It may seem rather strange and maybe a little ironic that on a day when we celebrate the freedom of Europe, when we remember the events of seventy years ago, that I would begin my sermon with a German poet from the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century. I chose this poet, Rainer Maria Rilke precisely because he conveys one of the great truths of life and the great horrors of war. Originally from Prague, and of German heritage, he became a German citizen, and wrote in German. He grew up in a broken family and immersed himself in the writings of Nietzsche. He loved the art of Rodin, but generally speaking, he had a dark and a pessimistic view of life. Even before the war, in 1914, he saw a storm rising. In a very famous poem, entitled A Sense of Something Coming, Rilke wrote the following, an incredible metaphor of loneliness:
I am like a flag in the center of open space.
I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live it through.
while the things of the world still do not move:
the doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full of silence,
the windows do not rattle yet, and the dust still lies down.
I already know the storm, and I am troubled as the sea.
I leap out, and fall back,
and throw myself out, and am absolutely alone
in the great storm.
Rilke knew a storm was coming. He felt alone and isolated, terrified in the midst of it.
How many of us and how many in the world feel like Rilke did: alone when a storm is coming, alone when there are troubles is brewing, and when the wind is blowing in the wrong direction? Indeed, as human beings, we are consciously alone in our thoughts. We were born alone and we die alone. Existentially, we think alone. They are our thoughts, our feelings. The ideas of our mind are captured and known only to ourselves. We are alone. You might think this is the most pessimistic way to start a Mother’s Day service. Yet, it is not there that I want to end; it is only there that I want to begin, for I want to turn our text this morning. If ever there was a group of people who felt that they were alone when a storm was coming, it was the disciples in the Upper Room right before the Crucifixion.
The disciples had dedicated their lives, and particularly the last three years, to serving God and following Jesus. They had declared him to be Lord, had risked life and limb for him, travelled with him through both the torrents of turbulent waters and the quiet, peaceful ones in the valley. They had witnessed the greatest of miracles and the greatest of rejection. The disciples are in an upper room and they feel that they are going to be alone. Jesus captures this. He addresses it straight on. He doesn’t pontificate. He simply says these incredible words: “I will not leave you as orphans. I will be with you.” For the rest of this discourse that only John captured from the Upper Room, Jesus makes these incredible promises: “I will abide with you and you will abide with me.” “As I have been with the Father, so I will have been with you, and you will be with me, and you will be with the Father. You will not be alone.” He uses the imagery of the vine and the branches and says, “I am the vine and you are the branches.”Jesus talks about the connectivity between the people who follow him and God and eternity. It is an incredible passage, beginning with the affirmation: “I will not leave you as orphans.”
On this Mother’s Day, I want to unpack this metaphor, because I think the notion of being an orphan is so profound that it is worthy of explanation in order that we might understand the living relationship that we have with Jesus himself. Jesus says, “I will not leave you orphans.” The Greek word used to translate it is orphanos. It was the beginning of our notion of orphans. Literally it means to lose both your parents as a child. Over the years, it has taken on many different connotations. For example, the UN Committee on HIV/AIDs suggests that losing one parent can make a child an orphan. The word has been used not only to describe the literal loss of both parents, but those who are abandoned, for in fact, there are children who are orphans whose parents are still alive, but they have been rejected or they have been left to fend for themselves, or they have been separated by war or cataclysm or political downfalls.
There are many definitions of being an orphan, but one that I really haven’t thought about until just recently is also powerful. When I was in Ottawa for the Prayer Breakfast, I had dinner with a very good friend of mine. I was apprehensive about this dinner because I knew that she had just lost her mother and they had been very close. Her father had died years before. I knew she would be grieving. Even though she is married, even though she has two children, she made a profound statement over dinner. She said, “Andrew, I am in my fifties, but right now, I feel like I am an orphan.” It doesn’t matter how old you are, you don’t have to be a child to be an orphan, because she mentioned the fact that what was lost was sort of a collective memory, the moments that they had shared, the mentor that she could turn to and had turned to from her very birth. For her, it was as if she was an orphan. I understood what she meant.
I think, that sense of not having a collective history, of not having a memory of the way things were, and not having a mentor along the way is part of what it means to be an orphan. Those disciples, when they heard that Jesus was going away – he was going to be crucified – felt that their collective memory and everything that they had done would somehow disappear. Who would be their teacher? Who would be their mentor? Who would care for them when the storms were coming? So Jesus declared, “I will not leave you orphans!” Of course, looking back at events as we do now, we see how right he was. Through the Resurrection, through the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, rather than leaving them as orphans and alone, he maintained that bond, that spiritual connection. Jesus was with them during the storms.
How many of us need to hear that assurance in our lives today? How many of us who have lost loved ones need to hear the words: “I will not leave you orphans.” How many of us caught in moral dilemmas and faced with decisions on what path to take need to hear “I will not leave you orphans.” How many of you have struggled with making a decision that would influence other people’s lives? How many of you as mothers and parents have had to discern the right path on which to guide your children? How many times have you been in a position where you are alone in that and need to hear “I will not leave you orphans?” How many of you in sickness, and in your own pain have not felt alone? You can’t hand 50 per cent of your pain to the person that you love the most so they could bear it! You are not able to share your pain physically with somebody else that they can carry it for you. You bear it! You carry it! And when you’re in that pain you feel alone. At a time like that, how much more do you need to hear the words, “I will not leave you alone, for I am with you.” There is not a solitary moment, when those who are bonded by faith in Christ will be alone.
It is also a witness of the church to address this notion of being an orphan head-on and to speak to it. Being an orphan is a reality for many people throughout the world. Statistics coming out of the United Nations are staggering. In Africa alone, 11.9 per cent of all children are orphans – in total 34 million children. In Asia, it is 6.5 per cent or 65 million children. In Latin America, it is five per cent - eight million children. Here we are, on Mother’s Day, with all the opportunities in the world and all the freedom and the peace and all those children orphaned. Not wanting to burst your bubble, not wanting to make you feel guilty. I am just letting you know that whatever you can do to help anyone who is ministering to those children, do it. It is staggering. With each successive war, battles, insurrections, violence, more orphans are created. This world needs to hear not only “I will not leave you orphans” but they need to be embraced and sheltered and protected.
I don’t think it is a coincidence, but so many of the great writers throughout history have understood the plight of the orphan, the greatest of which was Dickens, but the Brontes, Mark Twain, even J. K. Rowling, understood the problems that are faced by orphans. I also realized just recently how many of the superheroes, how many of the great characters of fiction were actually orphans: Superman – orphan, Batman – orphan, Cat Woman – orphan, Spiderman – orphan, the Saint – orphan, and the list goes on! Why? This is because there is a feeling that in their vulnerability they needed some sort of super-power, they needed some sort of strength to help them. Coming mainly out of the experience of people who lived through the Holocaust and who have been the source of writing so many of these stories, there is this sense of callousness of being an orphan, just like the great Moses himself. But it is for those who are in the greatest need that the spiritual presence and power of Almighty God is so much greater and so much more powerful: “I will not leave you orphans.” “I will abide with you and you will abide with me.”
It is not just about the solitary individual, it is not just about the child bereft and left without parents: it is also a collectivity. Jesus was speaking to the disciples in the Upper Room. They were the ones who needed help. They had each other, but were going to lose the greatest power in their lives: Jesus. It is not just an individual who needs to hear the words, “I will not leave you orphans.” Sometimes, it is a whole race or a whole group of people who need to hear that. Just recently, I have been contemplating particularly the plight of African Americans in the United States and the great worry and torment that is going on in many American cities. I read an article by a former professor of mine who teaches at Harvard, Randall Kennedy. He is an African American, who actually clerked under Thurgood Marshall in the U. S. Supreme Court. Kennedy has written some wonderful pieces – you can see them on my Facebook page – about the importance of optimism and the dangers of pessimism, and that, in fact, the United States has come a long way since Dred Scot in 1857, which declared that African Americans were not citizens and there is no point going back to that and revisiting those dark days, but to move on, and to move on with a sense of optimism and finding a way to make things work. I think at the heart of groups feeling alone, is fear, and I think when you fear, you feel isolated, and when you feel isolated, you lash out or you reach out. The words that need to be heard are “I will not leave you as orphans” and that in the midst of your anxieties and fears, “I, Jesus, will not leave you comfortless.”
The same goes for people of faith. At times, it seems that belonging to a faith is an isolating thing. Sometimes, I think we are like the disciples in the Upper Room and we need to hear this word of comfort. We need this word of encouragement that no matter what happens, “I will not leave you orphans.” For all those who are struggling to keep their churches alive, for those who are trying to maintain their fellowship in the body of Christ, for those who are wanting so desperately to maintain the thing that has meant so much to them in their lives, they need to hear what Jesus has to say: “I will not leave you as orphans.” I will not abandon you. I will not leave you. “We ask only” says Jesus to the disciples in the Upper Room, “that you will allow me to abide in you, that you keep my commandments, and that you love one another. If you do that, I will be with you until the end of the age.”
Next time you feel like Rainer Maria Rilke, a solitary flag blowing in the wind with storms coming, listen to Jesus: “I will not leave you as orphans” – ever! Amen.