Easter ends today.\u00a0 Endings are never easy.\u00a0 Leave-taking is hard.\u00a0 Something deep down in us resists mightily the move from presence to absence.\u00a0 We struggle when we move from active life to retirement, whatever that is.\u00a0 And I can tell you that the life-force in a human body is incredibly strong, even when the flesh of the body has worn itself out.\u00a0\u00a0 We don\u2019t want life as we know it to end\u2014whether it be our own, or the life of those we loved, or the life of our previous activities, or some rich and wonderful experience.\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, we resist\u2026wanting to hold on to what has gone before.<\/p>\n
But life is not ours to possess, but to use as best we can in the days that are allotted to us and among the people with whom we, by whatever chance, find ourselves living.<\/p>\n
Goodbyes are crucial for life\u2019s wholeness. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Goodbyes are a reminder of the transience of life, and that transience is a good thing. Nothing comes to stay. It\u2019s appropriate that we say goodbye, and that we do that with an open and willing heart, else we cannot live either in the present nor plan to live into our futures.<\/p>\n
All of our Gospel lessons throughout this season of Easter have come from the Gospel of John.\u00a0\u00a0 Things move along at a pretty good clip until you get to these four chapters between chapters 13 and 17.\u00a0\u00a0 Here things slow down to a crawl as Jesus bids his friends and disciples farewell.\u00a0 This gospel began with the declaration that \u201cthe Word became flesh and lived among us\u201d <\/em>(John 1:14), and now it ends with Jesus saying goodbye.\u00a0 His goodbye is crucial for his followers.<\/p>\n John drags Jesus\u2019 departure out so long that it can be said to be the problem in this gospel:\u00a0 Jesus, the one who called us, taught us, turned water into wine, raised the dead, became our good Shepherd, is leaving us.\u00a0 All four chapters take place on a long, sorrowful evening in spring, in a garden, a garden where Jesus is soon to be arrested and taken away to death\u2014the ultimate ending and departure.<\/p>\n Here on this last Sunday of the year, if we take a good look at the Church (capital C\u2014meaning the whole church), the absence of Jesus all these long centuries expresses itself in all our terrible dysfunctionality and the powerful witness of love.<\/p>\n But Jesus, trusting those whom he leaves behind, prays that the world\u2014that is all the future generations who may not believe\u2014may come to faith because of the witness of the his followers.\u00a0 He prays for the church\u2014that\u2019s all of us together, as a corpus.\u00a0 He trusts the community, the unity of God and himself and the believers.\u00a0\u00a0 This understanding of unity points to the fact that we are all equal to one another.\u00a0\u00a0 Christ is in US.\u00a0 I can\u2019t be in Christ without also recognizing that \u201cyou\u201d are in Christ, too.<\/p>\n At the moment of leave-taking, Jesus prays for us.\u00a0 WE are the community for whom Jesus prays\u2026.and THAT shapes the church, our life together, and our work together.\u00a0 We are not a collection of individuals, but gathered together here, we are something greater than the absence we think we feel at all the losses of this life.\u00a0 We are connected forever with him, and with God.<\/p>\n He prays that we will be one, as he and his Abba, his word for God, are one.<\/p>\n Not long ago a friend and member of one of my former congregations sent me a little vignette, about a visitor who decided, one Sunday, to go to church.\u00a0\u00a0 He arrived in good time, and so took a convenient parking place.\u00a0 Just as he was getting out of his car, a driver clearly looking for a parking spot began to yell at him that he had taken his parking spot.\u00a0\u00a0 The visitor shrugged, and went into the church.\u00a0\u00a0 He looked around a took a seat, near the rear, so as not to stand out.\u00a0\u00a0 Shortly,\u00a0 a couple arrived, and began to berate him that he had taken their pew.\u00a0 He shrugged and moved over to give the couple their seat.\u00a0\u00a0 Later in the service, \u00a0as the congregation was praying for Christ to dwell among them,\u00a0 the visitor stood up, and his appearance began to change.\u00a0\u00a0 Scars became visible on his hands and on his sandaled feet.\u00a0 Someone from the congregation noticed him and called out, ‘What happened to you?’ The visitor replied, as his hat became a crown of\u00a0 thorns, and a tear\u00a0 fell from his eye, ‘I took your place’.<\/p>\n Now that little story is a bit on the hoky side, but it contains a sad message to the church.\u00a0\u00a0 Jesus prayed that we would have the love in us that he had shared with God.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And lots of times we do\u00a0 have that love.<\/p>\n Yesterday, I spoke to a group of\u00a0 women at First Presbyterian Church, as they celebrated the birthday of their women\u2019s organization.\u00a0\u00a0 Each women\u2019s circle gave a report, and I heard of how a group of 15 women raised $2200 for various local mission projects; of how another circle made birthday cakes for the girls at the Florence Crittenden home for unwed mothers, girls who had never in their lives had a birthday cake or a birthday celebration.\u00a0\u00a0 Day in and day out, Christians do these sorts of things, but our public image has really gotten bad of late.<\/p>\n So here\u2019s another experiment for you to try in the coming week, as part of your faith journey.\u00a0 The idea came from a blog by another pastor, Dan Clendenin, called:\u00a0 \u201cJourneys with Jesus:\u00a0 Notes To Myself.\u201d\u00a0 Pastor Dan suggested that it would be instructive to learn how non-church-goers might respond\u2014and remember that 80% of young adults in their 20s do NOT go to church these days\u2014if asked what they think of Christians.\u00a0 Pastor Dan reported about an experiment given a psychology class at a major university:\u00a0 students were asked to find someone whom they feared, and to try to get to know them.\u00a0\u00a0 Here\u2019s the kicker:\u00a0 a full 40% of the students said that they feared Christians.\u00a0\u00a0 Pastor Clendenin notes in his blog that \u201cWhether we like it or not, we have been branded in these ways by a culture that for the most part sees the church primarily outside of the mainstream of current life.”\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Clendenin notes how \u201cNew Testament scholar Marcus Borg of Oregon State University, in a footnote to his book The Heart of Christianity<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0 says that when he asks his unchurched university students to write a short essay about their impressions of Christianity, \u201cthey consistently use five adjectives: they think Christians are literalistic, anti-intellectual, self-righteous, judgmental, and bigoted.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If we were to do a survey of all Christians, I\u2019m afraid that the majority would reveal just those characteristics.\u00a0 We have a terrible branding problem!<\/p>\n That branding problem says we Christians have forgotten the promise of Jesus to be with us always, to the end of the age, Matthew\u2019s Gospel tells us. \u00a0The book of Revelation ends with the last best word that the Gospel really has for the whole world. Apparently,\u00a0 we Christians just haven\u2019t been very good at sharing it.\u00a0\u00a0 It ends with an invitation:\u00a0 \u201cThe Spirit and the bride, say, \u2018Come.\u2019 And let EVERYONE who is thirsty come.\u00a0 Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.\u201d\u00a0 And then, in a prayer, the writer prays:\u00a0 Come, Lord Jesus.\u00a0\u00a0 And the Bible ends with these words:\u00a0 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s the goodbye gift from the testimony of Scripture.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s the word of love that abides with us, as God\u2019s love lived in Jesus, and so is given to us to give to the world.\u00a0 And that\u2019s a \u201chello\u201d\u00a0 message to each one of us, a message of forgiveness, of hope.\u00a0 And it\u2019s a message that we have to give to the disbelieving world.<\/p>\n I\u2019m pretty sure that if we held on to that last best word as our guide and vision for what it means to be Christians, we might begin to change our branding problem, and\u2026like the people of the Way of long ago, we might turn our world upside down.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Amen.\u00a0 Come Lord Jesus!<\/p>\n Texts:\u00a0 Psalm 97; \u00a0Rev. 22:12-21; \u00a0John 17:20-26 Prayer:\u00a0 O God, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and the longing of our hearts, by the words of my mouth and in the meditations of our hearts.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n![\"Share](\"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-content\/plugins\/add-to-facebook-plugin\/facebook_share_icon.gif\" "\\"Share"){kind=icon}
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