Orphaned? Never. Ever. (John 14:15-27)

Orphans

Oliver Twist. Annie. Harry Potter. Pippi Longstocking. Bambi. Bruce Wayne. You know what they have in common? Orphans. Every one of them. Some of the most beloved characters in two hundred years of Western storytelling — and they all have the same backstory. Peter Parker and Clark Kent and Matilda and Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker… the list is long, I could keep going. Fictional orphans beating the odds. Mom and dad, gone. Most of them, before the story even starts. The first thing we know about them is that they're alone in the world.

Why? Why does our culture keep going back to the orphan? Why does the orphan get cast as the hero, over and over and over again? Because the fear of being orphaned is one of the deepest fears a human being has. The fear of being the only one left. The fear that nobody is coming for you. This isn’t just loneliness. This is loneliness with no fix in the immediate proximity. You’re not just alone. No one is coming for you. No family. A baby cries when she can't see her mother because some part of her is asking the most primal question a human being can ask: is somebody coming? And we tell stories about orphans because deep down, all of us are afraid the answer might be no.

Today is Mother's Day. For some of you, that's wonderful. Cards, brunch, FaceTime with the kids — beautiful day. For some of you, it is hard. You are missing your mother. You are grieving a child you lost. You are sitting next to an empty chair that should be full. You are a woman who wanted to be a mom and isn't, and Mother's Day at church is one of the harder days on your calendar. I want to tell you up front: today's text knows. The Gospel reading uses one specific word for what some of you are feeling right now.

That word is orphan.

Jesus brings up the word in the last conversation he had with his best friends before going to the cross to die. We were in this chapter last week… and this week we’re looking at another part of the conversation. Jesus and his disciples are still in the upper room. things are totally unsettled. Judas was acting and talking a bit strange and Jesus himself is saying that he is going away… and where he is headed, his friends can’t go. Totally unnerving. And in his compassion, he begins to address their fear. Don’t let your heart be troubled. I’m going to prepare a place for you. So that I can dwell with you forever.

But even Jesus’ initial attempts at providing comfort prompt more responses from the disciples. Thomas says something to the effect.. you keep saying you’re going away, you’re going to the Father… we still don’t know where you’re going. Like, he’s not satisfied with Jesus’ general statements about going away. He’s right about that. Jesus isn’t giving specifics. But he’s giving Thomas and the others something better… himself. “Jesus says I am the way, the truth and the life.” All you need to know in this moment is that you have me. You get me.

Jesus’ humanity on display

Jesus is addressing an underlying fear here of being left alone. Everything he says here is addressing that idea. Too often we come to this passage trying to extract a bunch of deep theology. And ethics. And that temptation completely misses the point here. I don’t think Jesus wants us to sit down and spend the next few hours teasing out all the volumes of theology both explicitly stated and sitting underneath the conversation. Volumes and volumes have been written on this conversation… all in defense of the way we think God works. And along the way, Jesus’ humanity gets left behind.

And the line here that gets skipped over is the line that is bearing the weight of the entire conversation:

John 14:18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you.”

The entire chapter and conversation is built on that verse. Everything before it leads up to it. Everything after it is commentary on it. He uses the word “orphans”. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. He’s talking to grown men. He’s talking to men whose world is beginning to spin out of control. Out of all the theological relationships and ideas and images that Jesus could have chosen, he chooses this one. You’re about to feel like orphans. He could have said… I will not leave you as sheep without a shepherd… an image he has already used in the Gospel of John. I won’t abandon my friends. No… he reaches for orphans.

And as you contemplate just where Jesus is… the upper room… his arrest only a few hours away… this may be one of the most human moments we have from Jesus. This certainly rivals the scene outside of the funeral of his good friend Lazarus. Jesus can see that they cannot see… the arrest, their abandonment of him in fear, their sorrow, their fear… and he reaches for the most basics of fear.. in plain language.. I am not leaving you. Somebody is coming for you. That somebody is me.

That raises the question here…

What are we, if Jesus isn't with us?

Jesus answers that question right here, in one word. Orphans. Nobody coming. Nobody on the way. Left to fend for ourselves in a cold, cruel world. We find all sorts of words to talk about being without Jesus… and it’s not untrue. You can dress it up. You can call it something else. Adrift. Lost. Searching. Spiritual. You can buy books about finding your purpose and finding your tribe and finding your true self. The whole Christian self-help section at Barnes and Noble or Amazon is essentially an attempt to answer all of these things that we feel.. underneath it all is the word Jesus uses here: orphans.

Jesus promises here that he will not leave them as orphans. And the rest is about how he will keep that promise.

A Promise, not a condition

Verse 15 and 16 is where we get all twisted up, if we don’t see Jesus moving toward his disciples in love and with a promise:

John 14:15–16 “If you love me, you will keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever.”

This is where we begin to get out our theology books and pretty soon we are in the weeds and making claims this verse isn’t making. Both phrases here are also running themes throughout the conversation. But we have to say a couple of things here… in light of the idea that Jesus is providing comfort to guys who soon will feel like orphans.

First… we have to be careful with the first part. We read that and think… that’s a condition. That’s a call to obedience and if we don’t do our part, well then… there will be no comfort. Worse… if we don’t do our part, there won’t be the sending of the Holy Spirit. How many times are we going to lean into a transactional view of God? We do our part. He does his part. Love Jesus enough… obey Jesus enough… and you’ll get all the comfort you need.

That’s not what Jesus is saying here. That statement isn’t an imperative. Jesus is making a statement of fact.. a description of those who’ve already been loved by Jesus. It’s what they look like. There is no earning the Counselor or comforter here… if that’s the case, the guys Jesus is talking to will completely blow it in the next few hours. They are about to abandon Jesus. They are about to not keep Jesus’ commands in a very definitive way. There will be no earning the Holy Spirit by these guys. In fact, If you were to size them up… their “love” for Jesus won’t be all that evident.

The second thing here… the Father is sending another Counselor… some Bibles say “helper”, some say “advocate”, some say “comforter”. The word is literally “the One who is called alongside”. The one who stands alongside. Comforts. Delivers the verdict in your favor when your own heart is delivering the verdict against you. So when Jesus says, in our text, I will send you another Paraclete — notice the word he uses. Another. Of the same kind. Doing the same work.

The Spirit who is coming is not a different kind of comfort than Jesus. The Spirit is exactly the same kind. Doing exactly the same job. Standing alongside the troubled. Applying the verdict. Refusing to let the accusation stick. You hear what is happening? The whole reason the Spirit is coming is to keep doing what Jesus has been doing. Not to whip you into shape. Not to coach your performance. Not to make you a winner. Oh.. I could go on and on as to how we’ve talked about the Holy Spirit here… in our American evangelicalism, we want the Spirit for all sorts of things… but do we want him for comfort?

This text starts with “Don’t Let Your heart be troubled” closes with “peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.” From trouble to peace. And in between Jesus says another comforter is coming… the one who applies the peace. Anybody here for some comfort? Anybody here for some peace? Anybody here to hear the words of forgiveness one more time? Then this passage is for you.

But there’s also something else here that is addressing the deep desire for peace and comfort here.. what makes this real...

John 14:23 Jesus answered, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

I want to stop here because I think there’s a move we make with this verse, without us thinking about it much. The moment I say that the Father and the Son are going to make their home with us… the brain hears that… and we immediately translate that into… oh… yeah… that’s the Spirit coming to live inside me. We are conditioned by years of misreading this verse. We import all sorts of ways that we think about Jesus and the Holy Spirit into this verse… and pretty soon, it’s not Jesus coming to live with us… it’s just another way of saying the Holy Spirit is present because Jesus can’t be.

The Trinity.. FOR YOU

But that’s not what this verse is saying. Read that again. We will come to him and make our home with him. Who’s the we here? The Father and the Son. Jesus is promising the presence of the entire Trinity.. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And for this conversation, this is especially true about Jesus. It’s not just the Spirit. It’s the Father and the Son. Jesus… Jesus has already said… I go to prepare a place for you. I am doing to dwell with you… I’m planning and preparing to make my home with you. Jesus. Full stop right there. Nobody is pitting Jesus against the Spirit here, but we’ve jettisoned Jesus out of ourselves and out of the world in the way we talk.. Paul doesn’t do that:

Galatians 2: I’ve been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

Who lives in me? Christ does.

Colossians 1: Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Who’s in you? Christ is… our hope of glory.

2 Corinthians 13: Jesus Christ is in you.

Who’s in you? Jesus is. Paul says this so often that at some point we have to stop and say… Jesus lives with me. Quite literally. It’s not simply a matter of the Spirit living in us as if it were Jesus or on Jesus’ behalf… which is the way this text is too often stated.

So when Jesus tells you, this morning, that he will come and dwell with you — take him at his word. He is not subcontracting it. He is coming. Himself. To you.

The other thing that happens here is what we talked about last week… the promise that Jesus will come and live with us is pushed all the way into the future. In my Father’s house are many rooms.. I go to prepare a place… and immediately our minds, because of the way we’ve been conditioned, thing about that home in the sweet by and by… heaven. When Jesus says “we will come and make our home with him”… he’s using the same word as he did earlier in the conversation… my Father’s house has many dwelling places… we will make our dwelling place with the ones who are loved by the Father. Same word.

The Father's house is not a destination you arrive at when you die. The Father’s house is his sanctuary. Where God dwells. That’s here. That’s you. Right now.

Which just goes off the charts when Jesus says… I will not leave you as orphans.

John 14:18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you.”

Jesus is about to be left. By his friends. By the crowd. By the people he came for. And in some unfathomable way, in that moment on the cross, even seemingly by his own Father. The man who promises I will not leave you as orphans is the man who makes good on that promise by living with us. Emmanuel, God with us. Dwelling with us. FOR US.

He takes on the abandonment we feared. The cosmic terror of being left. The fear underneath all our other fears. He takes it on. Alone. On the cross. So that we never, ever have to.

Jesus, the Orphan

What are we, if Jesus is not with us? Orphans. AND What is Jesus, when he is hanging on the cross?

That’s the kicker…

My God, my God… why have you forsaken me? The cry of someone who has been abandoned. The Orphan. Dying so that we wouldn’t be Orphans.

Never. Ever.

If you came in here today carrying the orphan-fear — and some of you did, especially today, on this day, with the empty chair, with the missing mother, with the child you lost, with the family that fell apart, with whatever you are carrying that I do not even know about — Hear this:

I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.

Your heart needs to hear this because underneath all of it — underneath the abandonment, the helplessness, the loss of belonging, the loss of identity, underneath even who are we without Jesus — there is one question older and deeper than the rest. It is the mother of all questions. The orphan asks it because the orphan asks it most plainly, but every one of us has asked it, in the dark, when nobody was listening. Who will love me? That is the question. Not will I be safe. Not will I survive. Who will love me?

Who will love me?

And we know — without blinking, without flinching — what the honest answer is. Because we know what is in us. We know our sin. We know our unloveliness. We know the things we have done and the things we have left undone, and we know what we would deserve if every account were settled. Yes — yes, by God's mercy, we may find love in the people he has given us. A spouse. A child. A friend. A mother who loved us when we did not deserve it. Earthly love is real, and it is a gift, and it is not nothing. But peel it back. Strip it down to the bone. You are still left with the question with the Creator: Who will love me? Who will love me — knowing all of it — knowing what I am — who will love me that way? I have said it in this room before, and I will say it again. The chief end of me is to be loved by Jesus. That is who you are. That is your identity. Take Jesus out of that sentence and what is left is utter despair, utter hopelessness, the orphan question with no answer. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Who will love you? Hewill. Already does. Always has. Always will. That is the verdict. Never. Ever. That is the Gospel. That is the promise. You already have Jesus. Living with you. In you. Dwelling. And nothing will ever change that. That’s love.

Let’s Pray.

The Table

Everything we have just said about the One who comes, the One who dwells, the One who took flesh and never quit, the One whose humanity is the medium of the promise — that is the Christ who meets you at this Table. Not a memory of him. Not a symbol of him. Not the Spirit-of-Christ standing in for an absent Christ. Him. The same Christ who sat at the table in the upper room and said I will not leave you as orphans is the Christ who hands you bread tonight and says this is my body, given for you. The body and blood that took on the orphan-cry on the cross — for you — are the body and blood you are about to receive. This is what tlove looks like. Never. Ever. leaves means here, every Sunday, in your hands. Come and eat. Come and drink. Come and be at home in the One who has come to be at home in you.