Sermon: Gd Desires Our Company

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford. 2 June 2019

Easter 7 (Year C)

John 17.20-26

‘I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am’.

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I have long wanted to be here, to be with you all.

To be here, on a Sunday, I have to move things around in prison, and it’s not been easy. But I persisted, because I wanted to be with you. I have missed you. I mean that.

Of course, you know, I mean and have meant everything I have said in this place (and in any sermon anywhere). Not quite true, of course. From time to time (this isn’t a secret) I say some untrue things for comedic effect. To see if I can raise a laugh from you. And I have to tell you: you are a tough crowd to please, when it comes to jokes.

But… you are not a tough crowd in any other sense; you are a tender crowd, a caring crowd, a crowd keen to help and support in practical ways, a crowd keen to grow spiritually. And so, when I say I have long wanted to be here and I mean it, what I am conveying is that this resonates with me; this is a truth that runs deep for me. I have missed you.

And then… and then we are given a gospel text where Jesus says: ‘I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am’ - or – perhaps, arguably - that I may be where they are. Where else could I start?

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I am going to repeat something I have said a lot in this place. We can say that the core truth of Christianity can be summed up in this way:

Gd desires our company.

Jesus as the Son of Gd comes to be with us, in order to come to be with us, because Gd desires our company.

The message of the resurrection is that Gd raises Jesus from the dead to demonstrate that, whatever we throw at Gd (however murderous or complicit in murder we are), Gd will find the way to come back to us, to be with us, in order to be with us, because Gd desires our company.

It is that simple. It is also that hard, extremely hard. Extremely hard, that is, to believe, to believe it for more than a moment, to believe it consistently, to live on the basis that it is true, and true for us.

Think about it, sisters and brothers. If someone came in now, someone serious, someone who had something urgent and important to say, and if that someone raced over to you – just to you, not anybody else – and if that someone said: ‘Listen. I’ve a message for you, just for you; ignore the others. It is this: Gd is moving in with you.’ How would you feel?

I suggest you’d feel a range of things. I think those things would all be mixed up together. You might feel a knot in your stomach, and unravelling that knot would reveal lots of different parts.

·       Part of you would feel exhilarated. It doesn’t get any better than this! My life is going to be an adventure I had never dreamt of!

·       Part of you would feel on edge. What will this actually mean?

·       Part of you would feel terror. Wait. I cannot not know that when people follow Gd, it often doesn’t end well. At least, it doesn’t end in obvious comfort or obvious success.

·       Part of you would feel resentment, or maybe anger, or maybe rage. What? My life is my own! How dare Gd come and take over? Isn’t me going around doing things for the Church, doing Christian things, enough? This is unfair of Gd.

·       Part of you would feel cynical. Look, there’s been quite a lot of talk of Gd in my life already, and it can seem very little has come of it. I am not quite sure this will really be any different.  

·       Part of you would feel numb, because real shock really makes you numb.

·       And other things.

Oh, one of those other things is particularly important. It is this. Part of you may feel confusion. Wait, Gd wants intimacy with me. So Gd wants me to stop living in intimacy with my spouse, partner, children and family? But I can’t push them out. And here the someone will reassure you at once. No, no (they will say) When Gd moves in with you, Gd is not in competition with those others whom you love. Gd is never in competition with human beings. Never. With intimacy with Gd, you’ll actually love others more, as you’ll find there’ll be more love to go round. They will say it in such a way that you will find you trust them on this.

Do you take the point, overall? The Christian message is that Gd wants intimacy with us. Gd longs to be with us. And we… we are at best ambivalent in response. Part of us wants it; part of us does not want it. And Gd knows this. Gd stays with us as we are, in all our ambivalence, all of our dividedness, until we are ready.

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If I tell you that the work of a prison chaplain is often being with people as they look for hope (hope for change), when all seems hopeless – hope-against-hope, as St Paul famously puts is – then I imagine you get it. When all seems hopeless, we have to try this, and that, and that other thing, until we find something that connects us with the hope that is in us somewhere, but lost. But of course (and you knew this was coming), this isn’t something that is limited to prison chaplaincy, or prisons. It’s a truth for all of us.

The question for all of us is: How, then, shall we live, when hope comes… and goes.

And I don’t have anything new to say. I have already said what I want to bring today. I just want to say it again, this time as an utterly serious suggestion as something you might do. Imagine – maybe here and now, maybe later and elsewhere - seriously imagine that someone is saying this to you:

‘Listen. I’ve a message for you, just for you. It is this: Gd is moving in with you.’

How do you feel? 

What do you change? 

How do you live? 

I can’t be with you as much as I’d like. So this time is precious for me. But it may be that for all of us life is too short not to be asking these questions. Amen!