not orphaned

from my sermon on 5/29/11 from John 14:15-21

Memorial Day...in 33 years of preaching I have never paid any attention to this holiday. Maybe I was too caught up in the culture, you know....3 day weekend....department store sales....the running of the Indy 500.....the unofficial start of summer.

Today, I am going to change my pattern. We are going to slow down, pause, and pat attention to Memorial Day. I did some research. During our Civil War in the 1860's, people began to decorate the graves of those who had died in that epic battle. Now, we are going through an Arab Spring, where civil unrest in the Middle East and Northern Africa is making news. But we have our own discord here in America in our past. Just after the Civil War, a general declared the first official Memorial Day to be observed on May 30, 1868. Flowers were placed on the graves of both Confederate and Union soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. Memorial Day continued in different forms over the North and South over the years. In 1971, Congress designated the last Monday in May as Memorial Day to make a 3 day federal holiday weekend.

We have lost many men and women over the years in many wars....the Civil War, World War I and II, the Korean War, Viet Nam, more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, we need to hear Jesus say, I will not leave you orphaned.

To help us remember, I quote a poem from World War I, written by John McCrae, in 1915.

In Flanders FieldsIn Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Today, we keep faith. We remember. We pray. We pause. For you, it may be a family member, or a friend, or a co-worker, or a neighbor. If you do not have anyone to pray for, look at the prayer insert in the bulletin.

("Taps" is played by a solo trumpet)

Jesus says, I will not leave you orphaned.

I come not to glorify war. My dad fought in WWII. He was a navigator on bombers with the 8th Army Air Corps, flying runs out of England over Germany. He also helped drop OSS agents behind the lines. We kids tried to get him to tell us about his experience. He was very reluctant to say anything. About the most he said was this: I saw more men killed by accident and carelessness than anything else. There was such senseless loss of life. When I came back, I asked my Uncle Billie to put me to work on his farm. For more than a month, I lived in a shack in the woods, by myself. All I did every day was cut fenceposts. I became a cedar chopper.

How to tie all of this into Jesus promise not to leave us orphaned. Inspired by In Flanders Fields, Moina Michael in 1915, penned these lines.

We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.

She began to wear a red poppy on Memorial Day, and others did too. Very quickly the idea took off, and the VFW took ownership of the program. Soon disabled vets started making paper poppies to sell, with the money earned going to help widows...and orphans of those who had died in war.

We sometimes forget to calculate the human cost of war. We measure war in terms of billions of dollars...or material...or sorties flown. We forget about relationships, grief, widows and orphans.

The RSV had the traslation, I will not leave you desolate. You know what the Greek word is? It is orphaned! We get our English word orphaned directly from the Greek. To be orphaned did not just mean to be without a parent though, it meant to be without a rabbi, a teacher, a guide.

Jesus promises us another Advocate. He has been ours while on earth, but he will not leave us orphaned. He promises us....what does your translation say? Comforter, counselor, helper, friend? The work is paraclete. I know this sermon has been really heavy, but one of the commentaries I read said, remember paraclete is not that little yellow bird that sings in the cage...or the shoes you wear to play baseball or football. Paraclete is used only 5 times in the New Testament, 4 times in John's Gospel and once in first letter of John. Paraclete literally means, one by your side. Jesus says the paraclete will be with you, remain with you, and in you. Jesus promises, I will not leave you orphaned.

Anne Lamott in her book Traveling Mercies said, "I was 30 years old, a hip, single, intellectual, agnostic who did not need Jesus. I was pregnant by a married man. I had an abortion. I was as sad as I ever had been. I took pills and alcohol to dull the pain. One night, lying in the darkness, I sensed a presence. There in my sleeping loft was Jesus, sitting there on his haunches in the corner of the room, looking over at me with patience and love. For the next few days, he followed me everywhere, like a little cat. Finally, I took a long, deep breath, and shouted, All right. You can come in. And he did. I was dying. I got a second chance. I do believe I was saved."

We know we are not orphaned when we let the presence of Jesus in through his Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. We start acting like him. Anne Lamott takes her son to worship. She says, "The main reason is that I want to give him a path and a little light to see by. Most of the people I know who have what I want--which is to say, purpose. Heart. Balance. Gratitude. Joy--are people with a deep sense of spirituality. The are people in community, who pray. Who practice their faith. They folow a brighter light than the glimmer of their own candle."

We know we are not orphaned when we keep Jesus commandments. In the other Gospels, there are several commandments that Jesus gives, but in John's Gospel, there is only one: to love one another like I have loved you. We know that we have a guide, a teacher, a Paraclete when we love like that.

On this Memorial Day weekend, we remember what Jesus said just a few verses after this passage: No one has greater love than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

The good news is Jesus' promise, I will not leave you orphaned.