Sermon: 6th Sunday of Easter

Sermon: 6th Sunday of Easter

17 May 2020 – Archdeacon Mark Long

1 Peter 3:13-22 and John 14:15-21; NRSV

 

We gather today, apart yet together, as we have done every Sunday since lockdown began at the end of March. Communicating virtually is hard work, different and difficult when it consumes the bulk of our day. Like me, I’m sure you long for life to return to normal – and by normal I mean what life was rather than what life will be. This pandemic has fundamentally changed our lives and our future, and we live with the uncertainty of what that future will look like, and the frustration of having no control over what that future may be. Our uncertainty embraces many fears, and is underlined by the fact that we have no control over the present moment either. There are a variety of emotional responses that arise in us as we either embrace or avoid the realities of the moment, and speaking for myself this can be an inconsistent rollercoaster of emotion and feeling.

 

Scripture is a daily touchstone in the sea of my uncertainty. Journeying with the Eastertide weekday lections from Acts and John’s Gospel are a daily source of comfort, and also of hope. Today’s readings, too, are of similar comfort.

 

1 Peter is written to communities that find themselves dispersed, pilgrims not confined to homes as we are, but driven from them. Peter addresses them as, “… exiles of the Dispersion” (1:1), communities like you and I needing to mourn the certainties of the past and embrace the uncertainties of the future. What intrigues me in today’s passage, in the midst of the hardship, suffering, and difficulties that these communities endure, Peter encourages them to, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you” (3:15b). That word “hope” catches my attention: hope is an important mark of people of faith particularly in times of difficulty. It is not based on any surety of our daily reality – because there is none – but is based on the reality of our relationship with God and faith in God. Psalm 100 encourages us to “Know that the LORD is God. It is he that has made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture”(Psalm 100:3).

 

What is your account of the hope that is in you? Put perhaps more simply, what comfort do you find in a relationship with God? It’s quite possible that you’ve never really thought about it, but right now it is important that you do.

 

On my pre-ordination retreat in preparation for being made a Deacon I was given an exercise by my Spiritual Director that you may find helpful in exploring the nature of your relationship: simply put, it was to write an account of my awareness of God throughout my life. I remember initially being quite intimidated by the assignment, but subsequently surprised by the moments that came to mind, and at a point when I wasn’t sure I believed in infant baptism, realising that my baptism as a baby (as unaware of it as I had been at the time) had initiated my journey of faith in a very tangible way, and began a thread that I could trace through – at that point – the 24 years that defined my life. That sense of God’s presence that I discovered in a morning of writing has defined the foundation of my hope, and the 31 years since that defining insight have built on the foundation of awareness that it provided; and for which I am prepared to give account.

 

An awareness of God’s presence is so critical in difficult times: Jesus knew this, and in today’s reading from John’s Gospel, we experience him preparing the disciples for a time, soon to be upon them, when they will perceive that presence to be missing. In John’s Gospel Jesus speaks of the Spirit as “Advocate”, a term that may take your mind – as it does mine – along a legal path, perhaps seeing the Spirit as the one who will plead our case before God in the hope of a merciful judgement. I am amazed at how easily my mind takes me down that path in the context of a section of John’s Gospel where God’s love is emphasised so strongly? I am loved by God, as are you: there is no need to fear judgement.

 

So what then is the nature of the Spirit’s advocacy? Jesus speaks of “… another Advocate” (14:16) suggesting that Jesus himself has been our advocate, not in the legal sense but rather as the one who makes the case to us for God’s love, a love to be given without restraint through Jesus’ death and resurrection: a love that creates genuine life. The role of the Spirit is to convince us of the truth of this love and the life it engenders, to give us assurance of God’s presence in our lives for no other reason, perhaps, than that God loves us: deeply, fully, completely. Jesus says, “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (14:20).

 

So what does it mean to hope from a faith perspective? Sometimes it comes across as false-optimism, especially when people – whose only reference is material reality – demand we account for our hope, and especially if we haven’t fully thought through our own experience. Do the exercise I encouraged earlier: I am happy to chat through it with you once you have (virtually, of course).

 

What we hopefully begin to see in light of today’s readings from 1 Peter and John’s Gospel is that while we are tempted to seek our security and hope in our material reality and world, faith calls us to seek out our security and hope in the reality of relationship: “… I am in my father, and you in me, and I in you” (14:20b). From a faith perspective relationship defines us, not material reality. That’s not to say material reality doesn’t impact on us, often in harsh and chaotic ways – for it does – and we know that. However, it is in relationship with God that we are truly defined and formed, that our essence is affirmed and strengthened.

 

Human relationships can be difficult, sometimes even breaking, but also good and life-giving. Relationships do define us in ways the material world never truly can, and when we experience deep and caring relationships with other human beings we find the struggles of everyday life and survival so much easier to navigate. I have struggled increasingly over the past 25 years with a sense of growing isolation as my and Dawn’s close family have progressively left these African shores, but one of the gifts of an effective global lockdown has been that family events have been celebrated via Zoom, and Dawn and I have been able to participate in a couple of family birthday celebrations in the UK, and we sat down to drinks with Dawn’s sister and her husband in Canada a couple of weeks back: for us these have been the gift of Lockdown. Not that any of this was not possible before, but in lockdown it is a common and uniting experience.

 

What today’s Scriptures remind us is that just as our human relationships are defining, even more defining is our spirituality (or lack of it). The call of faith is to a divine relationship that undergirds and strengthens all that we are, and that as we learn to increasingly embrace God and love God with all that we are, so we are empowered to love our neighbour as we ourselves are loved: deeply, fully, completely. This is our hope: to this we give account!

 

I once again close with a prayer from Padráig Ó Tuama’s wonderful book Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community:

 

Jesus, you shared peace

around a table of anxiety, 

peace with the bread, peace with the wine, 

peace in the face of the uncertain, 

peace in the place of pain. 

May we share tables of peace 

in places of pain, 

sharing food and friendship 

and words and life. 

Because you came to a fearful world 

and found your place 

around those tables. 

Amen.