For Sunday Easter 7A
Collect
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
We are nearing the end of the Farewell Discourse, when Jesus is preparing his disciples for his departure. And remember how he has washed their feet and spoken of the work to come and commanded them to love one another: that this is part of loving God. And then, as we heard last week, he spoke of his leaving them, but not leaving them orphaned, because God is on it! Another advocate (another, meaning like him) who is the Holy Spirit.
This isn’t observable fact or intellectual pursuit, as if these things are the two principle options, but to speak, instead about relationship. Much like the question isn’t whether you or I exist, as if establishing that fact has any value at all! It is to say that you and I live in community with people who love us and enjoy our presence. This is the rubber hitting the road.
It is also the substance of the gospel.
Consider what many people hope is said at their funeral: phrases like “he taught me everything I know” and “I am who I am because of her.” These aren’t just nice things said, but attempts to express the impact of a relationship and just how much separation from them hurts. Relationship is the key to the Trinity.
As Jesus prays to God for the disciples, he is doing so from among them, to be witnessed by them. And his prior promise, to not leave them without parental connection, is built on the concurrent relationship we find in the Godhead and in our presence together.
At the heart of this, then is a dynamic for us, not when we are surrounded by friends, but when we feel lonely; when we look around and think nobody is there. Jesus is assuring us that we aren’t. And, with the same sense of relationship, to know that, in reaching out to someone else, we are, in fact, reaching out to God.