I Will Not Leave You Desolate! (Sermon for John 14:15-21, May 25, 2014. New International Version (NIV), World English Bible, WEB) Sermon In A Sentence: Christ does not leave us desolate, but comes to us and sends disciples to us to help us through our desolation. After the resurrection, Jesus spent forty days with his disciples, and then he ascended into heaven. He had lived in heaven before his birth (John 1:1-18; Philippians 2:5-11). Heaven was his home. He was returning home. But before he left his disciples, he had important words for them. You can be sure that they were important words. Jesus would not have wasted the occasion of his departure with unimportant words. First, Jesus said, If you love me, keep my commandments (v. 15 WEB). If you love me, keep my commandments. When I hear those words, my mind pictures a father saying goodbye to his son. If you love me, you will live as I have taught you. If you love me, you will bring honor to our name. If you love me, keep my commandments. We don t talk like that today. Words like commandments and rules are not very popular. Standing in a line, I noticed a slogan on a teen-age boy s T-shirt. It said: Training is everything. Rules are not! I tried to imagine what the boy was trying to say. Training is everything sounded like something that he might have heard from a coach and in football or basketball, training is nearly everything, isn t it! Games are won or lost on the practice field, where we practice the basics over and over again. But I was confused by the boy s T-shirt. Training is everything. Rules are not! After all, what is training but practicing basic rules or principles over and over until they become second nature! I finally decided that the boy s real point might not have anything to do with training. He was probably just trying to say that rules are bad. I wonder if his coach would agree. Jesus said, If you love me, keep my commandments. Jesus wasn t trying to spoil our fun with empty rules. He was trying to turn us into winners. Life isn t easy, but loving Christ and following his commandments can put us on top. And then Jesus said: I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Counselor,
that he may be with you forever (v. 16 WEB). Jesus was promising that, when he left, God s Holy Spirit would come to dwell in us. That is good news! Jesus, in his human body, could only be in one place at a time. The Holy Spirit can dwell within each of us, wherever we are, all the time. So Jesus was promising that, when he left, we would receive even greater blessings by the presence of God s Holy Spirit. And then Jesus said, I will not leave you orphans (v. 18 WEB). The Greek word is orphanous - it refers to a child whose parents have died. People also used it to refer to a disciple whose rabbi had died. Imagine being a young musician who has been chosen to study under a great master. Imagine the great honor! Imagine how much you could learn! Such a master could teach you things you could never learn from anyone else. Studying under a great master would allow you to develop your skills to their highest level. It would prepare you to become the next great master. It could prepare you for fame and fortune. Now imagine the first few months of your discipleship. In that short time, you would develop a relationship. You would begin to understand the master. You would begin to understand your instrument and your music in ways that nobody else could teach you. You would find it hard to believe you were learning so much. You would wonder where the next year or two years of study might take you. Now imagine that the master dies. What would you feel? Grief, certainly. Tremendous loss. You would feel abandoned orphaned - desolate. That is exactly the situation that Jesus disciples faced. They had hitched their wagon to a star, and now the star was warning them that he was going to die. It made no sense! If Jesus really was the Messiah, why would he die? If he was going to die, he must not be the Messiah? And yet he had taught them so much. He had amazed them with the depth of his understanding. He had brought them so far in such a short time. And now he was telling them that he was going to die. How did they feel? Abandoned. Orphaned. Desolate. Jesus promised them, I will not leave you orphanous. That is the Greek word orphanous. Some translations read, I will not leave you orphans. That is a good translation. But some translations say, I will not leave you desolate. That is a good translation too, because it captures the feeling of the person who is left behind. I will not leave you desolate.
What kind of place comes to mind when you hear the word desolate? Jesus disciples understood desolation. They lived in the midst of great deserts. To be alone in such a place is to be truly desolate. When I see images of deserts I try to imagine what it must have been like to cross the desert with only a mule and a canteen. How that would feel! Some people would like it. Some people would enjoy the solitude. But it would be more solitude than I wanted. I think if I had to cross a desert alone, I would feel desolate. Many years ago, in 1962, the big summer movie was Lawrence of Arabia. One of the most powerful scenes in the movie took place during a ten-day march across the Sahara. The men staggered along, dehydrated, near collapse, when they finally arrived at an oasis. When they saw water, they broke ranks and ran. They scooped the water in their hands and drank. They poured it over their heads. They splashed in it. They did not just drink; they celebrated! And then Lawrence noticed a riderless camel. One of the camel boys had fallen along the way. Lawrence tried to persuade the men to backtrack to search for the boy, but they were not having any of it. They replied that the boy s loss was the will of Allah, and they must not interfere with Allah s will. Disgusted, Lawrence mounted his camel to begin the search. The men shook their heads in disbelief, certain that Lawrence would be the desert s next victim. They sat by the water and waited. Two days later, their watchman spotted movement on the horizon. The image shimmered in the desert heat as they watched it approach. Finally, they recognized Lawrence astride his camel, holding the unconscious boy. When he arrived at the oasis exhausted at the end of his strength he looked at them and said: Remember this! Nothing is written unless you write it! What did he mean by that? If he had said such a thing under different circumstances, it wouldn t have meant much. If they had just been sitting around a campfire one night and he suddenly announced, Nothing is written unless you write it, nobody would have noticed. But those words had great power because of his actions. By rescuing the camel boy, he had said, This boy s death was not the will of Allah! He had said, We have a responsibility to do what we can. The words that he used were, Remember this! Nothing is written unless you write it. The action that he took was to mount his camel and ride off into the desolation looking for the boy. Furthermore, his actions promised those men, See! I will not leave you desolate! If I am faithful to this camel boy, I will be faithful to you! Lawrence could have gone further. He could have said, See how strong we become when we take care of each other! Even the desert cannot defeat us!
Jesus said to the disciples, I will not leave you desolate. He says to us, I will not leave you desolate. That is good news! We need to hear that good news, because we feel desolate now and then, don t we! We would feel desolate if we were lost in the desert, but we feel just as desolate in the city streets or even in the quiet of our bedroom. We feel desolate when our lives are in jeopardy, but we also feel desolate when we lose our job or our marriage breaks up or our child is sick. Have you ever felt desolate? Do you remember how terrible it was? Now hear Jesus when he says: I will not leave you orphanous orphans desolate. I will come to you. Jesus was telling us that God s Holy Spirit would come to dwell in us to comfort us to strengthen us to guide us to be our constant companion. I am reminded of the 23rd Psalm: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me (Psalm 23:4 WEB). Jesus does not promise that we will be spared suffering that we will be spared the valley of the shadow of death. But he promises to walk with us through the valley and to bring us through it to the other side. That is really the message of the cross, isn t it! Jesus says, I have been with you through the worst of it! I have taken the brunt of it, and have come out whole. I have endured my Good Friday, but I have also celebrated my Easter. So take heart! You shall celebrate Easter too! God is with us in many ways. He has planted his Spirit in our hearts, and he is with us through the kindness of others. He does not promise we will never experience hardship that we will never feel desolate but he does promise that he will never leave us desolate. He will come to us and strengthen us. And Christ often calls us, his disciples, to reach out to the desolate in his name. We do that in many ways through the church. The first President Bush talked about a thousand points of light. Indeed, there are a thousand points of light in every congregation that loves the Lord. And the interesting thing is that, when we serve others, we also serve ourselves. A person once asked Dr. Karl Menninger what a person should do if they felt a nervous breakdown coming on. Menninger replied: Lock up your house; go across the railroad tracks; find someone in need; and do something for them. Isn t that interesting! A doctor s prescription for desolation! If you feel desolate, go help someone. James Barrie put it this way: Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others
cannot keep it from shining on themselves. So today, let us remember Christ s promise and take heart. He says, I will not leave you desolate! Let us open our hearts so that God might fill us with his Spirit. Let us hear Christ s call to heal our own desolation by ministry to the desolate in our midst. Peace friends, Chuck