William H. Willimon - "I Will Not Leave You Desolate" (May 21, 1995)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | It begins with a question. | 0:11 |
One of Jesus' followers ask, | 0:16 | |
"Lord, how will you reveal yourself to us | 0:21 | |
"and not to the world?" | 0:26 | |
And when you think about it, isn't that your question too? | 0:31 | |
Isn't that what brought you here this morning? | 0:38 | |
You. | 0:41 | |
You want to see Jesus. | 0:42 | |
You. | 0:45 | |
In this world with all of its cares and concerns | 0:47 | |
it's easy to become distracted, blinded, not to see. | 0:51 | |
And so we ask with the disciples, "Lord, | 0:58 | |
"how will you reveal yourself to us? | 1:02 | |
"How will we have you among us?" | 1:06 | |
Today's gospel from John: | 1:12 | |
They asked, "Lord, how is it that you will reveal | 1:17 | |
"yourself to us and not to the world?" | 1:20 | |
Jesus answered, "Those who love me will keep my word | 1:23 | |
"and my Father will love them and we will come to them | 1:29 | |
"and make home with them. | 1:33 | |
"Whoever does not love me | 1:37 | |
"and does not keep my words. | 1:38 | |
"The word that you hear | 1:41 | |
"is not mine but is from the Father who sent me. | 1:43 | |
"I have said these things to you while I am still with you. | 1:47 | |
"But the advocate, the helper, the Holy Spirit, | 1:52 | |
"whom the Father will send in my name | 1:56 | |
"will teach you everything, will remind | 1:59 | |
"you of all I have said to you. | 2:01 | |
"Peace I leave with you. | 2:05 | |
"My peace I give to you. | 2:08 | |
"I do not give peace | 2:11 | |
"to you as the world gives. | 2:12 | |
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. | 2:16 | |
"Do not let them be afraid. | 2:19 | |
"You heard me say to you, | 2:22 | |
"I am going away and I am coming to you. | 2:24 | |
"If you love me, you would rejoice that I am | 2:28 | |
"going to the Father because the Father is greater than I. | 2:30 | |
"And now I have told you this before it occurs | 2:36 | |
"so that when it does occur, you might believe." | 2:40 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 2:47 | |
- | Thanks be to God. | 2:51 |
- | Easter didn't seem to last long this year. | 2:55 |
There was a time in the church when the church would speak | 3:01 | |
of the great 50 days of Easter, | 3:03 | |
the great 50 days of triumphal celebration, | 3:08 | |
of the great reign of God begun at Easter. | 3:12 | |
But this year, Easter seemed to last | 3:18 | |
hardly three days. | 3:23 | |
For it was on the Wednesday after Easter, | 3:27 | |
just three days after Easter, that the earth heaved | 3:29 | |
and shook and a building crashed into blood | 3:33 | |
and death and desolation. | 3:38 | |
It was a short Easter. | 3:43 | |
And now it's hard to believe that we're, | 3:48 | |
that we're just six Sundays from Easter, | 3:53 | |
because it seems much longer. | 3:58 | |
Seems a long time since crowds packed in here | 4:03 | |
and there were triumphal trumpets | 4:07 | |
and banging tympani proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus. | 4:09 | |
From now on when you think back to April 1995, | 4:17 | |
I don't think you're gonna think about lilies | 4:24 | |
and white garments. | 4:26 | |
You will think about the obscenity | 4:28 | |
of chaos and destruction. | 4:32 | |
You will see a bloody child | 4:36 | |
carried from the ruin, a bombed out hulk of a building. | 4:38 | |
And that's a long way from Easter. | 4:45 | |
Joy is always such a fragile emotion. | 4:53 | |
Joy lasts not long, even the deepest, most deep-throated joy | 4:57 | |
is hard to sustain. | 5:02 | |
With time it wilts. | 5:05 | |
Time. | 5:09 | |
Time is the great destroyer. | 5:12 | |
I watch them every year at graduation. | 5:17 | |
I listen to them. | 5:19 | |
And they always say things like, | 5:21 | |
"Oh, we're going to keep in touch. | 5:22 | |
"We'll always stay friends just like we are here at Duke. | 5:24 | |
"I'll call you as soon as I get to L.A. | 5:29 | |
"We'll keep in touch." | 5:32 | |
Young fools. | 5:37 | |
Don't they know that nothing, not even the deepest, | 5:38 | |
best friendship can remain untouched by time? | 5:42 | |
Nothing withstands the ravages of space, time | 5:47 | |
and the dissolution that comes on with distance. | 5:52 | |
The desolation. | 5:59 | |
Child psychologists tell us that that's one reason | 6:03 | |
that the little baby loves | 6:07 | |
to play peek-a-boo, because for the little child | 6:09 | |
when you're out of sight, you are, you're not only | 6:15 | |
out of mind, you're out of existence. | 6:18 | |
You're no longer there. | 6:21 | |
Thus, when the face goes away | 6:23 | |
from the crib and then reappears saying, "Peek-a-boo," | 6:26 | |
the child cackles with delight, | 6:29 | |
because when the face is gone, as far as the child | 6:32 | |
is concerned, you're gone. | 6:35 | |
You no longer exist. | 6:37 | |
The child laughs at the delight of unexpected reappearance. | 6:41 | |
Adults no longer delight at peek-a-boo, it is said, | 6:47 | |
because as we grow older we learn that just because someone | 6:51 | |
is not physically present doesn't mean that that person | 6:56 | |
no longer exists. | 7:00 | |
Just because a person is no longer | 7:03 | |
standing right there in front of you doesn't mean | 7:05 | |
that that person is dead. | 7:08 | |
As you grow up, it is said, | 7:11 | |
you learn to deal with space. | 7:13 | |
You learn to accept and to understand time. | 7:15 | |
I'm not so sure. | 7:26 | |
Maybe the older you get, the may, the more you learn | 7:29 | |
to respect the ravages of time. | 7:32 | |
I know when my mother died, I can remember promising | 7:39 | |
to myself, "I will not forget that face, | 7:43 | |
"those hands that, I will not forget that precise, | 7:46 | |
"particular way she was here with us." | 7:49 | |
But you do forget. | 7:57 | |
We human beings are rather pitiful | 8:00 | |
in our inability to fix in the brain someone forever. | 8:03 | |
You let them leave us | 8:10 | |
and it is not long before we know we really have lost them. | 8:13 | |
Time. | 8:20 | |
Time, the great obliterator, the great destroyer. | 8:22 | |
Time. | 8:25 | |
And so when Jesus announces to his disciples, | 8:29 | |
"I am going away. | 8:32 | |
"I'm leaving you." | 8:34 | |
They are, as we would be, they are desolate. | 8:35 | |
"I'm going to leave you." | 8:43 | |
To have had Jesus, to have touched the full | 8:46 | |
glory of God in Jesus, now to be left by him? | 8:49 | |
Desolation. | 8:56 | |
You'll find that a great, vast part | 9:00 | |
of the Gospel of John is consumed with this issue | 9:03 | |
of I'm getting ready to go away. | 9:07 | |
I won't leave you desolate. | 9:09 | |
Most of John's Gospel is consumed | 9:13 | |
with Jesus saying good-bye. | 9:16 | |
"I will not leave you desolate." | 9:20 | |
That's exactly what Jesus promises, but yet, | 9:23 | |
how can Jesus promise that? | 9:27 | |
Now comes time, the great destroyer, | 9:30 | |
the obliterator of memory, | 9:34 | |
the devastator of friendship and joy and all the rest. | 9:37 | |
Jesus promises. | 9:43 | |
"My Father and I will come and," | 9:45 | |
here's a beautiful phrase, "We will come | 9:48 | |
"and we will make a home with you." | 9:51 | |
Jesus's promise, "I will send you a helper. | 9:58 | |
"I will send you an advocate, | 10:02 | |
"a helper, the Holy Spirit, who will remind | 10:04 | |
"you of all that I have said to you." | 10:08 | |
This Holy Spirit is going to be a reminder, a helper. | 10:13 | |
If you have come here this morning to church, | 10:22 | |
wanting to see Jesus, wanting to be with Him, | 10:25 | |
then what shall I offer you in your yearning? | 10:29 | |
We ask with Jesus' disciples, "Lord, how will we, | 10:34 | |
"how are you going to reveal yourself to us?" | 10:38 | |
I really think that was his question. | 10:44 | |
That was his question when he met me for breakfast | 10:47 | |
in the U room in the spring. | 10:49 | |
He asked me, smart, young thing that he was, | 10:54 | |
"How can I be sure that this is true? | 10:57 | |
"How can I know that the things | 11:03 | |
"you people say about Jesus are really true? | 11:05 | |
"How do we know that these things really happened? | 11:09 | |
"It's a wonderful story, I'll admit. | 11:13 | |
"But is it true?" | 11:15 | |
Now, how was I supposed to answer? | 11:22 | |
Did it really happen? | 11:27 | |
"How can I know that it is historically true?" | 11:31 | |
Who told him that was the most important question | 11:34 | |
to ask of Jesus? | 11:38 | |
Oh yes, that's right. | 11:41 | |
He is a student. | 11:42 | |
He has been taught. | 11:45 | |
He has been taught here that history, | 11:47 | |
history is that mighty means | 11:49 | |
whereby we are able to retrieve the past, | 11:52 | |
whereby that which is past is made, is recovered | 11:55 | |
and retrieved and made available | 11:59 | |
and fixed, rendered presence. | 12:01 | |
All you've got to do is study history. | 12:04 | |
You take a Bible course here, | 12:08 | |
you'll take it from someone who is principally a historian. | 12:10 | |
And that's why, when he asked me | 12:16 | |
about Jesus, he asked me about history. | 12:19 | |
"How do I know that it really happened | 12:22 | |
"the way you say it happened?" | 12:25 | |
My Lord, what a sham. | 12:30 | |
History. | 12:32 | |
What was Jesus really, really like? | 12:35 | |
Did he do those wonderful things or not? | 12:40 | |
Is it all historically true? | 12:45 | |
We've been taught that history, | 12:47 | |
history is all that really counts. | 12:49 | |
History. | 12:53 | |
I told him, "Look, we don't even know | 12:56 | |
"who Eisenhower was, much less Jesus." | 12:58 | |
I can name you four books right now | 13:05 | |
on Martin Luther King. | 13:08 | |
Four books on the life of Martin Luther King | 13:11 | |
and all of them are different. | 13:13 | |
None of them agree on who Martin Luther King really was. | 13:18 | |
He's only been gone from us two decades. | 13:22 | |
What history gives back to us of the past | 13:28 | |
is rather small potatoes. | 13:33 | |
History is hardly anything worth basing your life upon. | 13:37 | |
History. | 13:44 | |
We're learning how tricky it is. | 13:46 | |
I remember the distinguished Yale historian, | 13:48 | |
C. Vann Woodward, saying to a class, | 13:51 | |
"Any American history, no matter how well-written, | 13:54 | |
"any American history which is written before 1960 is wrong. | 13:58 | |
"You people are going to have to rewrite | 14:04 | |
"all American history." | 14:06 | |
Well, some of you were around in 1960 | 14:10 | |
and you know what he's talking about. | 14:13 | |
It was like after 1960 our past changed. | 14:15 | |
Our history got seen differently. | 14:20 | |
The whole story had to be retold if it | 14:23 | |
was to be told with any kind of validity. | 14:25 | |
Suddenly, what we thought was past | 14:32 | |
was just crumbled into dust and had to be redone. | 14:35 | |
"I am going to leave you now," the risen Jesus | 14:39 | |
says to his despondent disciples, | 14:44 | |
"but I am not going to leave you desolate. | 14:46 | |
I'm going to give you history. | 14:50 | |
I'm gonna give you a book of history, | 14:53 | |
a record of who I am and what I've done | 14:55 | |
that is going to be so obviously irrefutably true, | 14:58 | |
so undeniably accurate that you will | 15:02 | |
always have me with you. | 15:05 | |
All you have to do is just open up the book. | 15:06 | |
You'll know. | 15:09 | |
Now, and you've come here this morning wanting to see Jesus, | 15:13 | |
wanting to get close to Jesus. | 15:19 | |
"Lord, how will you reveal yourself to us?" | 15:21 | |
Now you know, don't you, | 15:30 | |
that this episode from the Gospel of John was written down | 15:31 | |
by Jesus' disciples at a time long after Jesus | 15:35 | |
was with them in the flesh. | 15:41 | |
Nobody was there taking down dictation. | 15:44 | |
It was written long after Easter. | 15:47 | |
It was written by somebody after Easter. | 15:50 | |
I don't know how long after Easter it was. | 15:54 | |
I don't know whether six years or six years. | 15:56 | |
I don't know how long it was before they wrote | 15:59 | |
this down in the Gospel. | 16:01 | |
Even Richard Hayes doesn't know | 16:03 | |
how long it was when they wrote this down. | 16:04 | |
But it was after Easter. | 16:10 | |
You see my point? | 16:13 | |
It was the same time as your time. | 16:15 | |
After Easter. | 16:18 | |
That's kind of the only time | 16:21 | |
we've ever had with Jesus is after Easter. | 16:22 | |
He was no longer with them as Jesus. | 16:25 | |
He was gone, ascended, they believed, | 16:28 | |
to sit with the Father. | 16:31 | |
And yet, they heard him say, | 16:33 | |
"My Father and I are gonna come with you | 16:35 | |
"and be at home with you. | 16:38 | |
"I'm gonna send you a helper, the Holy Spirit." | 16:40 | |
Now how could his disciples believe that? | 16:47 | |
So long after Easter. | 16:50 | |
How could they believe that? | 16:55 | |
They didn't write this as future expectation. | 16:59 | |
They wrote this as present experience. | 17:02 | |
They could write, "I'm going to come home with you." | 17:06 | |
because Jesus was with them. | 17:09 | |
How could they write that? | 17:12 | |
Well, they had these words. | 17:16 | |
And words are fine | 17:19 | |
as far as they go. | 17:20 | |
Some of you, I bet, have read | 17:24 | |
in the newspaper about the Jesus Seminar. | 17:25 | |
The Jesus Seminar. | 17:28 | |
A bunch of middle-aged professors sitting | 17:30 | |
around voting on the Gospels in the Jesus Seminar. | 17:33 | |
And what they do, a verse from the Gospels is read | 17:37 | |
and then they pass around a box with marbles in it. | 17:40 | |
A white ball means Jesus said it. | 17:47 | |
A red ball means Jesus might have said this on a bad day. | 17:51 | |
And a black ball means there's no way somebody like Jesus | 17:55 | |
would have ever said anything like that. | 18:00 | |
And, and you see what they're doing. | 18:03 | |
They're hoping to just peel away | 18:04 | |
all this history and hearsay, | 18:06 | |
just get that thing peeled down to the 30 or 60 verses | 18:08 | |
that Jesus actually, really, undoubtedly said. | 18:12 | |
We will have Him thereby fixed on the page for all time. | 18:18 | |
You won't have to buy such a large Bible. | 18:22 | |
It will be a very small Bible. | 18:24 | |
It'll just be those that got a white ball | 18:26 | |
when the verse was passed around. | 18:30 | |
He will be there, fixed. | 18:32 | |
Of course, the problem with the Jesus Seminar | 18:38 | |
is the Jesus that comes out | 18:39 | |
of the Jesus Seminar sounds suspiciously like | 18:41 | |
a middle-aged member of the Department of Religion. | 18:43 | |
(audience laughs) | 18:48 | |
And besides, where did the Jesus Seminar get the idea | 18:51 | |
that we worship words anyway. | 18:54 | |
We don't worship words. | 18:57 | |
I'm in the word business. | 18:59 | |
That's all I've got, words. | 19:00 | |
I think the world of words, but let me tell you, | 19:03 | |
you can't worship words. | 19:06 | |
You can't follow words. | 19:08 | |
You can't. | 19:09 | |
The words of Jesus, no matter | 19:11 | |
how authentic, will not release your energies | 19:13 | |
to go out and follow Jesus. | 19:15 | |
It wouldn't make you want to die for Jesus. | 19:18 | |
You don't want words. | 19:22 | |
You want Jesus. | 19:23 | |
And that's what John says we get. | 19:29 | |
The Father and the Son at home with us. | 19:33 | |
The Holy Spirit. | 19:38 | |
The helper. | 19:40 | |
That's the reason you will note in our worship, | 19:43 | |
we always have a prayer for illumination | 19:45 | |
before we ever read the Scripture. | 19:48 | |
Prayer for illumination. | 19:50 | |
Look at it, what is it? | 19:51 | |
It's a prayer for the Holy Spirit | 19:53 | |
to make these words stand up, | 19:57 | |
walk around and move in with us. | 19:59 | |
You're here looking for Jesus. | 20:03 | |
Or more accurately, each one of you has gotten the notion | 20:08 | |
that Jesus is out looking for you. | 20:11 | |
He has come to you. | 20:15 | |
He has helped you. | 20:17 | |
And in a way, you're not here to get close to Jesus. | 20:20 | |
But you're here because he's gotten close to you. | 20:26 | |
You're here because Easter isn't over. | 20:28 | |
He went in for surgery and loving family and friends | 20:37 | |
rallied around him such as he'd never known before. | 20:42 | |
But the night before his surgery, late at night, | 20:48 | |
when everybody went home and he was left alone to lie | 20:52 | |
on that hospital bed and wait for dawn, | 20:55 | |
wait for that long journey from the room down to the OR. | 20:58 | |
He was alone. | 21:04 | |
You have to do it alone. | 21:08 | |
He was alone as never before. | 21:10 | |
Was he desolate? | 21:14 | |
No. | 21:17 | |
He felt a great sense of peace. | 21:18 | |
He knew that he was not alone. | 21:24 | |
It was as if someone was standing there beside him. | 21:28 | |
A helper. | 21:33 | |
Holy Spirit, | 21:37 | |
at home there in the darkness. | 21:39 | |
Now those of you who've been married for a long time | 21:47 | |
know that when you marry, | 21:48 | |
somebody really becomes part of you. | 21:50 | |
It's like Jesus said, "The two become one flesh." | 21:53 | |
It's just like you're part of one another. | 21:56 | |
And so you can understand that the night that he died, | 22:02 | |
she thought to herself, "I am dead. | 22:06 | |
"I can't go on. | 22:11 | |
"It's just like half of my body | 22:12 | |
"has been ripped away from me." | 22:13 | |
She wanted to die. | 22:17 | |
But she didn't. | 22:21 | |
Somehow into that void created by his leaving, | 22:23 | |
Jesus came like he made a home. | 22:28 | |
Courage. | 22:34 | |
Courage that she never knew that she had rose up | 22:36 | |
within her and she went on. | 22:42 | |
She triumphed. | 22:45 | |
He said, "Look, who cares? | 22:52 | |
"Hey, everybody's doing it. | 22:55 | |
"And besides, don't we love each other | 22:58 | |
"and isn't that what it's really all about? | 23:00 | |
"Right? | 23:03 | |
"Love?" | 23:03 | |
And, it was like she heard herself say the words, | 23:08 | |
"No, I can't." | 23:10 | |
"Well why," he persisted. | 23:14 | |
And she said, she was surprised she said it this way, | 23:17 | |
she said, "Well, for for one thing, | 23:21 | |
"I'm trying to be a Christian | 23:25 | |
"and we don't do it this way." | 23:28 | |
But she wondered where did those words come from? | 23:34 | |
What gave her the courage, | 23:39 | |
the inner conviction to resist? | 23:42 | |
She'd always thought of herself as a basically weak person. | 23:44 | |
It was the helper. | 23:50 | |
She had not been left desolate. | 23:53 | |
You have come here this morning saying, | 23:59 | |
"Lord, how will you reveal yourself to us?" | 24:00 | |
Listen to the testimony of the Gospel. | 24:07 | |
"I am leaving you, but I will not leave you desolate. | 24:11 | |
"I will send you a helper. | 24:15 | |
"I will give you the Holy Spirit. | 24:17 | |
"My Father and I are gonna come make a home with you." | 24:21 | |
And then Jesus ends it all by saying, | 24:28 | |
"I'm telling you all this that you might believe." | 24:32 | |
(bright organ music) | 24:46 |
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