John 14:15-21 Easter 6A                                                         
St. John, Galveston 5/10/26 
Rev. Alan Taylor
 
+ In Nomine Jesu +
 
Grace and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

    Jesus said, “I will not leave you as orphans;  I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but  you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that  I am in my Father, and  you in me, and  I in you.” 
 
        In the Broadway musical “Annie,” a young orphan girl by the same name is depicted as a precocious, confident, even light hearted young lady. She sees her future as filled with hope and promise. And so she sings, “the sun will come out tomorrow. You can bet your bottom dollar. It’s only a day away.”  
 
        We probably grumble sometimes at Broadway and probably more so, at Hollywood, because they sometimes have a tendency to make something bad out of something good. On the other hand, they sometimes make something good out of something bad too. It is the magic of the script, the ability to write a story with a “happy ever after” ending. Daddy Warbucks came to Annie’s rescue. He adopted her, taking her from the dismal New York Municipal Girls Orphanage and from the oppressive supervision of the wicked Miss Hannigan. He then lavished her with everything that comes with being a child of Daddy Warbucks.    
 
        In the real world though, the orphan’s experience is generally not like “Annie’s.” Children without parents often feel a sense of rejection, a sense of being unwanted, of being discarded, perhaps even of being unlovable. When our oldest daughter, Jennifer, was a student at Concordia University in Seward, Nebraska, she did her student teaching in Hong Kong, at the international school. One weekend, she and a friend took a trip onto the mainland of China. During their stay they visited an orphanage. She said it was a terrible thing to see. Quickly she noted that almost all of the children in the orphanage were little girls, some of them infants. They had been left in the orphanage, discarded by their parents, because in China, families are only allowed one child and most families prefer to have a boy.
 
        “The sun will come out tomorrow,” but life “under the sun,” as King Solomon wrote, “is vanity of vanities, a chasing after the wind.” Generally speaking, that which has been is what will be. Thus, “there is nothing new under the sun.” In his last days, Solomon concluded that life without God, life without a heavenly Father, is burdensome and meaningless at best, a chasing after the wind.    
 
        As Jesus prepared His disciples for His departure by way of the cross, He was mindful of the fact that after He left, they would consider themselves orphans, abandoned, forsaken, if you will, by their Lord and Master. For sure, it was the soldiers and the religious leaders that took Jesus away from them, but for them, at least for a time, their concern was simply that Jesus was gone and they were alone. Life that was once filled with meaning and purpose took on a new hue. When Jesus was alive the disciples vowed to follow Him to the bitter end, to help usher in His kingdom. But now He was gone and they were, as we saw in a Gospel text a few weeks ago, fearful of the future.       
 
        In this morning’s Gospel reading, Jesus reminds His disciples that they will see Him again, when He rose from the dead. He would be there on the shore of Galilee to restore Peter to the faith. They would see Him in the upper room in Jerusalem. And Thomas, yes, even Thomas, the one given to doubt, would embrace the fact that Jesus had truly risen from the dead and that He had, in fact, not left them alone as orphans. 
 
        And because Jesus lived, they would live also. It’s what Paul says to the Christians at Rome. The disciples, as well as you and I, have been baptized into Jesus death and resurrection. Consequently, we are as certain to live in the glory of heaven as heirs of the Kingdom, as it is certain that Jesus rose from the grave. The disciples saw Him. And they have declared it. Jesus is alive, and because He is alive He lives in, and for, each one of us.     
 
        For the disciples, there would be, of course, another departure of Jesus. His Ascension, which we will celebrate very soon in the church, is a bit of a happy / sad occasion. Luke describe the Ascension, saying, “when (Jesus) had (told His disciples about the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost), as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and  a cloud took him out of their sight.” Like a child watching as his father leaves him or her behind, the disciples weren’t sure what to think of Jesus’ Ascension. They were still rejoicing in His resurrection, and then, in the blink of an eye there was a big woosh and He was gone. Again!
 
        You and I, as it were, live in the aftermath of that big woosh, don’t we? We don’t SEE Jesus, per se. For sure, ours is an age of grace, grace ushered in by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Ours is a day when God’s word carries with it the power to redeem and to give life, the power to console and to heal, the power to strengthen, even the power to move us to say “I believe,” and not only to say it, but, to have it firmly planted in the depths of our hearts.  
 
        And yet, there is a certain yearning in our hearts. We so long to see Jesus, to stand in His presence, to touch Him, and to have Him touch us, to dry our tears and to turn our sorrows into joy. We are filled with questions, and we wish that He were here in the flesh to answer those questions and to settle our nerves and our worries. I suspect that on more than one occasion you’ve sat alone and wondered why Jesus doesn’t just show up and fix things, a broken family, a job that doesn’t satisfy, a financial situation that has gone amuck. We live in this age of grace, still it’s the age of the big woosh, if you will. Jesus has been taken up and we are called to believe and trust in Him, that we are His dear children, though we can’t see Him.
    
        Of course, His disciples would have experienced the same sort things that you and I experience now. His resurrection from the dead was to give them lasting assurance that they had not been left as orphans. Their Lord, who hung from the cross, who bled and died for them, was alive, though they could no longer see Him. And more than alive, He was seated at the right of God, ruling the world with power and the church with grace.      
 
        I suppose the question for us this morning is whether or not we continue to take comfort in Jesus’ resurrection and in what it means that He is alive? Certainly, when we stand by the grave of a loved one, or when we contemplate our own death, we find great comfort in knowing that our Lord has defeated death and the grave. It is only in that knowledge that we can “grieve, but not as those who have no hope.”
 
        But, Jesus resurrection is not just to comfort us in death. Rather, it is to assure us that we are not alone in this world, that we have not been left as orphans. As Jesus said, “In that day (that is, in the resurrection) you will know that  I am in my Father, and  you in me, and  I in you.” The purpose and meaning of life is wrapped up in the resurrection of Jesus. As Paul said when he was preaching to the philosophers in Athens, “in Him, (that is in God, in Christ) we live and move and have our very being.”   
 
        Friends, you are children of the Most High God! You are heirs of the kingdom of heaven! Indeed, “behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us that we should be called the children of God. And so, the sun will come out tomorrow.

“How blest are they who have not seen
and yet whose faith has constant been,
for they eternal life shall win.
Alleluia!”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
 
The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting.  Amen.
 
+ Soli Deo Gloria +