May 13, 2007 Easter 6C
Sermon Title: “Parting Promises”
Series: Empty Tomb Postscript
Text: John 14:23-29
Dr. Steve Jackson
Delivered on May 13, 2007
“Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with them.’” John 14:23
Parting Promises
There’s a new channel in our cable TV line-up. I hadn’t noticed it until recently. It’s called the Game Show Network. I watched a couple of old shows on it the other day and it brought back lots of memories. I had forgotten how cheesy some of these shows, especially the old ones, can be. For instance I love the part where the show host acts as if he’s become best friends with the contestants and says something familiar to them as a segue into introducing them to the audience, “So, Frank, you love animals, right??? That’s right Wink I sure do!” I also love it the way all the contestants clap for one another and appear to be genuinely upset when a contestant loses out and the winner moves on to the next round. The thing I like best of all though is when the guy with the deep voice comes on to announce all the “parting gifts” the contestant has won as he or she is booted off the show, you know, things like twenty cases of Eskimo pies, or aluminum siding or a lifetime supply of foot powder or margarine. J
I started thinking about “parting gifts” while working on this week’s
message because this coming Thursday is Ascension Day, the fortieth day after
the resurrection of Jesus. It’s the day when Christ ascended into heaven,
departing from his disciples from the top of the
The text for the day comes from John chapter 14. John 13-14 is called Jesus’ “farewell discourse” in John’s gospel and was delivered on the night he was betrayed to allay the fears of the confused disciples. John, who doesn’t have an ascension narrative in his gospel, gives us Jesus final words at this meal. If you break down what he says you find that it comes to us in the form of a Q&A kind of dialogue:
Q: Where are you going?
A: I got to prepare a place for you…(14:1)
Q: Can we go with you?
A: Where I am going you cannot come (13:33)
Q: How long will you be gone?
A: A little while and you will no longer see me, and again a little while and you will see me (14:19)
Q: Who will take care of us?
A: I will ask the Father and he will send an Advocate to be with you forever (14:16)
The text for today answers still another question. The question comes in verse 22, just before where we began reading today. The disciples ask, “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” Jesus answers that he will love and reveal himself to those who, “who love him and keep his word.” That’s the church, the body of believers, including you and me. We’re the recipients of these parting gifts.
Then Jesus proceeds to give them what I’ve likened to “parting gifts” in a game show as he leaves them. But these parting gifts aren’t the typical consolation prizes you get in a game show where they’re actually finding a nice way to say you’re really a loser. These parting gifts—these wonderful promises of Jesus—are actually the very reason he came to begin with. And so this morning I want to talk about a few of these promises with you.
A HOME WITH US
The first parting promise Jesus makes is that he’ll return to make his HOME with us. Look at verse 23, Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”
One of the most ancient and universal of all human longings, without a doubt, is the longing we all have for a place called home. It’s an impulse ancient as Adam and Eve after they were cast out of their home in the Garden of Eden, and as modern as Dorothy’s quest for home in The Wizard of Oz or E.T.’s yearning to “phone home!” Literature, movies and plays are full of accounts of this longing for home. It’s the human condition.
But what is “home?” What does the word “home” conjure up for you? Is it people, or a place, or what? Personally, I’ve always been somewhat of a homebody. As a child I was the kid who always went over to spend the night at a friends house and then called my folks up on the phone at about 10:30 at night and said, “Come get me…my stomach hurts.” I remember going on campouts as a Scout and when everything settled down and got quiet, I was ready to go home. I learned that my homesickness wasn’t just about my physical home either. One time I was on a father-son campout and my dad and I were sharing a tent and I still wanted to go home. I don’t quite know what to make of that… except that this homesickness we all share to a greater or lesser degree isn’t so much about something “out there” as it is about something “in here.”
Author Frederick Buechner says the meaning of home is twofold: the home we remember and the home we dream of to come. It not only recalls the people and place that we grew up in that had so much to do with the people we eventually became, but it also points ahead to the home that, in faith, we believe awaits us at life's end.
I’ve officiated at a number of funerals in my years as a pastor and as far as I can remember I’ve repeated John 14:2 at each and every one of them—it’s a verse from the very same chapter of John where we read from today. Jesus says he’s going away to “prepare a home for us” in heaven and then he’ll come back to get us and we can be at home with him there. But here’s something I’d never noticed before. In this same chapter of Scripture where Jesus says he’s going away to prepare us a home in heaven, the one I’ve repeated at so many funerals, he also says that he’s coming back, to make his home with us here. He’s saying we don’t have to wait to die and go to heaven to begin our relationship with him he says the Father and Son will make their home with us here where we are. That means whether in heaven or on earth, God is with us. What a great promise! Home is where we are with the Lord –– and we are with the Lord now –– and will be with the Lord forever. Just in case we missed it, he says it again in verse 28, “I am going away, and I am coming to you.”
So with God’s promise to come and make his home with us – a promise that’s repeated over and over again in Scripture, Jesus reminds us that this lifelong search we are all engaged in to “come home” is not primarily a geographical quest, but at its heart is a spiritual quest – it’s a search to find the wholeness and comfort of home that’s not so much “out there” as it is “in here” as I mentioned earlier. The good news here is that Jesus comes to us to make that home available to us now, in the present. Personally I find it incredibly good news that Christ has not only gone on ahead to prepare a heavenly home for us, but that he has actually come to make his home in each one of us in the “here and now.” And that leads to the second parting promise of Jesus.
A HELPER FOR US
The second parting promise Jesus makes here is a HELPER for us. It’s there in verse 26, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.”
That word “advocate” in verse 26 is translated a number of ways, but the most common way it is translated is “helper.” We all need a little help sometimes, don’t we? I know it’s un-American and all, to need help. We’re supposed to be the proud people who can stand on our own two feet and do it all by ourselves. Some see needing help as a sign of weakness. But the truth is, like I just said, everyone needs a little help now and then.
We’ve all heard the song by the Beatles, which was covered by Joe Cocker titled, “With a little help from my friends.” If you didn’t catch it when it was out the first couple of times back in the sixties, you may remember it from reruns of the TV show the Wonder Years, it’s the theme song. It goes like this…
What would you do if I sang out of tune?
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song
and I’ll try not to sing out of key.
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends.
I’m gonna try with a little help from my friends.
This song expresses a desire almost as deep and universal as the longing for home I mentioned with the last point. And that desire is to be able to be yourself with other people, to stand up and sing a song in front of others and know they’re not going to get up and walk out on us. It’s the yearning to know that even if you discover the worst about me, you’re not going to leave me.
We all need helpers and friends like that don’t we? But even more than that, we all need a God like that. One whom we know isn’t going to bail out on us the first time we slip up, or fall short. The kind of authenticity with others referred to in the song I just mentioned must begin with our relationship with God. You see, that’s what the Bible affirms from its first pages to its last. God loves us and pursues us, and even when we do things we shouldn’t God comes as our helper and keeps on loving us. It goes all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God pursued them, and then when they did something wrong and hid from God he still pursued them and took care of them. We all need a friend, and a helper like that. We all need somebody.
There was once an ancient king who loved to disguise himself as a peasant and then mingle with his subjects. Once while dressed as a beggar he went out to the town dump, the place where all the trash from the city was taken and burned. There was a continual stench there of rotten garbage and smoldering filth. There the disguised king met the man known as the “ash man.” This wretched man was the lowest of low. He stunk and was dressed in rags and everyone avoided him. He spent his days foraging through the dump seeking morsels of food and things to sell in the village. The king sat down beside the dirty man and began to talk. At meal time the ash man produced some questionable bread and a dirty jar of something to drink and the king shared his meal with him. The king went away but returned again and again for his heart was filled with sympathy for the lonely man. They became very good friends as time passed. Finally one day the king decided to tell the ash man who he really was and then he’d see what gift the man would ask for. But when the king told the ash man who he was, the poor man didn’t ask for a thing. The king was astonished and said, “Don’t you realize that I can give you anything—a city, a throne?” The man gently replied, “I understand your Majesty. But you’ve already given the greatest gift a man could receive. You left your palace to sit with me here in this wretched place. You could give nothing more precious. You have given yourself and that is far more than I could ever want or deserve.”
That’s what God has done with us. He came to be our helper—our constant companion—so that we would never be alone, and so that we’d never have to do anything in our own strength. We have a friend indeed. And those two things—a God who makes his home with us and a God who is indeed our helper—leads to a third parting promise of Jesus.
A HEART FILLED WITH PEACE
And that parting promise of Jesus given in today’s text is a HEART filled with peace. He mentions that in verse 27, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
God’s peace fills a third great longing people of every time and civilization have yearned for: peace. Peace that stills the heart and quiets the mind. Peace that allows us to lay down our heads at night and rest. Peace that is ours in the midst of the storm.
There’s a great Calvin and Hobbes comic strip where Calvin and Hobbes come marching into the living room and Calvin’s mother is seated there in her favorite chair. She is sipping her morning coffee. She looks up at young Calvin and is amused at how he is dressed. He has on a large space helmet and a cape is draped around his neck, across his shoulders, down his back and is dragging on the floor. He’s holding a flashlight in one hand and a baseball bat in the other.
“What’s up today?” asks his mom.
“Nothing, so far,” answers Calvin.
“So far?” she questions.
“Well, you never know,” Calvin
says, “Something could happen today.”
Then Calvin marches off as he calls back over his shoulder, “And if anything does, by golly, I’m going
to be ready for it!”
Calvin’s mom looks out at the reading audience and she says, “I need a suit like that!”
Don’t we all? Sometimes when I watch the evening news, or read the
newspaper, or talk with friends it seems like our world has grown more and more
violent. People seem to constantly be at each other’s throats. A suit like that would help, so we can say
with Calvin, “Whatever may come my way,
I’m going to be ready for it! Bring it on!”
I don’t have a suit like Calvin’s to give you this morning, in fact, I don’t think one exists. That’s the nature of living. But I can again remind you of this third parting promise of Jesus: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
Jesus is the “Prince of Peace” and because he died and rose again, his peace can be our peace—forever. Would you like to possess the “peace that passes all understanding?” Would you like to know that whatever comes your way later today, next week, next month, or next year, you’ll be prepared because you have the peace of Christ in your heart? You can have this assurance you know. Jesus promises it to us. And that, according to verse 28 of today’s text, should bring us great joy.
This morning as I conclude let me ask you a simple question. It’s a question no one can answer but you. Do you believe God has come to make his home in you—now? Or are you waiting the day when you die with great hope that there actually is a heaven? And do you realize this morning that you have a helper in your life that is closer and more intimate than anyone you can possibly imagine in the Holy Spirit? Do you take advantage of his help on a day-to-day basis? And finally, do you have the peace of God in your life? If not, I urge you to meditate upon these parting promises of Christ in the next few days. Ask God to make these promises real in your life. I believe God is more ready and willing to do that for you than you are to receive them. Will you ask him to do that for you today? I pray you will. Let’s Pray.