Stay Close - Sixth Sunday of Easter

Stay Close - Sixth Sunday of Easter

Author: Pastor Carolyn Hetrick
May 05, 2024

Last week I had the joy of seeing writer Kate Bowler speak on the campus of United Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg. If you are not familiar with her, Kate Bowler is an academic at Duke University whose career was on the rise. She was married with two lovely young children when she found that she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. A well meaning neighbor came to the door with a casserole and when Kate’s husband opened the door she said, “Just remember, everything happens for a reason.” And he said, “Really? I’d love to hear it.”
“Well, I mean, I guess.. God has a plan.” And he said, “Really? God’s plan is that my wife not survive and be able to help me raise our family?” And at that point the woman just set down the casserole and left. Sometimes the things we say are not so loving after all. “Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies That I Have Loved” became the title of Kate’s book she wrote as she treated for cancer and is in remission.
I told you had the joy of seeing Kate speak and she was speaking last week on the topic of “where is God in the face of evil or struggle?” That might seem like an odd source of joy. I mean, the readings today are all about love and singing and victory. Why are you talking about evil and struggle? Because Jesus is in a way in the gospel. Jesus is giving the disciples “The Final Discourse,” or what I like to call “The Final “Pep Talk.” Before the walk to the cross. Before he is resurrected but ascends from sight. Behind the talk are all those “other” days when Jesus might seem hard to find or love seems in short supply. Because life is so beautiful, and life can be so hard. And that reality means we often need more courage than we thought as we live inside our days. Where Jesus is saying me and to you and to all of us, to abide in him as he abides in us. Stay close.
One of my favorite old hymns is “Abide With Me” where we sing about when darkness deepens, when other helpers and comforts flee, when earth’s joys grow dim, glories pass away and change is all around. Abide with me. Because then, I fear no foe. Hold your cross before me. Shine through the gloom. Abide with me. 
Jesus hears us saying “abide with me, Lord” and responds in the gospel by saying to us- “abide with ME.”
Let’s pause there a second. If we believe that Jesus is always with us, we are being called to draw close to the God who is already here, rather than assuming we need to summon God to be present. But it’s not always easy is it? This is the give and take of a living loving relationship. The one laid out in Jesus’ gracious command to love. It’s a way of living that is borne out of our faith in him and fervent love toward one another.
And it seems easy to abide when life is beautiful. It is quite another when life is not so much a celebration but a terrible storm threatening to take everyone down. When things feel overwhelming we can barely see anything or anyone clearly, much less Jesus. We need to hear “Abide with me.”
I think about that a lot these days when it surely seems like our collective soul is struggling to abide with each other in this time. When a “commandment” can feel less like loving guidance and more like a weapon to be wielded. In the hands of some it leaves people not so sure that the word “Christian” and “love” go together. I despair that in those times the way we try to love gets lost in the noise.
Our days are neither all beautiful, nor all terrible. Often we are holding aspects of both at the same time, hoping to make sense. We all are. So I want to share with you a different gospel passage Kate Bowler mentioned she draws upon when she was asked last week what scripture passage she holds onto in times where there seems to be evil or struggle.
It’s a story I have heard so often, but her reframing of it now allows me to see it as abiding with Jesus. It’s the passage that tells us that when evening came, Jesus said to his disciples in the boat, “Let’s go over to the other side of the lake.”  And a furious squall came up, and the waves are breaking over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. The disciples are almost underwater and yet Jesus was asleep on a cushion in the stern of the boat. They wake him saying, “Teacher, don’t you care if we’re drowning?” Jesus stands up and rebukes the wind and commands the waves, “Be still!” And then it was completely calm.
I confess to you I have often been a little peeved about this gospel because people feel like they are drowning, and it seems like Jesus is just asleep. But Kate Bowler said that in her life’s storms she has come to see that her hope is that she can curl up next to Jesus on the cushion and sleep in a storm too.
It is still a storm, but when she stays close to Jesus, she knows she is loved and cared for and then also ready to love however Jesus calls her to in abiding with Jesus. And I want to have that level of trust.
You see, those first disciples heard the pep talk before they knew they needed it. Jesus was preparing them for a new way of abiding and remaining with him, when he will no longer walk among them, but they are still the ones he has chosen to produce the fruit of the Kingdom in the world. Just like us.
They’ll need to learn to turn to the Father in prayer, they’ll need to receive the Holy Spirit, and they will need to keep themselves connected to how they have learned to be and think from their teacher. Just like us.
Jesus summarizes how this thinking and being is: love one another as friends of God. “Look at the bond,” Jesus says, “I have with the Father and how that bond of love has been shared with you.” Jesus modelled obedience-known through listening, doing, and staying close.
Jesus is not saying here that if we do not keep his commandments Jesus does not abide in us. But, when we keep his commandments, we and all God’s children experience the fuller joy of that connection more deeply. It’ abiding close enough to hear Jesus’ heart beating with ours.
So imagine how the disciples felt when Jesus returned resurrected. They knew they had failed. Not once but twice Jesus comes and stands among them saying, “peace be with you.” It’s the first things he does because he knows they are not at peace and they haven’t been able to sleep in the storm. Or abide in love. Because a heart in chaos is a heart in a storm.
They cannot hear then beating of Jesus’ heart over the beating of their own. Yet Jesus shows up with grace.
We hear about this in the anecdotal writings beyond Scripture as well that fill in a little more of this. Writings that were written in the same time as our gospels, including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, where even after Jesus had appeared to the disciples as I have described, there are again terrified, saying, “they did not spare Jesus, how will they ever leave us alone?” It is then that Mary Magdalene comes to them and embraces them. Physically drawing them together into abiding in Jesus’ love and grace. Then she reminds them, “Do not let your hearts remain in doubt, for his grace will be with all of you, sustaining you and protecting you.” In this moment she is able to open their hearts to remember the good news. There is still a storm outside the door, but she draws them close to Jesus’ beating heart inside them and the Holy Spirit takes their fractured hearts and makes them one.
In the gospel of John, believing is an ongoing action. So is abiding. Just as we hear this gospel so that we will come to believe and keep one believing in all that is to come, today we are reminded to abide and keep on abiding with Jesus in all that is to come.  Because when we get far from Jesus, we stop believing that we are loved by Jesus. And when we stop believing in Jesus’ love, we find it hard to trust God’s word, or feel God’s heart beating with ours. It is then that we ask, where is Jesus? And tt is then that we do not love. And so Jesus reminds us again and again and again in grace: “Keep on trusting my word. Keep on trusting what I have revealed to you about myself and my Father and my work and love.” When we keep Jesus’ commandment close, we are keeping God’s vision and God’s presence close to our hearts. And then we see the world with the eye of that heart.
And friends, our world needs us to keep believing in and speaking and embodying God’s love language so that that love grows greater than anything else around it. May it be so. Amen.

Gospel Text: John 15:9-17
[Jesus said:] 9 “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”

Copyright Rev. Carolyn K. Hetrick, 2024 All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.


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