MAKES THE HEART GROW

John 15:26-16:15

In the movie Harold and Maude (one of my favorite movies, which came out in the 70s; I'm sure many of you have seen it) Harold, one of the main characters in the story, is a young man obsessed with death--he drives a hearse, and attends funerals in his spare time. And at one funeral he attends (he doesn't even knows the deceased), he meets the other main character, Maude, a woman whose advanced age belies her zest for life. They fall in love, and Harold, despite his obsession with death, gets a taste of life for the first time.

Toward the end of the movie, it comes time for Maude to die; she celebrates her death with great fanfare and joy, even while Harold is struck with grief.

In one of the final scenes of the movie, after Maude's death, we see Harold's hearse drive over a cliff. We presume Harold is inside. But it's only after the camera pans to the top of the cliff that we see that it's Harold, standing alone next to the edge, who has driven his hearse into the sea. We realize what a gift her death was to him; that it's in Maude's death--in her absence--that Harold is able to live.

In this passage from John, assigned for us to read on this Pentecost Sunday--the Sunday that marks and celebrates the birth of the church and the coming of the Holy Spirit--we confront a rather strange idea. In this farewell discourse of Jesus (the part of John in which he's saying goodbye to the disciples) he says basically that if the disciples are really to get what he's all about--if they are really to get his message, his teaching--then he needs to depart from them. He says that the only way the Spirit is going to come (he calls it "The Counselor") is if I go.

In other words, a paradox--the only way you'll see me is if you don't see me; the only way you'll get what this teaching is about is if I'm absent.

We've all heard that aphorism, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." Even though it's a cliche, I think it applies here; it's a biblical idea. The absence of Jesus is what makes the disciples hearts grow in the Spirit, that presence that helps them understand Jesus not just between their ears, but in their heart.

Have you ever had that experience? Often people do have that experience when they suffer the loss of a friend or loved one. When someone's is gone, we still have a relationship with that person, don't we? We have a different experience of that person through our memory of him or her. In some ways, we might even understand that person better in such a way--because of the distance that time gives, the clarity brought by our memory.

For example, my own father died about 12 years ago, but I find that I continue a relationship with him, even in my everyday life. He also was a Pastor, and there are times when I'll be doing something, and it will remind me somehow of my father--some thing that he did when he was alive, or some aspect of him. And often I find that in that moment, remembering such a thing, I have a new understanding of him--Ah, yes, I get it now, I might think. Now I know who you are. I understand in a way I never would in the moment, at the time when I was having the experience. It took me all that time, it took his absence, it took my memory, for me to understand.

Saint Augustine in his Confessions writes quite a lot about memory, and the part it plays in the development of faith. We don't understand Jesus right away; we don't experience the meaning of the gospel right away. We learn the Sunday School lessons about Jesus; we get knowledge in our heads. We may have a head-level faith. And then we have experiences in life--and the real meaning of those experiences in light of our faith may only become clear to us after the fact, later on, through our memory. In some ways, the only means by which we can understand God acting in our lives is in looking back, remembering events of our life in light of God's grace, which comes to us as the Spirit acting to move our understanding of faith from our head to our heart.

That may also be instructive for those of us in the crucible of parenting. As much as we wish our kids would "get it" right now, the things we're trying to teach them--it may be our greatest hope that they won't get it now. That when we launch them into life without us, if we've prepared them well, they will somehow experience and know, "Ah, now I get it. Now I know why you said that. Now I agree that you were right. Now I understand and know it in myself." But it's only through time, and your parental absence, and the experience of life that it makes sense.

A question we could ask ourselves today, then, is: do you want to see Jesus? Do we yearn to have an understanding of him that resides not just in our head, but travels also into our hearts--and the only real way we can get a clear picture of Jesus Christ is with both. But the good news I want to share today is this: it's OK if we don't get it at first. We probably won't get it at first. We may only get it intellectually, or perhaps not at all. Don't worry. Stay on the trail. Those words of the gospel you are hearing are working on you when you don't even know it. But while that is happening, the key is this: to invest your life in it--in this word, this teaching. To invest yourself in this community; to study the scriptures together, to practice the message together, to share our lives with one another. That's how we come to see and know it.

In a moment, we'll be taking communion together. This is a feast at which Jesus is the unseen host. That is our understanding. You may think that I, or Joan--one of us is the host at this table. Not so--we're just the servants. Jesus is the host, though we can't see him with our physical apparatus. And there are no doubt times when you take communion, and it's just bread and juice--just ordinary stuff. It's just some ordinary ritual we do together. But, if we say in our hearts, "I want to see, yes--I'd like to see Christ," if we invite him into our lives, we may find one day we're taking this bread and it's not just bread; we're drinking this cup and it's not just juice. Somehow the Spirit has entered into us through this ordinary stuff, and broken us open; and disclosed to us life. Somehow, on such a day as this, taking into us ordinary bread and juice, we might find ourselves strangely changed; we might find dwelling with us that Spirit that connects us intimately not only with the living--those around us--but with the unseen--the dead. We'll know we're part of that great throng stretching through the ages and into eternity who have been claimed by that spirit, by that great love, which we know in this bread and cup.

O Come, Holy Spirit, Counselor, come! Amen.

 

June 4, 2006

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