Easter 6A sermon

Easter 6A
May 29, 2011
Sometimes in a week, a homily creeps up on me. It started this week with a seemingly random song going round in my head:
“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child/ sometimes I feel like a motherless child/. Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child/a long ways from home/ a long, long ways from home.”
In our gospel reading today, we see Jesus and his disciples right in the middle of the Last Supper. I can just imagine the looks on the faces of the disciples as Jesus tells them that he will not be with them much longer. They are the expressions of people who have known in the past what it is to feel like be a motherless child. And so he says to them, “I will not leave you orphaned.” You may feel like motherless children now, but this will not always be so. I will send you a comforter, and advocate, and you will belong to me and to each other through what has always bound us: love.
Some of us also know what it means to feel like a motherless child, to be left alone, abandoned, to feel we have become orphaned with no kin or care to be found. We can be surrounded by people at all times and in all places and still feel alone, orphaned, like motherless children. So where is the good news in today’s gospel for us? Where is this fulfillment of Jesus’s promise to not leave us as orphans?
The 12th century Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux writes about the four degrees of love. “There is the infantile stage of ‘love of self for the sake of self.’ ‘Give me that bottle!’ We may progress to the next stage of ‘love of the other for the sake of self.’ ‘Oh, you gave me that bottle.’ And so on to the more or less selfless stage of ‘love of the other for the sake of the other.’ This is the place of genuine human love, a reflection of the love of God, the place of altruism. But, says Bernard, there is a final stage which is heaven’s healing. This is the ‘love of self only for the sake of the Other.’ Knowing this love is to arrive at a true image of myself, a measure of the view God has of me, to see myself to some degree in the way the One who loves me into being sees me.”
The gift of today’s gospel is a reminder of Jesus’s commandment to us. As followers of Jesus’s way, we are called to give love freely, called to love God and to love others. But we are also called to receive love. We are called to receive the love of God that is freely offered to us, and we are called to receive love from other people.
This past week, I read an article by the Episcopal priest Sam Portaro called “Practicing a Life of Prayer.” In this article, Portaro writes about two spiritual practices that we can do in our everyday lives, to help us grow more deeply in our knowledge and love of God and each other. The first, he says, is to “pay attention.” This is not as easy as it sounds. We all know how much is competing for our attention, and Portaro challenges us to be more intentional about where we give our attention; being intentional about being a steward of the gift of attention that God has given me.” He writes that we have to ask ourselves the difficult questions about where and how we give our attention: “Am I paying attention to the people and concerns that have the greatest value for me that represent love for God, neighbor, and self? Am I giving the 1st fruits of my attention, the best of my attention to God? Or am I squandering it, throwing my precious attention away…” “When I pay attention, I don’t have to remind myself of God’s presence in my life; God is nearly always present and manifest, recognizable in the other, the one in whom and to whom I have paid my attention.”
The poet Marge Piercy wrote “Attention is love.” And I think she is right.
The second spiritual discipline that Portaro articulates is to “take care.” This phrase, which is often used as a casual farewell, is of profound weight in our spiritual practice. We are called to “receive, reach out, and seize hold of care” that is offered to us. This is hard for us. We don’t want to seem weak or needy or dependent. We do not want to have to rely on the care of another, and so often we resist care and concern and love when it is offered to us. But Portaro insists that this care is a gift from God through others, and that we are called by God to accept it. “Take the care that God holds out, offers in the hands of those who reach out to help. Take the care proffered in those friends God gives us who manifest God’s love in the flesh, the companions whoare there for us and with us in the inevitable dark night, those who believe in us, love us even when we find it hard to believe in or love ourselves. Take the care that comes running to the door and leaps into your arms, happy that you’re home, whether it’s the love of your child, or the love of your dog. Take the care that comes your way and receive it as the gift of God that it is…”
This morning, may you hear and believe the words of our Risen Lord: I do not leave you orphaned, as motherless children. God is with you, loving you more than you can ask or imagine. And God has given you brothers and sisters to love you and walk with you along the way, to give you encouragement and hope; to give and receive love, and to help you remember that you are not alone.

References:
“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Chile” hymn 169 from Lift Every Voice II .
From the Rt. Rev Jeffrey Lee’s article “On the Theology of Wellness” in Credo’s All Shall Be Well compilation.
From The Very Rev. Sam Portaro’s article “Pracitcing a Life of Prayer” in Credo’s All Shall Be Well compilation.