Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
May 5, 2002
John 14: 15-21
Recently I visited my older daughter in Baton Rouge, and a week ago yesterday, we went to the Jazz Fest in New Orleans. We had a wonderful time with all kinds of music, wonderful, spicy food and I discovered I could even catch a cold and bring it back home. There are about twelve different stages at the Jazz Fest with different performers and one of the most popular venues is the Gospel Tent. They bring these wonderful Gospel groups in from all over the United States. I went for a little while last Saturday and I heard a couple of groups, the Joyful Gospel Singers and The Mighty Chariots of Fire. In the first group, the lead singers were a young man and three young women. And he started off by telling us, “You might think that I have come here today to give you a performance. You might think I have come here today to do a show… and a few years ago, I might have said ‘Yes, I’m here today to do a show.’ But I’m not here for a performance today. I’ll tell you why I’m here, I’m here to tell you about my Jesus and all that He has meant to me. I’m NOT doing a show today! I’m going to tell you about my Jesus.” He started to sing. And within seconds, people who I am sure had never darkened the door of a church in their life, were up singing and waving their arms and clapping as he praised Jesus.
As I was listening to him, I wondered, who would have ever thought a hundred and fifty years ago, when the white slave owners began allowing their slaves to hear the story of Jesus, who would have ever thought that they, and their children and their grandchildren and great grandchildren and their great-great grandchildren would actually take it seriously! That they would take Jesus seriously and His message of freedom and justice and hope; that they would take the presence, the promise of Jesus seriously and carry it with them and have it sustain them through a struggle for freedom, through lynchings, and police dogs and fire hoses. Let me tell you about my Jesus and all that He has meant to me.
I was reminded of a preaching conference I attended a while back. There were several white New Testament scholars lamenting the fact that African-American scholars really have taken no interest in the on-going discussion of the historical Jesus. A black pastor got up and said, “I have been listening to you worrying about why our people aren’t really talking much about the historical Jesus. You know, it is not a big issue in the black church. Because, you see, we ALWAYS knew who Jesus was!” Always a presence, an abiding presence, through thick or thin, through joy and sorrow. Let me tell you about my Jesus and all that He did for me.
“I will not leave you orphaned.” Some Bibles say, “I will not leave you desolate… I will not leave you alone, I will not leave you abandoned. I am coming to you. In a little while, the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also.”
A significant amount of the Gospel of John beginning in the 13th chapter and continuing into the 17th chapter, is taken up with Jesus’ farewell to his disciples. In no other gospel is so much made of the absence of Jesus. John, I think, is very honest. The Jesus of John is very honest. He knows it is one thing to talk about Jesus when he is standing there with you, but quite another to speak about Jesus when he is no longer physically here. It is easy to talk about the Spirit of Christ, the abiding love of Christ, when things are going pretty well. But when we are far from home and it is dark, and we are cold and alone, what then? How can we know that he is still with us? How can we know the promise is true? How to keep and hold on to this sense of presence?
I once heard that time is the great obliterator. It so easy to forget. Did you ever take out a high school year book and read what classmates wrote? “Hi Gene – it was a great four years. I really appreciated your friendship and all that we’ve done together and I know things are going to change, but it will sure be fun to stay in touch. Think of all the great things that are going to happen to us… have a good life. John.” John who? My good friend, John…I can’t even remember his face! Same in college, where relationships are even more intense. I remember leaving my university and going back to Arizona, saying to close, close friends, “yeah, we’re going to stay in touch.” Then, what, maybe after three months, no more letters? Maybe a Christmas card a couple of years later. We forget.
I think of my own sister. When she died, I promised myself I would never forget her face, her voice, the way she was with us, the passion she felt for the things she believed in. Yet today, parts of her, the memories, are slipping away. Time… the great obliterator, we forget! Jesus says he will be with us, but we forget! And more often than not, there is this painful and at times, frightening absence, more than a presence.
And yet, there is the promise, “I will not leave you orphans.” Jesus knows we will forget, he knows the frailty of memory, yet still he makes the promise, “I will not leave you. I will not leave you alone. You maybe lonely, but never alone.” But how can we really know that? And the fact of the matter is, we probably never can really know that. We can never know it as a scholar might. We can’t prove it as a mathematician might, can’t come up with a nice, rational argument as a philosopher might. We can’t know.
But I do know this: When my sister was first operated on for cancer, at the same time my mother was operated on for a very dangerous neck condition. So both my mother and sister were in different hospitals in Phoenix, both, at times, hovering between life and death. My dad was going absolutely crazy, coming apart in anxiety and fear. When I would go and visit, we were running this kind of shuttle to Phoenix for a while, I would feel the anxiety and fear, wondering what was going to happen next, what were we going to do as I rushed between two hospitals and tried to keep my dad from flying off into the stratosphere. It was a crazy time. As I look back, it was like a yearlong nightmare. You wonder if you will ever wake up. And I don’t know how I came back here on Sundays and actually prepared and preached a sermon. I don’t know how I did it. But I did. Yet it is clear to me now that it really wasn’t me, it wasn’t up to me, it wasn’t me and my strength. Some of those plane trips between Oakland and Phoenix were the loneliest I have ever taken. And yet I wasn’t alone. I realize now, there was a presence, a helper, holding me up, walking with me, seeing me through, even through what would eventually become the valley of the shadow of death. I was not left orphaned. Let me tell you about my Jesus and all He has done for me!
And I have seen it with you, it hospital rooms, with families when a loved one has died. I have seen people who thought they could not take another step, yet they did. People who found courage when they never thought they would, who found a peace they never thought would come… who were able to face that day they hoped would never come. They were not left desolate. We don’t have explanations here, we don’t have proofs… we have a presence. Our faith really is not built on a set of rules to be followed, a set of moral laws, a set of noble ideas and teachings. It’s not even the Jesus Seminar telling things that Jesus said or might not have said. That is interesting stuff, I love reading it, but it is not Christianity. Our faith is Christ present with the people of Christ, not leaving us orphaned or desolate but with us, making wherever we are – here, there, anywhere, - Holy Ground.
Can you claim the promise for yourself? Please, claim it for yourself. Claim it as you remember the close occasions when love was shared. Claim it as you remember those times when you somehow made it through, even though you knew you could never make it through. Claim it when you take some small step for justice and peace in this broken world or ours. Claim it when you remember your baptism, when you remember the bread and the cup, when you remember worship with a community of faith, claim it. You know what we are doing here each and every Sunday? We are making memories. We are affirming the promise. Let me tell you about my Jesus and all that he has meant to me! For the day will surely come when what happens today will be the only food you have. But you know what? It will be enough, it will be enough.