A sermon based upon John 14: 23-29
Dr. Charles J. Tomlin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Mother’s Day, Easter 6, May 9th, 2010
“A child wakes up in the night, perhaps from a bad dream. Finding himself surrounded by darkness, alone, beset by nameless threats, perhaps imaginary but to this child no less real. In this moment of sudden fear, when the trusted lines of reality and stability are blurred, the child cries out for his mother in terror.
In that moment, what any good mother will do is become “the high priestess of protected order”, says Sociologists, Dr. Peter Berger. This mother will take the child and cradle him, turn on a lamp, encircling the scene with a warm, glowing and reassuring light, and then she will speak or sing to the child, but the major content of the communication will always be the same: “Don’t be afraid---everything is in order, everything is all right. And if all goes well, the child will be reassured, his trust in reality will be recovered, and in this trust he will fall back asleep. (From Peter L. Berger, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatual, Doubleday, 1969, pp. 54-55).
“It will be alright.” This is what any good mother will routinely say to her frightened child. It’s a beautiful picture of what motherhood means: caring, nurturing and giving a child the kind of loving and trusting foundation so they can have the strength to face the “real” challenges of life and the world.
Today, in this text from John’s gospel, we encounter the “mothering” promises of God, which came from the lips of Jesus and were spoken to his own disciples in the night, just before he went to the cross. With all the fears, confusion, and doubts swelling up in their hearts, Jesus spoke some of the most reassuring words ever recorded in Scripture, beginning with these words echoing what any mother might say, “Let not your heart be troubled….” (John 14:1).
But can Jesus back up these words of comfort, hope and promise? Today’s Scripture, John 14: 23-29, is very much an answer to a question one of the disciples (Judas, but not Judas Iscariot who is already dead),put directly to Jesus. While hearing Jesus own words of promise, this disciple asked: “Lord, How is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?” (vs. 22). It is as if he was asking, “Jesus can you back up what you are promising when the whole world is against you and us? Why should we trust you?
WE ARE PEOPLE OF PROMISES MADE AND KEPT
Jesus’ answer begins with a reminder of who God has made us to be: a people of promise and hope. Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word….” (Vs. 23).
Do we realize that our human lives are made possible by the promises we make and keep? How would life be possible, in human terms, without both the making and the keeping of promises to God or to each other? Even if you take God out of the equation of our lives, as many are doing today, having a life worth living would still be practically impossible without people who make and keep the promises they make to each other. We become who we are by the promises we make and the promises we keep.
Once a sophomore student came to their advising professor, saying he was ready to drop out of college.
“Tell me what’s going on!”, the professor asked the student, taking a mothering role.
The student’s eyes became glassy as they longingly looked out the window and responded in a way the professor had heard before.
“Doc, I need to go out and find myself. Everyone expects me to be someone that I’m not. Friends, family, church and society, they’ve all got these expectations and definitions of who I’m supposed to be and what I’m supposed to do. I just need to get away from it all. I need to find the real me.”
This is when this professor turns directly to the student and talks a like a good mother:
“What if you after you’ve peel away all these layers of expectations that everyone has put on you and you find out you are an onion?
“An onion?” The student answers in bewilderment.
“I know you might think this sounds crazy, but what do you get when you peel away all the layers of an onion?” Nothing, right? An onion is nothing but the sum of its layers. Many people spend their whole lives trying to peel away “who they are” only to discover that there is no “real me” other than the commitments and promises we make and keep. (From Tony Campolo as told by Regan Clem in “Pulling Weeds Out of Potholes” from his blog entitled, www.regansravings.blogspot.com , April, 2010.)
We are an onion. We are the promises we make and keep to God and to each other. “If anyone loves me,” Jesus says, “he will keep my word.” At the very center of a mother’s love is the promise she makes to herself to care for the child even than she cares for herself. All the trust, reassurance, and stability a child needs to grow and become a healthy person is wrapped up in the gift of the mother’s promise. Without such a foundation of promises made and kept, children can become lost for a lifetime.
In the same way, the promises we continue to make and keep to God and in our human relationships make our world trusting, reassuring and stable place where humans can live and thrive. Even in anxious times, just like those we live in today, our future rests on the self-fulfilling promises that we make and keep with God and each other, because the promises we keep are the same promises that keep us.
But, as we all know, we live in a world that does not value the promise as it once did. Not only are promises more easily broken, but promises are being made less and less. We find people living together without promises. We find people even coming to church without joining or making any kind of promise to God. The whole national movement called “Promise Keepers” was really about the fact we have become a nation of “Promise Breakers”. And when we fail to make and keep the promises we make, not only do we keep peeling back the onion and finding less and less value in our souls, but we also find less value and worth in our world. What good is a world, a life, a family or a relationship filled with brokenness and the distrust that comes with failed promises? It’s kind of like owning an HD TV’s with their brilliant picture today. Just about the time they are able to make a near perfect TV, there’s very little of value to watch on it. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? In this world, just when we thought we had everything we wanted, without making and keeping promises to God and to each other, life can so very quickly become so much less than what life should be. The value of everything in our lives now and the hope we have for tomorrow, resides in the promises we make and keep.
THE GREATEST PROMISE IS IN THE PRESENCE
Jesus knew that his disciples could not trust the future without the “keeping of their promise”. But what Jesus says next matters even more. Jesus describes that the greatest promise of hope is found not in only in the words we keep and deeds we do, but the greatest source of stability, hope and trust comes in our promise to be there for each other. He says, ”Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” Trust is built on God being with us and our being there for each other. The promise is in the presence.
A promise is only as good as the one who backs it up with their presence. This is what child knows, though they might not always be able to verbalize it. The greatest promise a mother or parent fulfills with a child is to back up their words with their abiding presence. Without the abiding “presence”, the promises we make have no meaning or saving impact on our lives.
One of the most unforgettable parts of German culture, were the formal, serious way people make, keep and honored the promises they made, even in church membership. They made a big deal out of promises and presence. In America, when you join a church, you go take the pastor’s hand and say, “I want to join this church”, and that’s about it, unless there is some kind of new member class which follows. In happens this way in our churches, because to most people church membership is about choice, not promise. But in the German situation church membership is taken with more formality and seriousness. You don’t simply join a church by choice but by promise: you make promises to the congregation and the congregation makes promises to you.
What I found most intriguing was not just what the German Baptist did when they joined a church, but what happens when they decided to leave a church, whether it was for good or bad reasons. When you leave, you left visibly and honorably, coming before the church and allowing the church to bless your leaving so that it would be shown that even though you are leaving, you are not breaking your promise to God or to the church. That is how serious promise making and keeping was taken. You were not just making a promise, but you back it up with your presence. It was very much the same way, even if you just miss one Sunday. Because you promised to be there, you let someone know where you were, because it was always most important that your promise be backed up with a presence.
Interestingly, the Scripture calls the greatest human failure and the one unforgivable sin “the sin against the Holy Spirit. The greatest sin is not committed by doing great evil, but the greatest sin is a sin “against the presence”. Why is the greatest biblical sin the against the presence? It is in the presence that we find the greatest promise and hope and when we sin against the presence, especially God’s presence, there is no other hope.
We know, beyond any doubt, that without an abiding, stable, promising presence in their lives, a child will die. Of all the creatures on the earth, a human child is most vulnerable. Without this caring presence, they child will die physically or they will suffer extreme emotional, psychological and spiritual scars that can last a lifetime. But the “abiding presence” is not only important for the child, but for our whole lives. This is what God does to give his own disciples the assurance and trust they need. Jesus says in verses 25 and 26 (in the KJV translation): 26 But the Advocate (comforter, KJV), the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. (Joh 14:26 NRS). Even the promises of God or the promises we make to God are only made real through the abiding presence. God backs up his promise through his abiding presence through his Spirit and we are to back up our own promises by our own “abiding” with him and with each other.
Isn’t this what we need most to bring back trust, assurance and hope in these difficult, anxious and uncertain times? When we are not with each other and when we don’t keep our promises, we struggle to find the trust we need to build stable lives for ourselves and for our children? We don’t have to have the answers to the hardest questions, nor do we have to solve all the world’s problems, or have all the monies, securities and everything else we think we have to have. The truth is, we can live without many things, if we are really present with and for each other in his spirit and in his name. As someone has rightly said, “we are the promises we keep.” Nothing brings value, hope, trust and confidence, back into our lives more than backing up our promises with our presence. This is what God does for us, and it is what we must learn to do again for each other.
THE ABIDING PRESENCE IS WHAT BRINGS US PEACE
This is exactly what the mother did in Peter Berger’s story, isn’t it? When the child cried out in fear of the unknown, the known, or of the imaginary, the mother backed up her promise with her presence. Motherhood is more than anything else, an abiding presence. And it is this gift and blessing of “presence” we can carry in our heart and souls, even after our mothers are gone. The abiding “presence” we experience becomes the abiding “peace” that resides in our hearts and in our souls. This is what Jesus tells us when he says: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. (Joh 14:27 NRS).
A new book was released this week, telling the heart-breaking story two infertile couples in Michigan whose embryos got mixed up. When the expecting mother, Carolyn Savage was told of the mix up and that the child she was carrying belonged to another couple, Paul and Shannon Morell, who could imagine the pain, the hurt, and the disappointment both families experienced. What made this “Misconception” (the book’s title) a very tragic, but also a story of hope and redemption in the worst situation, is because the woman carrying the child was able to rise above the situation and do what was best for the child. The associated press reports that Carolyn Savage and her husband, Sean, never considered an abortion nor raising th child. She was willing to carry the child to birth and give that child back to its rightful parents. (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iincwiNQLlTKS517NfKEAMaBbFtgD9FDK29G3)
I can’t imagine the “right thing to do” being any harder than this. She made and kept this promise for the sake of a child she would not get to keep for herself. It was a situation still filled with hurt, but what you could also see rising up in this story was not just the pain, but also promise of peace. Since the couples were still friendly and talking to each other, the mother who received the child also made a promise to stay in contact. It was a situation where there was peace, even though there could have been so much hate, anger and strife.
Interestingly, the word “peace” in the Bible does not imply the absence of strife, war or pain. The Greek idea of “peace” is not dependent upon what’s happening around you, but it is a peace that flows from within. It is not the “state of the situation” which brings peace, but it is the “state of the soul” at peace in their hearts with both God and humanity. This is the kind of peace that cannot be taken away even when life hurts and hits us “below the belt”.
It is this kind of peace that we need in our own anxious, nervous, and frightful world. It is the kind of peace so beautifully visualize in promising presence of a mother’s love. Such life-giving promises we make to God and to each other are backed up by God’s own promises to us. When Jesus promises to abide with us, not just in words and deeds, but with his spiritual presence we can grow, live and even die with full trust and we don’t have to be afraid of the dark or the night. He is with us. He keeps his promise. We can have “his” peace, even when we can’t manufacture our own. Amen.
© 2010 All rights reserved Charles J. Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min.
© 2010 All rights reserved Charles J. Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min.
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