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St. Andrew's Church
An Anglican Church • Grimsby, Ontario, Canada
Preached by
Stuart Pike
Rector
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Easter 6 C - In God we live and move and have our being
Acts 17: 22-31
John 14: 15-21
St. Andrew's Grimsby
27 April 2008
There's this Tom Hanks movie which you may have seen. It was made in 2000 and it is called Castaway. It is the story of a man whose plane falls from the sky in the ocean leaving Tom Hanks' character, Chuck Noland as the only survivor on a deserted island.
It is an ironic title because most of the Cast is Away. During most the movie itself there is only one member of the cast - Noland and one other character - a volleyball which Noland names "Wilson" after the brand of volleyball.
Noland builds a relationship with this volleyball. He talks to it, protects it, pours out his deepest fears and hopes to it. When eventually Wilson and Noland are separated, the audience, along with Noland are devastated.
Even though for most of the movie there is just one cast member, Tom Hanks does a phenomenal job of acting and I think he is worth at least a cast of 100.
But the really important thing that this movie shows is how much human beings need relationship. Perhaps the biggest fear that any of us can have, besides the ultimate fear of death, is the fear of being really and truly alone.
I think that it is a very basic fear - perhaps built into us from primordial times when we truly relied on being in a social group to survive. Loneliness is an aching void which most people will try just about anything to fill. Sometimes what we try to fill it with is not good for us.
Many theologians describe hell not as a fiery place full of demons and other burning souls, but rather as a place of loneliness - a place where one is eternally separated from God. I think that many people experience hell on earth when they feel so dreadfully alone.
Sometimes loneliness and isolation isn't about there not being other people - often the loneliest people are surrounded by other people - yet they do not feel connected with them, or understood by them. Something draws them to be connected, yet they can't seem to find the way.
I think the disciples are already feeling separation anxiety when Jesus starts to speak to them sitting around the table at the last supper which he would have with them in the upper room, which is the setting of today's Gospel Lesson.
He is telling them that he must leave them, but that they will not be alone. "What do you mean, you're leaving us?", they ask. "Where are you going?" "What do you mean you're going to the Father?" "How can we know the way?"
Jesus reassures them that he will not leave them orphaned, but, even though the world will not see him, they will. They will because Jesus is sending them the Spirit of Truth.
Here in the New Revised Standard Version, Jesus calls the Spirit an Advocate. Sometimes it is translated counselor or comforter, but it is probably best left in its original Greek, Paraclete, because the sense of the word isn't fully captured by an English word.
The word "Paraclete" in Greek would be the word for an advocate who would stand by you if you were being tried in court. But this wouldn't be one who spoke for you at trial, but would be one who spoke to you and enabled you not to feel alone and to withstand the trial.
Well the Disciples would undergo trials in their future. Most of them would face persecution. They would be imprisoned. Most of them would die a martyr's death, and yet, because of their faith in Jesus, they would never be alone, and they would face all of their trials with courage.
Jesus says that the mark of their faith will be in the way that they keep Jesus' commandments. In last week's Gospel Jesus says to his disciples that they will do even greater works than he. I don't think that Jesus means that they will do bigger and more impressive miracles than Jesus did. I believe that Jesus is speaking about the works of compassion and love which will be done in his name. These works are the marks of faith. Jesus says, "If you love me you will keep my commandments."
I remember meeting a very special Irish Roman Catholic Priest in the shanty town called Villa El Salvador outside of Lima Peru. I and another student stayed with him for five days in the summer of 1988. His name is Father Eugene Kirke, but he is known in Peru as Padre Eugenio.
He left his family far behind when he traveled across the world to Lima. At first he lived with the other Irish Catholics in a monastery in Lima and many of them would travel to different shanty towns on Sundays to lead worship and then would go back to the relative safety and comfort of their monastery.
It wasn't long before Father Gene decided that if he was going to minister amongst these poor people, he had to live with them as well. All the other priests thought he was crazy. "You'll be robbed", "You'll get sick." he was warned. But all the same, he took his few possessions and built a small shack just like so many other shacks in the desert sands of Villa El Salvador.
Father Gene laughed with us that his relatives back home in Ireland worried that he would be by himself, all alone in the Shanty Town. "How can I be all alone, surrounded by all these people of the Parish?", he asked.
I sometimes worried about Father Gene when I would hear stories of violence from Peru. Once a few years ago I heard that the shanty towns of Lima were going through a cholera epidemic. But I discovered, through the miracle of the Internet a story of Father Gene just this last February being feted with a celebration because of his 35 years of service in Villa El Slavador. And right there on the webiste is a picture of a white-haired Father Gene blowing out the candles on the cake being offered him.
Father Gene had discovered the secret which Jesus is giving to his disciples: they will never be alone because they will have God's spirit living inside of them - and tied up with that is the fact that because they love Jesus in the Spirit, they will keep his commandments.
And what are Jesus' commandments? He gives them to us when he summarizes the ten commandments and tells us to love God with our whole being, and to love our neighbour as ourselves. And further on in the Gospel Jesus tells us to love one another as he has loved us.
Loving as Jesus loves means that we can never be alone, for there will always be people to reach out to. Even if we were totally separated from people and cast away on a desert island, we would still never be alone because, as Jesus says, we know the spirit and the spirit abides with us and is in us. And the Holy Spirit is a whole lot better than a volleyball named Wilson!
St. Paul writes of this relationship with God when he quotes a Greek poet who says, "in him we live and move and have our being." Sometimes, we simply need to stop and be fully present to the moment and to know our presence in God our creator. And then we need to start up again and love one another. Amen.
