Jesus Comforts His Disciples - Vienna Community Church



For BerlinJesus Comforts His Disciples14?“Do not let your hearts be troubled.?You believe?in God[a];?believe also in me.?2?My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there?to prepare a place for you??3?And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back?and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.?4?You know the way to the place where I am going.”Jesus the Way to the Father5?Thomas?said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”6?Jesus answered,?“I am?the way?and the truth?and the life.?No one comes to the Father except through me.?7?If you really know me, you will know[b]?my Father as well.?From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”John, the gospel of light and lifeThe gospel of John, chapter 14, is one of the most comforting and strengthening passages in scripture. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” This is not intended as an in-your-face, my-religion-is-better-than-your-religion mic drop, but is intended to give confidence and hope to followers of Jesus in tough times. And we know about tough times; currently, we are hidden away from each other (in order to care for one another) and many of us are stressed and facing an uncertain future …That’s exactly what this passage was intended to address. It was written (probably not by the Apostle John, but certainly by his close followers who did not want his memories of Jesus to be lost), sometime around 90 to 100 A.D. In other words, a generation or two past the time of Jesus’ death. John’s gospel is not story-telling, like the other gospels. It is reflection – the theological thoughts of someone who has spent a lifetime pondering the meaning of Jesus.And it was written down during a time of crisis. Some of this is speculative, and depends on the work of scholars who don’t yet agree. But it is clear that the Gospel of John was written in a turbulent time. It may have been a time of growing persecution, not just by the Roman authorities, who saw Christianity as a political threat, but also by the Jewish community, who rejected the new doctrines. In 70 AD, the Temple was destroyed, and both the Jewish and the early Christian community scrambled for their very existence. It was a time of martyrdom as well as expansion, and it was a time of confusion as people who had experienced the life of Jesus were trying to make sense of what his life meant for them and for others. There was conflict, within the early church, and outside, not only about right belief, but who had the authority to determine what “right belief” was. This, by the way, has nothing to do with the 21st Century.The beauty of funeralsThis is such a powerful reading, that it’s used at funerals all the time. I have to confess, that makes it difficult for me.Don’t get me wrong; I think that the gospel proclamation of hope beyond what we can see in the moment is a life-giving message, a life preserver tossed to people who (no matter how strong their faith) have fallen into the chilling waters of loss, and need a rope.You may think this is strange, but I’d rather do a funeral than a wedding. Yes, weddings are fun and celebrative. But weddings carry their own joy … and usually, the person who gives the blessing is not really necessary.(This is, by the way, theologically true for Protestants. The Catholic tradition holds all things that Jesus may have approved as being sacraments:Protestants are more limited, and we only recognize as sacraments the two that are explicitly identified as means of grace in Scripture: Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. Not marriage. I leave it to you to decide whether we are somewhat impoverished in our insistence on being biblical).In fact, our understanding of weddings is that the couple themselves are the ministers of the event. The pastor, if she or he is involved, is merely a representative of the community.Technically, that’s true of funerals, as well. There is no need of the pastor’s presence. But this is one of the moments in life when many people (including those of no fixed faith) turn to those that deal with the questions of life and death and meaning and purpose and future and eternity. So, even people that would never show up on a Sunday, are willing to call the pastor on a Friday when there’s been a death.How could I not, as a lover of my neighbour, feel called to respond at that moment with all of the hope and confidence that I can offer, from the gifts of God? And that is why I have used this text so many times that statistics are meaningless. Assume … out of four hundred funerals … that I used it half the time. Because even for those of little faith, there is an incredible expression of hope and grace in the words, “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?” It allows the most distant from Jesus to hold out the hope that there is some room prepared, that they are loved, and not forgotten. That’s Gospel.And a funeral is precisely the place where grief and laughter meet. You’ve been to some of the “celebrations of life” where we alternate between laughing at the human foibles of a loved one, and then gulp in grief as we realize our loss. That’s the way it should be. “If we can laugh, we can pray.”But … Pain and hopeThis text is weighed down for me, by the weight of so much grief. Hundreds of families, literally. And (because of the particular ministries I have been part of) a disproportionate number of young people, unexpected deaths, suicides, and accidental deaths that should not have occurred.476251524000I get triggered by these memories, I confess. I’ve gone through some moments (and so have you). Today I am going to share one of my beautiful, heaviest moments.This is Berlin. She was one of our patients in the field hospital in Haiti, following the devastating earthquake in 2010. I deployed with a crew of nurses and doctors to a region where over 90% of the buildings had collapsed, and thousands of people had died. We set up a hospital to treat injuries resulting from the earthquake. This was in a region that had never had such a level of medical care, even before the earthquake.Berlin was eight years old, brought to us with multiple leg fractures. It would have been a routine procedure, although painful, to set the leg, monitor the progress, and after two months, watch her run around the playground with her friends. But we didn’t have two months. We had a month, and that meant that we had to speed up the healing. And that meant multiple surgeries, every few days, essentially re-breaking the leg in order for it to heal more quickly.Imagine being eight years old.Berlin and I became very close. Every time the nurses would place the anaesthetic mask over her face, she would panic until I arrived. I would hold her hand, and sing lullabies and hymns until she fell asleep. She taught me Creole versions of hymns I knew; she taught me simple songs. I sang them back to her. I laid my hands on her over and over and over as she fell asleep, knowing that she would wake up with pain that she did not understand.(There’s more to the story … another time). But … look at that face. That was the last time I saw her. Grief does not get the last word.Hope and grief lean against each otherBoth hope and lament are faith responses.A book edited by Phllip Vannini, “The Cultures of Alternative Mobilities: Routes Less Travelled” includes this simple quote:“Always paddle on the opposite side from your partner.” I’ve always considered that good life advice, and particularly good advice for married couples. It’s good advice for our church community, as well. What it means to me is that we don’t all need to be singing the same note, sharing the same thought, experiencing the same feelings, and paddling on the same side. When someone is singing lament, there is someone else who can add a descant of hope. They don’t drown each other out.So … if you are grieving and anxious right now, you are in good company. The Bible (and especially the book of Psalms), is full of lament. It has many prayers of those who, in faith, tell God about their pain and their frustration, because the world is not as it should be. Don’t worry … God knows that already. Your prayers won’t hurt God’s feelings.We should become better at expressing our grief, our lament, our anger at injustice.And that’s one side of the story. If you are, on the other hand, seeing the green shoots of hope rise out of the soil, you are also in good company.The gentle balanceWe need to be people of the “both … and”. Both grief and celebration should be part of our experience. And that allows us to support one another, not by trying to convince others to see it our way, Do not try to convince each other that what you are seeing and experiencing is the only truth. Above all, do not try to convince each other that there is only one faithful way to see the novel times we are experiencing.As Paul put it in his letter to the Galatians (6:2):"Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." ................
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