SPEAKER_00 0:00

The Holy Gospel, according to John, the 14th chapter.

unknown 0:04

According to you, O Lord.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Jesus said to the disciples, If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you. I will not leave you orphaned. I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them. This is the gospel of the Lord. You may be seated. Would you rather hear the good news first or the bad news? That's how I would answer it too, yes. When somebody asks that question, it's like, get the bad news over with. And then you wonder what in the world is going to come up, right? Well, hearing this gospel text for today, if you focus in on one part of it, you might be like, that is such bad news. Because Jesus says, in a little while the world will not see me. And there's a lot of good news around it. But if you've ever been in that place where all of a sudden you hear that and you don't hear anything else, so you fixate on it and it sounds like bad news. Jesus is going away. And for the disciples, they would think, oh no, what do I do now? If Jesus is not physically with me, how do I keep his commandments? How do I keep his word? Now, we might know from different experiences what that's like to be separated, or when you have to say goodbye, or you're gonna be apart from somebody. I think often of young kids that first time they might get dropped off at a daycare or a school by their adults, and they're thinking, are you kidding me? You're gonna leave me here? Do you not love me? Why would you leave me and not stay with me? Now, Rod was talking about his dogs, and think about pets when you leave them, and if they really love being with their people, it's that same feeling. They're thinking, like, goodness gracious, I'm the best thing that you have. Why in the world would you not take me with you wherever you go? You should be by my side all the time. Now, there are those who experience deployment, families, and they have that time of being apart. And it can be really difficult. And I think that's why I like seeing those videos when families are gathered together again, when they welcome them back and they have big hugs and there's a celebration to be together once again. But Jesus, when he's talking to his disciples, he's not simply talking about going away on a trip for a little bit. That's a little bit more permanent of when he goes away, and yet there's good news that surrounds that idea that the world will no longer see him. And yet it can bubble up anxiety and fear and grief when you think of somebody not being there physically with you anymore. But there's more good news. There is more good news in this gospel reading than there is that bad news. For Jesus says, I will ask the Father and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever. You will see me because I live, you live. You are not alone, Jesus is saying. The advocate is that gift of the Spirit with you. And you might think, great, that's wonderful, but Jesus isn't physically with us either. So what is the Spirit for? The Spirit gives us that presence to live out our faith. That Spirit is the one who is that nudge that we often might get to live out those commandments that Jesus says, love God and love one another. It helps us live it out so that the good news outweighs the bad news that we experience in life. And yet sometimes it's helpful to know what it means for somebody to live out their faith, to keep those commandments in real life. What happens in those big moments and those small moments when we're asked to live out our faith, when the Holy Spirit might be nudging us to do something that we think we can't do that on our own. And yet Jesus says, You are not alone. I am with you. The advocate will be with you. It's why over the number of years I've held on to a news article written by Catherine Wynne that I read back in 2013. And she was even writing about a much older incident from 1996 as a follow-up. And it involves a teenager, Keisha Thomas. And that's why I thought about it again today when I think of these eighth graders who are have just affirmed their baptisms and their faith and might be wondering, how do I live out my faith? Well, Keisha found herself in a situation, in an amazing situation where she stepped up when even the adults around her did not. For this article that the author Catherine Wynne wrote is called The Teenager Who Saved a Man with an SS Tattoo. Now she was 18, and there was going to be a KKK rally held in her hometown, and it seemed to be an unusual place for it to happen. And there were people that gathered up because they didn't want that rally to take place. And so you can imagine that the atmosphere was very tense, and yet it was controlled because they had police there that were ready. They were separating those who were there for the rally versus those who were protesting the rally. They had a special fence erected because they wanted everybody to be safe. But then, with all of these people gathered together, a woman with a megaphone shouted, There's a Klansman in the crowd. And they all turned around and looked at this white middle-aged man wearing a Confederate flag t-shirt. And so he quickly started walking away from them. But the protesters, including Keisha, thought that they would try to kind of walk towards him to chase him out, and so he wasn't with them. And it was unclear if he was a KKK supporter or not. But those anti-protesters made some assumptions because of his clothes and his tattoos, and so they started to shout horrible things at this man. And so he began to run. And soon they were running after him. And he was knocked to the ground, and there was a group that surrounded him, and they started to kick him and hit him. And it was this mob mentality that suddenly had taken over when people individually would not do that, but suddenly they get caught up in all the emotions of the crowd, and they find themselves surrounding this man. Everybody probably waiting for somebody else to say, stop, this isn't right. And that's where Keisha came in. This African-American teenager who's still in high school threw herself on top of this man to shield him from the blows of those around her. She said later, when they dropped him to the ground, it felt like two angels had lifted my body and laid me down to protect him. There was a student photographer there that day, Mark, who witnessed it and took pictures of what was happening. And he said about that incident. He said, She put herself at physical risk to protect someone who, in my opinion, would not have done the same for her. Who does that in this world? When she was asked why she did do it, she said, I knew what it was like to be hurt. The many times that that had happened, I had wished someone would have stood up for me because violence is violence. Nobody deserves to be hurt, especially not for an idea. Well, she never heard from that man that she saved that day. But months later she was in a coffee shop and somebody came up to her and wanted to know if that was her, and they said, Thank you. That was my dad. Now there were others that affected, were affected by that incident that day and remembered it year after year after year. And the author of the article, when I read that article, she wanted to contact Keisha so many years later, just wondering how it still affected her. And when she was interviewed once again, she said she'd like to concentrate not on the past, but on the future. She didn't want that to be the best that she ever did in her life. She wanted to do better each day that she went into the future. She was simply trying to be a little more like she thought Jesus would be. She wanted to live out her faith for her neighbor, no matter who her neighbor was, even if it didn't come back and return to her. She wanted to live out her faith. Wow. She was 18. Definitely being spurred on by the Holy Spirit in a very big moment and stressful moment in her life. And I go back to that story again and again because I think of how many things come up in our day and age. And where we come back to that. Do we speak up? Do we not? Do we live out our faith? Do we sit quietly? It might be something big or it might be something even that doesn't seem big, and yet to the person that we help, it is a big deal. And the good news is that we don't do that on our own. That we go out together. We have this community that supports us and can remind us of the gifts that we receive, and that you have that gift of the Holy Spirit, the advocate who goes with you. And it's a way for you to remind another person that they too are not alone. Because we do face both good news and bad news every day in our lives. But Jesus is there to bring us good news again and again and again and again, no matter how often we need it and no matter in what situation we are faced with. Maybe it's somebody who's moving away for their first job or thinking about heading off to college in the fall. Maybe you are retired and you're volunteering your time in the community, or health issues keep you homebound. Maybe you're thinking about, okay, I've affirmed my baptism today. What does that mean for me now? Or maybe you're still struggling with what you believe. Whatever those situations are, you have the gift of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, the very presence of God's love and forgiveness surrounding you. And even when we're confused or in wonderment, we still have that nudge to live out Jesus' love for one another. Because it's not that God needs us to do that, because guess what? God's gonna love you. Even when we don't speak out, or even when we get nervous and scared, God will love you no matter what. But you know who needs us to reach out? Our neighbor does. Our neighbor needs us to speak up and to reach out. And do not fear, because Jesus says that those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them, and I will reveal myself to them. And if you still wonder, you will hear words of a hymn coming up that we will sing together, reminding us that we aren't leading ourselves, that it is Jesus, our shepherd, who leads us and loves us still. Amen.