Easter 7 2012

Easter 7 2012

I don’t know if any of you had the chance to celebrate it or not, but last Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension—sort of a big day for the Church. Unfortunately, it’s on a Thursday, so it limits some of the ways that we can celebrate it.

The Ascension, of course, was when Jesus, 40 days after his resurrection ascended into heaven to return to the Father. This then makes way for the Feast of Pentecost, which we celebrate next Sunday. And, while there are some churches who will probably celebrate the Feast of the Ascension today…I guess we didn’t because I’m a jerk.

All the same, even though we’re not celebrating the Feast of the Ascension today—our readings still reflect this sense that Jesus will not be around in a physical way for much longer.

Now, chronologically in the Gospel reading, this section happens before the crucifixion. However, the drafters of the Lectionary (in their infinite wisdom) rightly assigned this reading for us as we near the end of the Easter Season.

 Well, with all of that background taken care of—when we look at today’s reading we know that it is a prayer on behalf of not only the disciples that Jesus will eventually leave in a bodily sense; but the prayer even includes everyone who will believe because of their witness…Effectively, that includes us.

In this prayer, Jesus gives thanks for these disciples who had become friends. He is grateful that God had given them to him, and says that he protected them, but now—as he prepares to leave them—he gives them back to the care and safekeeping of God…

In its context, this prayer (which is known as the High Priestly prayer), was offered before Jesus gave himself over to be arrested and eventually executed. And even though in John’s Gospel, Jesus seems to know everything that’s about to happen—we can see in this prayer that there is still fear for what will happen to his disciples. For all that he can foresee, he can’t imagine what their fates will be… So he prays for them, and hopes for them, and entrusts them (and us included) to the care of God. It’s one more selfless act on the part of Jesus for his disciples.

 It’s also a prayer which demonstrates a deep love for his friends, and by extension, those of us who came to faith generations later because of these disciples. And for those of us who are implied in the prayer—it becomes a kind of timeless benediction for the whole Church.

However, from experience in life, we know what this prayer is not. Namely it’s not an inoculation from the harshness of the world. We still live in a broken world of mixed disparities, hunger, war and disease. We live lives with real danger and unavoidable tragedies.

The search committee has already heard this story, so I do apologize to them. But in my last job situation, I was working at two parishes. I was the part-time youth minister at (St. Paul’s Cleveland Hts.) the cardinal parish in the diocese, and clergy-in-charge at (St. Alban’s, Cleveland Hts.) a much smaller parish only about a mile away.

The way that we worked out the Sunday arrangement was that I would alternate Sundays between churches—and both knew if I wasn’t at one, I was at the other.

Well, one Sunday, when I was at St. Paul’s (the bigger church), I received a call on my cell phone. Don’t worry, it was on silent. I was still a transitional deacon at the time, so I didn’t have too many duties that day (in fact there were two other deacons besides me).

 The odd thing about the call was that it was from my treasurer from the other church—someone who knew that I was at St. Paul’s, and was familiar with their worship schedule. This was my first clue that something was wrong. However, I decided to ignore it. Before long, he called again. It was at that point when I let another deacon know that I had an emergency call, and excused myself.

I went out into one of the hallways, and saw that this treasurer had called a total of 4 times, and had left a message. At first I tried to dial him, but got a busy signal—the message was panicked—and when I finally got in touch with him; he told that his son-in-law had committed suicide. He was the one who had found him…

I took a very deep breath and asked him if he needed me to come to him, and he said no that the police were called and were on their way. He explained that his daughter had fought with her husband and had come to her parents house and stayed the night. He had gone over the next morning to try to talk to the husband and found him dead.

 He said there wasn’t much that I could do where he was at, but what he did need me to do was go and tell his daughter that her husband had killed himself.

As I was driving to this parishioner’s house; I wish I could say that my prayer was one for the repose of this young man’s soul—for peace and comfort for his now widowed wife, or his family… I wish I could say that my prayer wasn’t a string of expletives followed by the words: “You’re gonna have to help with this…because I can’t handle this on my own.”

The short end of the story is that I made it through telling this man’s daughter about her husband, and it was hard. It might have been one one of the hardest moments in my ministry so far. In fact, I ended up having to go and tell the guy’s mother that he had committed suicide, as well, because no one could bring themselves to do it.

 But the point of the story is that, there are times in life that we just have to wonder what that prayer that Jesus prayed for all of us really means. We may wonder where all of this care is when we wait with a loved one for bad news at the doctor’s office. We might question the meaning of such a prayer when all of our financial security has dropped out, and we’re wondering what we’re going to do to survive…

I wish I could tell you that everything got easier the more I worked with this family. But it didn’t really.

The really odd thing about all of it, however was that throughout all of it, I can at least say that I never felt alone. There was even a little peace about all of it—even if it was just a whisper.

 That’s not to say that I’ve never felt alone—but in that really tough place that I found myself, I was still somehow reminded that in my confusion—Jesus was somehow there with me and praying that I wouldn’t screw things up.

Jesus was somehow with this family, mourning their loss, and praying for comfort and peace. Jesus was watching and weeping with this young widow—Jesus was even somehow with her husband even though he couldn’t see or remember that fact. Perhaps if he did, it might have saved his life…who knows?

 I suppose what we’re left with then, with this High Priestly prayer of Jesus is not so much the promise that everything will be alright every time.

In fact, it’s a prayer that’s pretty honest when we think about it. If anything, what the prayer holds up to God is the reality that things would be tough—even scary and unknowable at times.

But there remains this promise that we’ll not ever be alone in our troubles—that this prayer is the prayer of our Great High Priest who continues to pray for us, and give himself for us no matter what. So that we would somehow be in him as he is in the Father, and therefore never be alone to face all that we experience in our lives.

What’s more is that we have this promise from the one who can make all things that may die or pass away into resurrection.