Welcome to Bures Parish Church

Revds Robin & Katharine King

For previous sermons see our archived files below to the right.

To search by biblical reference please scroll to the end of this page.

Easter 6 2008 – 27th April

(for a microsoft word version click here)

“Hope and help”

Readings: Acts 17.22-31, John 14.15-21

There’s a thing happening in America now that’s becoming quite common at colleges and universities there, which is something called ‘the Last Lecture’. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. What happens is that top professors are put in a hypothetical situation, which is that they have to imagine this is the last time they will speak in public. So they’re asked to think deeply about what matters to them, and to give – again hypothetically – their final talk, summing up the most important things that they have learned in life. The question they’re trying to answer is this: “what wisdom would I want to share with the world if I knew this was my last chance”.

This American idea came to my attention thanks to an article in the paper recently about an American professor of computer science called Randy Pausch (only in America …!). Last September he gave one of these lectures – but the difference is, this time it wasn’t hypothetical. He had been booked to give the lecture for ages, but by the time it came round, they’d found ten tumours in his liver, and they’d given him 3-6 months to live. He began his lecture with that information, but immediately went on to say that this wasn’t going to be a lecture about death but about life, about all that really mattered to him in life. And you know, when a man really is dying, you listen to what he has to say. His words must have been inspirational, because the lecture took America by storm, and now he’s just published a book called “The Last Lecture”. I say now, because he is still alive in fact, thanks to some very drastic medical treatment, and very possibly a lot of prayer, but he now has eleven tumours, and he’s very very ill. But what a legacy to leave behind - that article I read about him had the title, “The dying man, who taught America how to live.”

Now, I’ve only seen ten minutes of his lecture on the internet, and I haven’t read his book, so I’ve no idea whether it’s any good or not, and therefore this isn’t a recommendation, but the reason I mention all of this is that our gospel reading this morning comes from what we might now think of as the Last Lecture of Jesus, and there’s nothing hypothetical about this one either. These are the last words of a dying man, and we should sit up and take note, because they teach us how to live. These are Jesus’ words to his disciples at the Last Supper, he’s trying to prepare them for the shock of his death, but also to give them guidance and reassurance for what will follow. So this also is not a lecture about death, but about life, the life that Jesus gives, and how to make the most of it. And the whole thing takes up a huge chunk of John’s gospel, 4 whole chapters out of the 21 that are there in total are given to Jesus’s Last Lecture, John clearly thought it was really really important that we hear these words. And although we are now at the other side of Easter, so to speak, and we know that the death of Jesus wasn’t the end of the story, there is another farewell looming. On Thursday it will be Ascension Day, which marks Jesus return to his heavenly Father for all eternity. So it’s now that Jesus’ words really do come into to their own, because they’re words that speak to us of life after Jesus. The whole passage of 4 chapters has a lot to say, but I just want to pick up on two themes this morning, both beginning with the letter ‘h’ – hope and help.

First of all then, hope. Even the small section of just a few verses that we heard today is full of it, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you…you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. One day you will realise that I am in my father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” I will…you will…you will…I will…The future tense. Jesus is clearly saying this is not the end. As Jesus was arrested, tortured and killed, the disciples must have thought again and again about these words – words that seem so certain, don’t they, and yet they can hardly have dared to hope that he was right. But he was, that hope was fulfilled, and they did see him again.

And it’s because of that Easter hope fulfilled that they and we can all have hope in what is to be fulfilled, hope for our future, hope that we will walk hand in hand with God through life, and hope that we will be with Jesus in heaven. Hope that gives us real confidence, because it is hope that is rooted in reality. Without reality hope isn’t hope, it’s just wishful thinking, and that doesn’t really get us anywhere. It’s “if I win the lottery” thinking, which might give us a few happy minutes of day-dreaming, but it’s not going to happen, it’s not grounded in real life. The promises that Jesus makes are much more concrete, because we know that they were fulfilled in part 3 days after his death. The resurrection gives us real hope.

But even having said that, hope does need help, and Jesus has no intention of leaving his disciples in a situation where they are left to hope without help. Someone put it like this, “without help, hope remains an orphan”, and Jesus says, I’m not going to do that, I’m not going to leave you orphans, I’m not going to leave you hoping alone, I’m going to send the Holy Spirit – there’s another ‘h’! If this was an old fashioned lecture room I might now turn to the blackboard and write Hope + Help = Holy Spirit! The sending of the Holy Spirit is a promise that Jesus makes 5 times in the course of his last lecture, using a word that’s translated as Counsellor in our version, but it’s broader meaning is one who helps, one who stands alongside. Jesus calls him the Spirit of truth, and says later in chapter 14, ‘the Holy Spirit will remind you of everything I have said to you.’ It’s in the power of the spirit that our hope is kept real, he is the help of Christian hope.

Without the spirit, the followers of Jesus, both then and now, would be thrown back on their own resources to sustain their hope, and to do God’s work, and those resources are simply not enough when the going gets tough. We only have to look back at that other great salvation moment in the bible, when God led Moses and the people of Israel out of captivity in Egypt , to see how quickly good news becomes bad news. They’re free, but in the desert they’re tired and hungry and thirsty and they moan and moan and moan. “It would have been better if we’d never left” they say, and there’s a wonderful verse in Numbers that I came across the other day when they’re moaning about only having manna to eat, and they remember with rose-tinted spectacles that in Egypt they had melons and cucumbers and leeks and onions and even garlic (it really says that - 11:5!). And now, they say, all we’ve got is this manna, completely ignoring what a miracle the manna is, and quickly forgetting the truth, which is how miserable they were, how they longed to be set free, and how they cried out to God in the hope that he would intervene, hope that was fulfilled, but hope that is soon forgotten.

But in the book of Acts, which covers the events after Jesus’ ascension, we see what happens the power of the Spirit gets hold of hope. We’ve just recently done the whole book of Acts in our home group, and week after week we commented on how determined the disciples were, how eager, how focussed, undeterred by anything. Not once do you hear them saying, “it would have been better Jesus hadn’t come along, we were better off before.” – in spite of the fact that their lives have now been made pretty complicated. And in the reading we heard this morning Paul is so bold, that he stands up in front of the greatest men in Greek society, philosophers and thinkers, it would be like giving a lecture at Oxbridge and Cambridge to the professors, and he says I’m going to tell you about something you don’t know, but I do! He’s so sure, he knows this is the truth, because the spirit of truth is with him, helping him to express the hope that’s so amazing he can’t keep to himself.

Jesus tells us that the Spirit is unseen. That is true, but what is seen is the hope and confidence of the disciples and that’s what started the church. And Jesus also makes it clear that the same Spirit he promises will be given not only to the disciples, but to all those who love him and follow him.

I wonder if that’s what people see when they look at us – a church that’s full of hope? We’re good at proclaiming Easter hope, but I wonder if we really show it. And if people can’t see that hope in us, or we can’t see it in each other, perhaps it’s because we’re not allowing the Holy Spirit to help us. Someone once said that the Holy Spirit doesn’t gatecrash people’s lives. I don’t know that I agree absolutely with that, because look what happened to Paul himself on the road to Damascus ! His conversion involved being thrown to the ground in a great flash of light, if that’s not a gatecrash, I don’t know what is! But generally I think that the Spirit is close but waiting, and he’s not going to barge in unless we say, come and help. Perhaps our challenge now, as we look towards Ascension Day, and Pentecost after that, is to really be open to the Spirit, to allow him to help us to make hope a reality, to make our faith living and real. Faith that ignores the Holy Spirit is faith that is a shadow of what it might be. Jesus knew we would need the Spirit of truth.

At the end of Randy Pausch’s lecture, he says 5 simple words. “This was for my kids”. He’s got 3 children, aged 5 and under, there’s no way he can tell them now what he wants to tell them, but his words will live on, and one day they will be old enough to understand. And Jesus’ words also are for all those who will need to understand one day, words for the children of God, words for us. And at the end of his last lecture, at the end of these four chapters in John, he does something else, he prays. He prays for himself, he prays for his disciples – and then he prays for all believers to come, for all who will believe because of the message the disciples will give. And that means that Jesus prayed for me. Isn’t that amazing, on the last night of his life, Jesus prayed for me, and for you. His final words are about us to his heavenly Father, he says Father, “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself will be in them.”