Sermon for May 7, 2023 – The Fifth Sunday of Easter
When I was fourteen-year-old, I had the opportunity to offer a short reflection, a homily if you will, to a group of youth from across the Diocese of Massachusetts who were gathered for a day-long retreat; for youth, led by youth. Because I was part of the planning team, I was asked by our adult clergy mentor if I wanted to “offer a few words” on the heart, using these verses from our gospel this morning. I still remember my angst-riddled and audacious adolescent sermon title: “A Cure for Heart Dis-ease;” what I though was a clever play on the word disease. As a teen, I was excited because I thought that my word study on “troubled” in Jesus’ opening words had cleverly revealed the distress of the disciples: it was the anxiety of their hearts on that night that kept them from hearing Jesus give final instructions, and how we as teens must not be afraid to follow our hearts, and to not always believe what our minds can convince us as truth. However, my title was, perhaps, more of a confession of my own nervousness at preaching to my peers on matters of the heart. Because honestly, at fourteen, what did I really know about the workings of the heart?
The disciples who gather with Jesus for the farewell meal in that Upper Room almost certainly have a measure of heartburn. Their hearts are torn and disquieted. They are broken as they hear Jesus say a long and final good-bye. They have been following Jesus since he began his public ministry, nearly three years long, but they are, at best, adolescent in their understanding of his message and mission. They are not able to comprehend that their lived theology is about to radically change. They have been looking for a Messiah and believe that they have found him. They believe their Messiah to be immortal, but he is about to be executed. They have a vision of a messianic strongman who will liberate the people from occupation, but he is about to be seemingly defeated by oppression and corruption. They believe that the Messiah will usher in an eternal kingdom of peace, but they are about to experience horror and suffering beyond their most terrified imaginations. Adolescent indeed. The scales have not yet fallen from their eyes, for they see only in part, as in a mirror dimly.
So, how does the heart feast at the banquet table of disappoint, and death? These verses are often used as a passage of comfort and support to families and mourners at funeral and memorial services, but the disciples of the text find no balm in Jesus words. They do not know it yet, but it is not just Jesus who is saying farewell; his crucifixion will mean the death of how they understand the messianic message and their mission. All that they have hoped for throughout their lives, which they have believed has come to fruition in Jesus, will soon be nailed to a cross. It will be a long time before they realize that the messianic message is eternal, even if the Messiah is not immortal. Death will have neither the last nor the lasting word.
With post-Easter eyes, it might be easy to skip to the last chapters of the Gospel instead of wading through three chapters of Jesus’ farewell. It is easy to say, “we know how this ends, so why delve too deeply into these words?”
As part of my training for the priesthood, I was required to take a course in Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE for short. The course is essentially a summer internship in a hospital or some other clinical setting, like a prison, where we are given the opportunity to learn how to be a chaplain, to listen and be present to those in time of unique crises. As I was in a general program, i.e. not specifically focused on oncology or pediatrics wards, I witnessed the full range of human life and death. I was invited into rooms to pray with new parents. I visited patients who were struggling with chronic illnesses and wondering where God was in the midst of their suffering. I was in the ER for drunken car crash, after drunken car crash, after drunken car crash where some lived and others did not. I even prayed over two people as their life support was removed. I was learning how to be present to those in need across the full spectrum of life. I was learning how to be the hands, feet, and face of Jesus to those who needed it most. Even if Jesus could not be seen, he was there in each of those moments; beside me, in me, working through me.
This is precisely where the disciples find themselves. They are unwittingly about to be simultaneously dispatched as both hospice chaplain and midwife. The words of Jesus are their primer. When their hopeful visions for a just and peaceful messianic kingdom melt in the crucible, the hearts of the disciples will be diseased, and their anxiety will be blinding. More than Jesus’ body will perish; a hospice chaplain is needed in that upper room as the disciples’ understanding of the mission of Jesus, and of themselves, passes away.
As with all death, with all change, comes new life. The settings of a midwife and a hospice chaplain are startlingly similar. As the new is birthed, something dies and that which is eternal can find its full nativity only in death. In both the maternity wing and the hospice room, the family is changed, all things are being made new. Birth and death are but the bookends of a shelf full of stories of transformation; birth and death are repeating cycles in the narrative of our lives. Visions of who we are and are becoming give us life, even as a previous sense of our self dies. And yet, when we find ourselves in these moments, even as Christ is leading us, we all too often echo Thomas in asking “how can we know the way if we do not know where God is going”; with Philip we claim that we will be “satisfied if we can just see.” The role of midwife and the hospice chaplain is to be fully present, even as they and we, cannot see and do not know what comes next in the narrative of life.
The disciples want to cling to the perceived safety of location. They want to know where Jesus is going and how to go there with him. Throughout the Gospel of John, location is used as a metaphor for the intimacy of a close relationship. The sheep are kept close to the shepherd; Jesus is proximal to the heart of God. As they are sitting in the room sharing the feast of loss, John’s Jesus attempts to assure them that there will be a place with plenty of rooms for them; the relationship is going to continue, even as it changes. They will not be abandoned. They will not be forgotten.
The opening imperative of the Farewell Discourse is not just an affective command. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” is a direction to the disciples’ will. It is a command to stand firm, even when their courage fails them. Jesus knows that they will need their heart more than ever because their eyes may also fail them.
At one point in the timeless children’s classic The Little Prince, the main the character, the Little Prince, develops a deep loving relationship with a fox. In fact, he tamed the fox in order to create this deep bond between them, and when the time comes for the Little Prince to leave the fox, the Little Prince is heartbroken. Like the disciples, he is sad and hesitant to leave the fox in order to continue the journey towards the one he loves that was set before him. Like the disciples, the Little Prince is stuck between going and leaving, love and pain, and so to comfort and encourage the Little Prince the fox says, “Here is my secret. It’s quite simple. One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”
And so too, the disciples find themselves in a liminal space, as soon they will no longer be in the relative safety of having Jesus among them to show the way, but not yet in that place to confidently proclaim the risen Christ with all their heart. Doorframes are liminal places: a space between rooms, a portal from the outside to the inside. And though they cannot see it or even comprehend it yet, Jesus will return, and the Comforter will come to cure their broken hearts.
So it is for us, when we find ourselves in the disciples shoes; when we find ourselves in a liminal space, an in-between period of our lives, take heart, though we may not see him, Jesus is with us. And in times like that, remember the words of Jesus, “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” and remember the words of the Little Prince, “One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.” Amen.
