or do they?
In Romans Paul
writes:
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be
transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the
will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
When we look at
the Church today, and see so many graying heads, and so many empty places in our
sanctuaries, one has to wonder if we are experiencing a “lost generation”.
Those of us who
remain wonder if our children, our neighbors, have indeed conformed to this
world, and become one with it at the expense of not being set apart from the
world, and transformed by Christ.
Karla and I
struggle with this ourselves, as we look at our children, and recognize that
they have not yet found their place within the Church as we wish they might
have.
And yet we cling
to the promise.
If Jesus can say
to me, “David, I don’t want to lose you,” he can also say that to my children,
our children, all to all who are called children of God.
Not one of them
was lost.
Mind you, there
are many in our world who have not found their way, and yet even when it
appears they are wandering, they are not lost.
They may not have
“found” Jesus, but Jesus has not lost them.
It is like a
mother who watches her children leave the nest and spread their wings out in
the world, yet never ceases to love and care and embrace them.
Oh, children may
wander far and wide, but never can they venture beyond the reach of their
parents love.
So it is with
God, only in a much more perfect way.
Go where you
must, face the world as you can, but just know this, that Jesus loves you all
along.
He will not leave
you orphaned no matter how far you stray.
That’s
grace. The pure unmerited love of God
for his wandering children.
I am one such
wandering child.
To one extent or
another we all are.
And Jesus did
not, and will not lose us.
May this peace
that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our
Lord.
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment