May 14, 2023
Easter 6
Friends,
It was hard to choose which of several sermons I might compose for today’s worship. We have the wily Paul preaching to the Athenians, filling in the blank for the God they do not know and even reframing the works of two of their great philosopher poets, the Cretan Epimenides and the Cilician, Aratus. I could have fun with Paul.
Or the challenge of 1 Peter to offer a good defense of the faith and hope that is in me, and with some gentleness and reverence for this assembly. I love the expression “with gentleness and reverence”. Or I might pick up some thread in the Gospel of John with the promise of the Paraclete, the One Called Alongside, in Greek, the One called into journeying with us. A sidekick. Possibilities. Where to start?
Two weeks ago, Barbara and I were in Welland, where we celebrated her mom’s 90th birthday. I think Ninety is a big one and so we did it up in fine fashion in two batches. First a batch of young’uns who are glued to cell phones and always have somewhere else to be. And then a batch of the rest of us who could sit a while and measure out the span of ninety years and all that that has meant and all that has been attached thereto. (By the way, I also think 70 is a big one. Just say’n.)
Anyway, Mom Schmidt had a wonderful time. I think she even surprised herself. And we had a wonderful time in which we spoke a few important words, with some pink “Crémant de Bourgogne” to hold them together and ate cake and a lot of other fine food. On Sunday morning, Mom was rehearsing the events of the day before with great and palpable satisfaction. She wasn’t wearing her birthday tiara, but she might have done. It didn’t hurt that her beloved Maple Leafs had won the game–in her honour, on her birthday, the night before. And Barbara and I were there to cheer them on. All good. Well, mostly good. I lost $1 to Mom in a wager I wasn’t completely aware I had made. Her Leafs won. And I was out a dollar. Icing on her cake. She will remind me of her win at every opportunity.
So, earlier on the morning after, I found myself peering out the kitchen window, and for whatever reason, my mind wandered to this morning. And I was verklempt. I was overtaken, overcome. Teary. I had read today’s texts and was turning them over somewhere deep within and contemplating possibilities for today’s sermon. But disparate feelings intruded upon one another because that is how Mother’s Day is for me. I have trouble sorting out Mother’s Day, as do my kids. And I know as a matter of private conversation that some of you do too. Perhaps not for the same reasons but all does not sit easily with me or mine or with some of you. At the same time, for many it is completely the way Mom’s 90th was for us. Upbeat. Celebrative. All stops pulled.
The back story is this: when my kids were small, in 1994, one of their grandfathers died; two years later, a grandmother … my mother; then their other grandmother; then their other grandfather … my father; and then their mother died. John was sixteen going on twelve, as is the way with boys, and Ruth was nineteen going on thirty, as is the way with girls. That was a long time ago. But my kids had no mother and no grandparents and the world around seemed pretty bleak and none of us emerged completely whole. A part of each of them had been torn away, a bit at a time, over five terrible years. It’s just that simple. A part of me is missing. It’s just that simple. So “mother” is a complex and fractured figure for me, injured, damaged over several years of suffering and despair and death when Kim, increasingly, could not mother as she wished –causing her additional pain and suffering– and I was no substitute.
And all of that stuff comes welling up on this day. My clinical supervisor and friend of many years used to say that “like feelings stir up like feelings”. If one feels something deeply in the present, it will stir up memories of a time when you felt that same feeling. I suspect we all know the truth of that.
Now, my sense is that the landscape for my family then was kindred to the landscape for the disciples in the Gospel of John. The Gospel writers are acutely aware of their present circumstance in creating their narrative of important events, important truths, and important connections to Jesus. For his part, John is conscious of a suffering community, whether several generations after Jesus, when he wrote, or in the same time as Jesus which we all know from Good Friday’s Passion got pretty awful.
The disciples’ rabbi, teacher and friend, Jesus, is not dying though he will soon be dead. (The Lectionary plays strange tricks moving backward and forward in time as it does.) Jesus will soon be killed. And they know it. Remember, Thomas, our twin in John’s Gospel: “let us go with him to die”. Except that he will not die; they will not die; the sometime coward Peter will not die but Jesus will, and so the promise of the Holy Spirit or Advocate or Sidekick in John’s Gospel. Someone to take the place of their friend? No. Someone to fill the void. Any student of death knows that such voids remain voids. Lesser voids with time, perhaps, but voids nonetheless. So, no.
Someone to salve the wounds which will surely show and be raw. Perhaps. Someone to provide memories when memory fails? Yes. As promised: “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, that One will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” Yes. Such is the way of grief and death and life. We are transported back to a time of hurt but the Holy Spirit comes along to be with us, not to fill life’s voids but to honour them, to honour the lives of people significant to us whether then or now, whether in celebration or sadness.
I dare say that the Holy Spirit of God who insinuates God’s self into life’s living was of great comfort to John. Remember, John, writing several generations after the death of Jesus, chooses to set forth such promises of Jesus as will resonate with his time and with his people. At the end of the Gospel, he says that what could have been written of Jesus might have filled the whole universe and then some. His job, however, was simply to put forth a Gospel containing a good defense of the faith and hope that were in him; containing his sure witness. John must pick and choose and settles on his experience of the Holy Spirit who infuses life with familiar gentleness and reverence. I have known gentleness and reverence in the cloak of deep and consequential friendship. And from people here present.
When someone leaves you, however that happens, and a piece of you goes missing, the wound may be dressed but it remains a wound however closed and there abides a scar where the tissues are hard, and the skin is thick, and less resilient. But nothing, no one, can ever quite repair the breach. For my part, I am much blessed and happy with Barbara. She is my love. For the disciples? It’s hard to know. They are struggling before and after Jesus’ death. John’s profligate use of the adversarial term “the Jews” when the times got hard, hints at substantial hurt and serious brokenness in the community of first followers.
Today’s Gospel, as we have it, is about people who love and people who keep commandments. But the thing of it is this: where Mark, and then Matthew & Luke have Jesus concerned primarily with loving God and neighbour –familiar commandments and, in my view, the very Jewish heart of the Gospel– John has Jesus concerned with loving God and each other; with people who might fall away so harsh is life. Not quite the same thing. John’s Gospel hints at a fracture in the community. It hints at hard times.
It is sometimes easier to love our neighbour than each other. And that truth, that experience, is familiar to John in a way that it is not so familiar to Mark or Matthew or Luke. For them, it’s the neighbours who are hard to love. John is concerned with the internal truths of life lived in community. Well, the truth is, sometimes, that it’s really hard to love the people closest to us. Closest to us in the assembly of believers. Closest to us in discipleship. Closest to us in family life. Not everyone whom we are called to love makes it easy for us, or is able to reciprocate, or is able to deliver. Sometimes we are not able to reciprocate or to deliver. That is simply our human truth.
Remember Thomas? Unless; unless; unless … I will not believe. He’s a bit of a dweeb but he is not a nonbeliever. He is of the very fabric of the first discipleship in which, until Mary Magdalene rallies the troops, the disciples are all despondent and mired in depression, some gone back to doing what they were doing before Jesus ever showed up. Thomas is suffering, and Thomas is of the very essence of the seed community of first followers, an exemplar, but he is injured. The place wherefrom his friend was ripped away is still raw; is still telling; is still angry; is not resilient and he is unable to trust the combined witness of his friends.
I will not leave you desolate is the promise of today’s Gospel. And that is my witness. It has always been so. I will not leave you orphaned /comfortless /bereaved /forlorn /helpless. All are nuances of the same expression in Greek. I will call alongside you a One to be with you forever; a One who is not frail as humans are frail; a One who does not leave as humans leave; or die. A One to bring to memory all that Jesus said to his companions.
Christians in John’s Gospel are people called to keep Jesus’ commandments and so to love one another. Tall order, sometimes. Hard to get right, sometimes. Subject to human vicissitudes and the clumsiness which comes with the territory, sometimes. But as communities go, this one is pretty great. The Holy Spirit of God abides, here, and comforts, and cajoles, and reminds. And the Holy Spirit honours all of the relationships we treasure, especially this day, whether in celebration or sadness. All of these, with gentleness and reverence.
Silence
May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in God’s sight. And let the church say “Amen.” R/ Amen.
André Lavergne, CWA (The Rev.)
Church of St. John the Evangelist, Kitchener
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.