The promise of comfort

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter (May 14, 2023)

View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: The Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year A)

Preached at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. A video of our whole 10 am service for the day is available here.

A parishioner shared this painting of the Ascension which she took at a church in Zimbabwe. I love how this perfectly expresses the abandonment the disciples must have felt when Jesus went up into the sky.

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Jesus said, “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.” John 14:18

Edited Transcript

May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Please be seated.

Yesterday afternoon was our Mother's Day Tea. As you'll probably hear, it was a phenomenal success, it was a total delight.

I am now only going to be eating food with the crusts cut off, because I have seen the light! <laugh>

There were so many people gathered at the Tea. Folks from within St. James', both serving and partaking, as well as many people from the wider community. There were "regulars" who'd been looking forward to the return of the Tea. And there were people who were there for the first time. I met someone from Beacon, and a family who's just moved here to Hyde Park. And so it was a wonderful way for a whole lot of different folks to celebrate their mothers, their aunts, their grandmothers, all those who mother.

And because I got to stop by most of the tables and speak to most of the folks who attended, I'll tell you: while there was joy and celebration in the room, there were also a lot of people who came carrying griefs, even as they celebrated mothering.

These conversations reminded me that Mother's Day can be a complex day. Today, most of us come here not only celebrating the people who mothered us, but also carrying—alongside joy—bitterness, loss, or grief. Some of us are mourning the mothers that we've lost. Some are mothers who have lost children. Some are would-be parents mourning the children that haven't come into our lives the way we'd hoped. Some are mourning the mothering they should have had, but didn't. There are all kinds of ways that grief gets mixed up in the joy and the celebration of being loved and having the gift of sharing love with others.

And on a complicated day, it's really helpful to hear the words of Jesus who promises: "I will not leave you orphans." In some translations, "I will not leave you comfortless." "I will not abandon you."

In today's Gospel, he speaks to the disciples on the brink of his death. He's continuing his last words to him—which we started exploring last Sunday—where he lays out to them, after their last meal together, that he's about to go through this process of dying and being raised again. And he's letting them know that they are not always going to have him with them, at least not in the same way. They've come to find comfort and trust in his presence among them as a living, breathing human. But this won't last. And so of course, as he tells them this, they're feeling anxiety. Where are you going? They ask. How can we get there too?

And it's to this anxiety he responds: I will not leave you comfortless. I will speak to the Father, who will send an Advocate, a Comforter, to be with you. And although the world doesn't know me, and I won't be visible and tangible in the same way, nevertheless, Jesus says, you will still know my presence. This is Jesus' promise.

Now, today we are in the sixth Sunday of the season of Easter, and this Thursday the church celebrates the Feast of the Ascension, which comes 40 days after Easter Sunday. On the Feast of the Ascension, we remember that the resurrected Jesus leaves his disciples again.

Just to go back to the beginning: Jesus is born at Christmas. He's incarnated into the world. He lives among us and heals and comforts and preaches and shows us the Way of Love. He dies. And on Good Friday when we remember his death, we mark too, that period between Good Friday and Easter where Jesus is absent. The One who has been among us, showing us how to love, dies and leaves us.

Jesus promised the apostles that he would not leave them comfortless. Nevertheless, there is that period between Good Friday and Easter Sunday where we experience comfortlessness. There are periods where we, as a Church, remember that there are seasons of our life where we don't know for sure that God is there, where we don't experience God in the way we had been used to. There are seasons when love seems absent and where grief and pain seem to triumph.

Now on the third day, Jesus rises again. On Easter Sunday, there is a new life. For forty days! The Risen Christ walks among the people again, and they know him as they did not know him before. He cooks fish with them on the beach. He appears to them at Emmaus and breaks the bread. He walks through a locked door. To show them that he is real, he shows them the marks on his body, to show that he is the same one who lived and died.

But on the 40th day, the Ascension, he ascends into heaven. And the disciples all stand there looking up to heaven. The Ascension, in a way, is another Good Friday. It's another moment where the disciples say, "Wait! Where are you going? Don't leave us comfortless." Yes, Jesus has promised, "I will not abandon you." But even in a season of Easter, of resurrection and new life, we still remember and acknowledge those times where we feel grief and loss and wonder, God, where did you go

This coming Thursday is the Ascension, and it's ten days from there to Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit falls on the Body of Christ and lights them up, when they again experience the renewing power of God. So I just want to point out that there are not one but two periods in our liturgical calendar—Good Friday to Easter, and Ascension to Pentecost—which acknowledge the reality that even when we walk the Way of Love, and even when we do the practices of the Body of Christ, and even when we are faithful, there will be seasons where we experience great grief and loss and where we will even question God: Where did you go?

There are seasons that will be heavy. Our liturgical calendar gives us times to practice the presence of God, but also times to practice knowing that there may be seasons of absence.

Jesus' promise to those of us who at any point experience a season marked by what feels like absence is this promise: "I will not leave you comfortless. I am coming to you. You will know me no matter what the circumstances are."

So in these seasons that may be marked by absence; on days when the sweetness of our celebration and of our love for those who mothered us is mixed with grief: Christ will not abandon you. You will not be orphaned, but you will be comforted.

Going back to that Tea: everyone who came into that space—and there were people celebrating, there were people struggling—all sitting side by side. We have the opportunity to make that promise of God true, that there will be comfort. When we sit by one another, side by side, we can embody the true presence of that Spirit, which is a Comforter, an Advocate and Encourager. We as a church and the Body of Christ, now we take up that call, filled with the Holy Spirit, to care for and to comfort, to mother and to father, to be sisters and siblings and brothers, and even one another's children. To care for one another, so that God's promise for those living in seasons of absence will be true: You will be comforted.

Amen.