"Doing the Hard Things" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday May 14 – 6^th Sunday of Easter

Scripture Reading:  John 14:15-21

 

 

Can you think of a time when you learned how to do something that was hard?  Maybe you remember learning how to ride a bicycle for the first time.  Or maybe you remember learning how to swim, the first time you kept your face out of the water without panicking.  Or maybe you have learned to play a musical instrument, or maybe you have learned a new language.

 

When you think about learning something new, you probably didn’t do it all by yourself.  You didn’t decide one day that you were going to teach yourself how to play the piano, and a year later, with no help and no feedback from anyone go on a concert tour playing the complete Chopin preludes.

 

I remember learning how to quilt.  When I was in high school, my mother decided that she wanted to learn to quilt, so she signed herself up for a quilting course at the local fabric store, and then she shared what she was learning with me, and together we made my first quilt.  I still have that quilt, and I still love it, even though there are things about it that I would do very differently if I were to make it again today.  Then when I was on internship in BC, I brought a quilt I was working on with me, thinking that it would be a project to occupy my evenings; and when I got there I discovered that the community quilting guild met at the church every Tuesday during the day to work on their projects, and I was invited to join them. They were happy to share their knowledge and their wisdom with me to help me get better at cutting and piecing the fabric together to make the top of a quilt.  And now I get to sit around the quilt with the Summerville quilters, where people like Martha and Sue and Sandra have helped me to get better at hand quilting with rows and rows of tiny stitches… though I don’t think that I will ever be able to make as tiny stitches as Sue Gamble does!

 

I have had so many people to teach me about quilting and help me get better at it – the Summerville quilters, the Chetwynd quilting guild, my mother, my mother’s teachers…

 

Jesus, in his life, spent a lot of time teaching his disciples – teaching them about God’s love, teaching them how to love one another and love the world, showing them and teaching them all about healing, and feeding people who are hungry, and overturning tables of injustice.

 

The reading that _____ shared with us today, just like last week’s reading, comes from Jesus’s farewell discourse.  We are literally in Maundy Thursday at this point in Jesus’s story.  He and his disciples have celebrated the Passover meal together, Jesus has washed their feet, he has told them to do likewise, and he has given them a new commandment to love one another as he has loved them.

 

You get a really strong sense when you read the story that Jesus knows what is coming next.  He knows that he likely isn’t going to be able to leave Jerusalem alive.  He really is saying goodbye to his friends at this point.

 

And he knows that he has given them, given us, a mission – to carry on the work that he began, to abide in God.  But he knows that, like with all hard things, they, we, aren’t going to be able to do it alone.  Jesus’s disciples are going to need some help.

 

And so Jesus promises them, “I will not leave you orphaned.”  Jesus promises them the paraclete – an Advocate, a Companion, a Comforter, a Counselor, a Helper, a Friend.  This paraclete, this Holy Spirit, is going to be who accompanies all of Jesus’s disciples as they, as we, continue the work that Jesus began.  This Holy Spirit is going to be abiding in us and in all of creation; and because the Holy Spirit abides in us, we abide in God.

 

For the Holy Spirit is always transforming us into who God created us to be.  It is because of the Holy Spirit that we are able to say “yes” when God calls us.  It is because of the Holy Spirit that we are able to do the hard things that we are called to do.  God reaches into humanity in the person of Jesus; but then the Holy Spirit is almost like a bungee cord that Jesus attaches to us, that pulls us into the life of God, that pulls us into the dance of the Trinity.

 

God does ask us to do hard things.  Feed the hungry.  Be bringers of healing.  Overturn tables of injustice.  Be peace-makers.  We are called to do hard things, but we don’t have to do them alone.  The Holy Spirit who abides in all of us equips us and empowers us to do the work that we are called to do.

 

The Holy Spirit is always there, and we are continually getting little micro-doses, little infusions of the Holy Spirit.  It happens in our baptism.  It happens when we worship together.  It happens when we share the bread and the cup.  It happens when we pray together.  It happens when we accompany another through difficult times.  We have so many opportunities to be freshly infused with the Holy Spirit, so that we can continue the work we are called to do.

 

And that is my prayer for all of us – that we might not despair at the challenge of the work that God has given to us, but rather that we might trust in the Spirit’s abiding presence, for that is how we abide in God, and that is how we can do the work.  And may it be so.  Amen.

 

 

That first quilt, not long after it was completed.

Photo Credit:  John Edwards (aka my Grandad, who was

very proud of what his granddaughter had done)