“I will not leave you orphaned” says Jesus to his disciples, speaking
on the night before he is crucified. It’s a poignant phrase which touches one
of our deepest fears, the fear of having to face the world alone when we aren’t
ready to do so.
Here in more privileged Western Europe we’re probably not as
aware of orphans as our forebears were; Unicef estimates that there are about
15 million orphans around the world today – children under 18 who have lost
both parents - and 140 million who have lost one parent. Of course there are
many more who don’t have the love and care they need for other reasons. The
orphans who come to our minds most readily may be the ones in literature, like
those in the novels of Charles Dickens, or the children’s stories many of us
grew up with – Anne of Green Gables, The Little Princess, Kim, Heidi, Ballet
Shoes. They are usually stories where it all comes right in the end, but the reality
is, as it always has been, that many orphans don’t triumph over adversity. They
don’t even live to grow up and tell the tale. Their lives can be desperately
precarious.
That’s why the Bible so often hammers home the importance of caring
for them, along with the other two most needy groups in the ancient world,
widows and foreigners. “You shall not
deprive a resident foreigner or an orphan of justice,” says the book of
Deuteronomy (24.7) “When you reap your harvest … and forget a
sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the
foreigner, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you
in all your undertakings.” (Deuteronomy 24.19)
Again and again, the Old Testament prophets denounce those
who fail to protect orphans. (Malachi 3.5,
Zechariah 7.10, Ezekiel 22.7, Jeremiah 5.28, Isaiah 1.23) The letter of
James, in the New Testament, mentions orphans as part of a sort of litmus test
of the genuineness of faith., “Religion
that is pure and undefiled before God is this “ he says” to care for orphans and widows
in their distress”(James 1.27) If you don’t do that, any claim to be
following Jesus is meaningless. In an age when there was no welfare state, it
was very difficult to live without a family or clan around you for protection
and practical support. Everyone needed to belong somewhere, to someone. Having
no family around you could be a death sentence, as it still is in many parts of
the world.
That’s the fear that Jesus touches on when he uses this word,
orphan, on the night before he dies. Of course, he isn’t speaking to small
children. He’s speaking to his disciples, grown adults, burly fishermen who’ve
sailed through stormy seas, tax-collectors who’ve had to deal with the Roman
political and military machine, women who’ve had to live off their wits and
their courage in a male-dominated world. Yet he recognises that when they lose
him, first to crucifixion and then as he ascends to his Father in heaven, they’ll
feel bereft and uncertain. They’ll have to make their own decisions as they
take on the work he’s called them to. And it won’t be easy. They’ll face
persecution and maybe even death. Some may be cast out of the families they’ve grown
up in, rejected by others. They’ll feel like orphans adrift in a wide and scary
world.
We may not face challenges as great as those, but however old
we are, however much we’ve been through, we all come to points in our lives
when we realise we can’t handle the stuff life dumps on us on our own. We look
around for the adult in the room, and we’re a bit horrified to find that it’s
us. We may be grown up chronologically, but there’s always a small child within
us, looking for help and guidance.
The comforting thing about this passage is that Jesus doesn’t
tell his followers to “grow up and act their age”. He doesn’t tell them that
they really ought to know what they are doing by now. Instead he says to them, “I will not leave you orphaned”. He
affirms that it’s ok to feel bereft. It’s ok to feel out of our depth. It’s ok
to feel that we don’t know what we’re doing. It’s ok to need help, to need
others, to need God. In fact if we don’t accept our need of God and of one
another, we cut ourselves off from so much that might have blessed us. If our
hands aren’t open, how can anyone put anything into them?
Jesus promises his disciples, and us, that though we may
sometimes feel alone, we are not alone. He talks about the Holy
Spirit, God’s presence here and now, where we are. Up until now, he says, his followers have had
to be with him physically to see him and hear him. But when he’s gone from
their sight, he promises that they’ll discover the wonderful truth that,
actually they can never be separated from.
“I am sure,” says St Paul ” that
neither death, nor life…nor anything else in all creation will be able to
separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8. 38). They’ll discover
that God is within them, like the sap that rises through the grapevine, like
the blood that circulates through their veins, closer than their own heartbeat.
They’ll know the Spirit not only personally and individually, but in their
community too, in the love that draws them to each other. They’ll discover the ever-present
love of God who, as our Psalm puts it “holds
our souls in life, and will not allow our feet to slip”, just as a loving
parent holds and helps us when we are taking our first steps, wobbling and
uncertain.
Today’s readings invite us to be honest, to stop pretending
that everything’s fine, to drop the make-believe that we can live independently
of one another or of God, never needing help, always being the one who is in
control. This time of lockdown, although it has distanced us physically, has
underlined how much we need each other, whether it’s the delivery drivers or
supermarket shelf stackers or the friends and family who phone or email or
skype or zoom or write cheering us up and supporting us. Human beings hunger for
connection with one another, and I’m also finding, from my conversations with
people, that people are hungry for connection with God too, reaching out in
prayer and reflection for something beyond themselves.
This Thursday is Ascension Day, the day when we recall that
strange story of Jesus disappearing into a cloud, taken from his followers’ sight.
It begins ten days of preparation for Pentecost – Whitsun – the day when we
celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit, God within us and around us, God at work
in the world. We can’t meet to celebrate the day this year, but each day
between Ascension and Pentecost there’ll be a short podcast – links on the
church website– just a few words and time for reflection to help us be aware of
God and discover that his promise is true, that he has not left us
orphaned.
Amen
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