Not Orphaned

Jesus speaks one of the most important truths that feels important to hear in this moment: "I will not leave you orphaned." Let's explore this statement more!

Acts 17:22-31

Psalm 66:7-18

1 Peter 3:13-22

John 14:15-21

© 2026 The Rev. Seth Olson

This sermon was preached on the Sixth Sunday of Easter at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostles in Hoover, AL. You may watch a video of it here.

Holy God, may my words be your words, and when my words are not your word, may your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.

There are some fears we grow out of. When we are little, we might be afraid of the dark, or monsters under the bed, or being dropped off at school and wondering if our parents are really going to come back.

And then we get older and become very sophisticated, mature, capable adults… And we find new things to be afraid of. The monsters under the bed become bills, diagnoses, conflict, grief, and loneliness; aging parents, struggling children, uncertain futures, and the quiet fear that maybe we are not enough.

Or maybe even deeper than that: the fear that we are alone. Not just physically alone. But spiritually alone. Emotionally alone. Relationally alone.

The fear that when the hard thing comes, no one will be there. That when the grief hits, no one will understand. That when we mess up, no one will stay. That when the world changes, when the old certainties fall away, when the life we knew disappears, we will have to figure it all out by ourselves.

And perhaps that lands with particular tenderness today, on Mother’s Day — a day that is beautiful for many, complicated for many, painful for many, and often all of those things at once. Later in the service, we will offer a prayer broad enough, I hope, to hold some of that complexity. But here, in the Gospel, Jesus speaks a word beneath all of it: “I will not leave you orphaned.”

That is the heart of the Gospel today.

“I will not leave you orphaned.” Jesus says this on the night before his death. He is not speaking in a peaceful moment by the Sea of Galilee while the disciples are well-rested and full of bread and fish—nor after it’s all worked out.

He is speaking in the shadow of the cross—to friends who are about to watch their world fall apart. He’s speaking to ones who will soon scatter, deny, hide, weep, and wonder whether everything they had hoped for was just another beautiful dream crushed by the powers of the world.

And Jesus knows this. He sees what is coming. So, he prepares them.

But notice how he prepares them. He does not hand them a guide entitled, “How to Survive Good Friday,” nor does he say, “Here’s what is going to happen and here’s how you should manage your anxiety.” No, he says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.”

Intriguing. Another Advocate. Another Helper, Comforter, One who comes alongside.

From our 2,000 year later vantage point, we see Jesus offering the Spirit.

The Spirit of truth. The Spirit who abides. The Spirit who will not just visit them from time to time when they’re especially holy or especially well-behaved.

No, it’s the Spirit who will be with them, in them, among them. This isn’t abstract, nor is it a secret doctrinal quiz before Jesus keeps going. This is pastoral care.

This is Jesus looking at frightened people and saying, “You are going to feel like I am gone. But I will not abandon you. You are going to feel like the world has won. But I am coming to you. You are going to feel like death has had the last word. But because I live, you also will live.”

That is the promise.

Not: nothing hard will happen, love will prevent grief, or faith will block fear

But: We will not be abandoned. We will not be left alone to figure out resurrection life by ourselves. And, that matters because Christians too often talk about faith as though the goal is to be fearless. As though if we really believed, we would never be anxious, never confused, never weary, never shaken.

But that is not what we see in Scripture. The disciples are afraid, confused, and misunderstanding Jesus all the time. They lose heart, nerve, and perspective.

Fortunately, we do not hear Jesus say, “Well, when you finally get yourselves together, I’ll send the Spirit.” He says, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate.” The gift comes to fragile, frightened, and unproven people. That is grace—God’s favor unearned, undeserved.

Then, Jesus offers something more, that can sound conditional: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

Now, if we are not careful, we may hear that as a threat. “If you love me, prove it, perform, get everything right.”

But that is not the voice of Jesus. That is the voice of anxiety dressed up in Jesus’ robes. He’s not saying “Obey me so that I will love you.” He is saying “When you live in my love, my way will become visible in you.”

So, what are Jesus commandments? In John’s Gospel account, it’s not a checklist of religious performance. It’s simply: “Love one another as I have loved you.” That is the command.

Love one another. Love as Jesus loves. Love with humility, mercy, courage.

Live in love that washes feet, feeds the hungry, welcomes the outsider, forgives enemies, tells the truth, lays itself down for the life of the world.

“If you love me, keep my commandments” does not mean, “Become impressive.” It means, “Let my love take shape in your life.” And that is why the gift of the Spirit is so important. Because we cannot do this on our own.

We cannot manufacture Christlike love through willpower, or grit our teeth hard enough to become the Body of Christ. We need help. We need the Advocate, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, to come alongside us, to dwell within us, to remind us who we are and whose we are.

Because the truth is, when we feel orphaned, we often stop acting like beloved children of God. When we feel abandoned, we become defensive, controlling, or start protecting ourselves at the expense of others. And whole communities can do this too, which sadly means churches can do this.

When a church feels anxious, it can start living as though scarcity is the deepest truth. As though the past is gone, the future is uncertain, and everything depends on us holding it all together by force of personality and committee structure—not that committee structure is unimportant. This is still the Episcopal Church after all—and we love our order (sometimes, too much).

Regardless, the Church is not held together by anxiety, nor sustained by nostalgia, nor saved by frantic effort, nor fueled by fear. The Church lives because Christ lives. Christ lives in, among, between, around, and beyond us.

Jesus says, “Because I live, you also will live.” That is the promise and the ground on which we stand.

And, here is where the Gospel becomes very practical for us. Because all of us, at some point, have to decide what kind of people we will become when we are afraid.

Will fear make us smaller? Meaner? Overly controlling?

Will fear hasten us to isolate ourselves? Become skeptical of our neighbors? Turn our religion into sword and shield? 

Or will we receive the Spirit again? Will we let the Advocate come alongside us? Will we remember that we are not orphaned? Will we allow the love of Jesus to become visible in us precisely when love is hardest?

That is the invitation. And, thanks be to God, it is not only personal. It is communal. We walk this path and do this holy work together. 

So, what would it mean for Holy Apostles to live as a community that truly believes Jesus has not left us orphaned? It would not mean we never feel anxious. It would not mean we never disagree. It would not mean we never grieve what has changed or wonder what comes next.

But it would mean that underneath all of that, there is a deeper confidence.

Christ is alive. The Spirit abides. God is near. We are not alone.

And because we are not alone, we can love, we can serve, we can take the next faithful step.

Because we are not alone, we can welcome the stranger, care for the hurting, teach our children, tend our elders, forgive one another, tell the truth, and bear witness to the life-giving, liberating love of God in Jesus Christ. Not because we are so strong. But because the Spirit is with us.

Because the Spirit is in us. Because Jesus keeps his promises.

“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.” These are words for frightened disciples—for weary churches—for anxious hearts. Words for anyone who has ever wondered whether they are going to have to carry the whole thing alone.

You are not orphaned. You are not abandoned. You are not left to your own devices.

The risen Christ is not simply someone we remember. He is the One in whom we live, and move, and have our being. The One whose Spirit abides. The One whose love becomes highly visible when his people keep his way—living in love.

And because he lives, we also will live. So love him. Keep his way. Receive the Spirit. And do not be afraid.

For Christ has promised: “I will not leave you orphaned.” And Christ always keeps God’s promises.

Amen.

Our Trouble with the Divine

On Sunday we will continue working our way through the “Bread of Life Discourse” from the 6^th Chapter of John. Having had two weeks off from preaching in a pulpit—my family had to deal with me sermonizing them on the beach last week—I am excited to jump into the middle of this five week block. During my first reading of this coming Sunday's Gospel lesson my eyes fall upon the conflict between Jesus and some Jewish leaders. 

The Common English Bible translates it this way: “The Jewish opposition grumbled about him because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ They asked, ‘Isn’t this Jesus, Joseph’s son, whose mother and father we know? How can he now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’” (John 6:41-42). These words stand out because the trouble that the Jewish elite have with Jesus we all have with the Divine, or rather with people who say that they are from God.

Followers of Jesus today are quite certain that he came down from heaven, but in his day claiming that he had come from heaven was blasphemous and reason for not just alarm but persecution. Today we still feel this way, at least in parts of the Church. If someone claims that they are a messenger of God or have heard God speaking we tell them to seek professional help, run them out of town, or write them off. Why is this?

Well, we in the Church tend to differentiate between Christ Jesus and us. Clearly in his life, death, and resurrection we see as the centurion did that “Truly [Jesus] was God’s Son” (Mark 15:39). Jesus showed in his actions, his healings, his teaching, his prayerfulness, his faithfulness, and his love that he had come down from heaven. However, we are not so quick to connect ourselves or others with the Divine. We do not recognize that while we are different from Jesus we are nonetheless children of God.

All of us are made in God’s image. All of us are grafted into the Body of Christ. All of us are adopted through Christ into the household of God. And yet, whenever someone talks about a pre-birth experience with God or an encounter with the Divine we, in the Episcopal Church, shut them up. I get it we love good theology and orthodox religion, but if we are not willing to share how we are part of God’s family, enmeshed in God’s limitless love, and filled with God’s Holy Spirit what are we doing? How are we continuing to share the Good News of Christ Jesus not only according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but also the Good News according to us?

To follow Jesus is not only about worshipping God on Sunday mornings as we join together at church. No, following Jesus calls us into remember something very important on a daily basis. Those of us who eat the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven, are in that moment remembering that we are part of God’s household. But, we are called to always re-member the Body of Christ and to know that we are God's children always. Every day we are challenged to live into the truth that we are Christ’s friends and through him fellow children of the Divine.

We do not like when people claim that they are of a higher position than we think that they are. We want them to prove it first, but the truth is that all of us are children of God by no effort of our own. All of us are members of God’s household. All of us are called to live into the limitless love that Christ showed us. Don't be troubled with the Divine. Remember that you are one of God's own children!

Infantile Vision

 

To see who we truly are we need the vision of a child (and yes, I am shamelessly using a pic of my own child).

This Sermon was preached at St. John’s Church, Decatur, AL during the Wednesday Evening Eucharist on July 18, 2018. The sermon was inspired by the following passages from Holy Scripture:

Isaiah 10:5–7,13–16

Psalm 94:5–15

Matthew 11:25–27

“You are so infantile!” is not typically a compliment. In fact, usually that phrase gets thrown around as an insult. Being “childish” often gets even children in trouble. We as a culture want nothing more than to grow up. So, why is it that Jesus thanks God for hiding “these things from the wise and the intelligent and [God has] revealed them to infants”? What is Jesus talking about—what things are hidden from the smart but revealed to earth’s newbies?

To understand what Jesus said, we must take a look at where his earthly mission had recently taken him. Jesus had been on a tear! He’d been healing and teaching and all the while revealing the Kingdom of God to those that were bold enough to follow him. His renown grew in all of Israel. People shared what Jesus was doing so much that even John the Baptist in prison heard about it. John’s followers sought out Jesus to discover if he was the one whose way John had been preparing. Instead of giving a straightforward answer, Jesus pointed to all that was being done—the blind receiving sight, the lame walking, the lepers becoming clean, the deaf hearing, the dead living, and the poor hearing good news!

As John’s disciples left, Jesus spoke glowingly of his forerunner, but he lamented that no one really heard John’s message. And what was more, no one listened to what Jesus was speaking. When John came people said he was too harsh and when Jesus came they said he was too joyous and accepting. Even through all of the deeds of power that Jesus did the people could not see who he was. With all of the bountiful spiritual fruit Jesus produced the people were not satisfied. They were essentially dead to what he was doing, which brings us to today’s Gospel lesson.

Even though Jesus had been pointing to God through his words and teachings, his thoughts and speech, his deeds and actions—even though with everything he was and did he pointed to God—not many saw to whom or to what he pointed. They missed it. Children though are different. Infants are different. They do not have prejudices, preconceptions, and prejudgments. They are open. Their vision is pliable. They are playful in engaging the world.

God’s gracious will was to hide the greatest wisdom from those who are puffed up by their sense of ego, knowledge, or status. Instead, God hid signs in the everyday and they point directly back to God. That’s what Jesus was inviting others to see. Through his healings he was pointing to something larger—that the created order was about restoration and wholeness. Through his teachings he was pointing to something more profound and at the same time more simple—that all are welcomed as God’s children. Through his ability to overcome death he was pointing to the most important truth—that God’s love conquers every disconnect, every sin, and even dying itself. Still somehow people missed that, and sadly we miss it too.

Through these words we are challenged to see through the eyes of an infant. We are called to be infantile, childish, and immature, but not by regressing. No, Jesus is inviting all who have ears to hear into a second childhood. Some call this state being reborn, but I prefer another term, second naiveté. What does this mean? To better understand this let’s look at the analogy of a journey.

It is all too easy to be thrown off our path in the middle of our lifelong pilgrimage. Often getting thrown off the path is a good thing. It’s a chance to learn and grow. There are moments when we use a self-defense mechanism to get through a tough time. This is a good thing—it helps us make it through a difficult wounding. However, if we get stuck using this self-defense mechanism too often or for a troublesome part of the journey that it will not really help, then we may get discouraged or worse. We may become cynical, burnt out, depressed, anxious, or otherwise disenchanted with the beauty of this life. This is where so many who have heard Jesus but did not listen to him get off track, and where we need second naiveté.

To see the world not through the prism of defensiveness, skepticism, or cynicism requires us not to regress to childish behavior, but to reclaim the essence of who we were as authentic children of God. Who are we really? Who are you really? Who did God make you to be? What gifts and talents do you have? What’s your place in this world? These are all helpful questions in recovering that genuine part of us that Jesus yearns to draw out of us. For when we see with the vision of an infant we do not expect the worst in people, but rather see them as other ones to play with, laugh with, and learn from!

Jesus, right after this passage, says some of the most inviting words in Holy Scripture. They are words that call us deeper into life with Jesus and seeing from God’s “child-like” vision. “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” This invitation is a blueprint into finding our true selves.

Jesus invites us to put down the burden of thinking that we are important (i.e. egoic thought). He calls us to rest in our real selves. He gives us the work of being who God truly calls us to be. Children who see that everything points to God through the neon-bright sign that is Christ. You are God’s child, now start acting like one  by actually being one!

Connectivity

Each Gospel account possesses its own particular flavor. This year on Sundays the Gospel lessons mostly come from Matthew, which gives us the Sermon on the Mount with challenges to tend for the outcast, the poor, and the lowly. Luke’s distinctness derives from the details, the Songs from Anna, Simeon, Zechariah, and Mary, as well as the parables. In John we find a sophisticated way of talking and thinking about God, a festive theme, and of course, the opening verses describing the Word creating all. While I love all of these appetizing aspects of other Gospel accounts, my favorite telling of the Good News is Mark’s.

Mark tells the story with perfect pace, as though the tale of Jesus could be turned into a screenplay and then a movie. Immediately the audience moves from one story to the next, until the events of Holy Week unfold slowly and deliberately to emphasize their importance. Also, the interpretation does not get accomplished by the narrator, but by us who hear the most basic details about the Son of Man. We must decide what to make of Jesus. When we read through the pages of Mark we may experience Jesus stepping out of the story and into our lives. To top it all off the original ending leads us to go out and see the Risen Lord in our own lives, in our own Galilee. What’s not to love about Mark’s expression of the Good News?

An enveloping structure additionally stands out as one of the other hallmarks found within the Gospel account of Mark. This means that sometimes stories happen within a story or are far more connected than we might initially imagine. In Chapter 11 the cursing of the fig tree immediately precedes and follows the cleansing of the Temple, as if to show us that our spirituality will wither and die like that tree if we turn our spiritual practices into money-making mockeries. To this end, we can swiftly discover that so much in Mark connects, and the edges of stories blur into one another masterfully, such that one helps us to interpret another. Today’s passage falls into this same pattern.

As Jesus and his disciples travel through Galilee, a rough place in which Jesus’ healing, feeding, and teaching flourished, this band of travelers kept a low profile. They did this because Jesus sought to teach them about the nature of the Son of Man. The Messiah would be betrayed, undergo suffering at human hands, and even die before rising again. With the backdrop of other lessons in his ministry, Jesus tries to show his closest followers what lies ahead. Their fear though precludes them from seeing or even asking for clarification. This is where the connectivity from one story to the next comes to the forefront.

While the disciples were walking with Jesus and hearing of what the Messiah must undergo, they begin to argue over who is the greatest. This is no coincidence. Even though they could not grasp where Jesus’ ministry was going, they did still make the connection between greatness and the coming of the Christ. However, they mistook what greatness looks like—just like we do so often in our lives.

To be the Messiah requires suffering greatly, laying down one’s life for another, and rebuffing the lure of power at every turn. “Whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all.” Those who want to be followers of Jesus must also take on the mantle of the lowly and the role of the servant. However, what does this look like?

While it might seem like a random detail thrown into the story, Jesus’ invitation of a child to come among the disciples serves at the culmination of this lesson on discipleship. Children in that day and age were sadly on the lowest rung of society. Unlike in most of our society today where we celebrate children, back then young ones were seen primarily as cheap labor. Kids had rough lives that were liabilities on their families until they could start making money for their families. Jesus wisely saw this terrible reality and sought to encourage his disciples to flip the prevailing system on its head. In this way he bid them to welcome even the lowest members of society to be welcomed as though they were welcoming Jesus himself.

Connectivity in Mark’s Gospel account provides a beautiful way of us understanding the profound wisdom that Jesus left us. While we assuredly do not have to get every connection to follow Jesus, as we dig deeper into the Living Word of God we experience all the more Life in Christ. In our daily lives we may want to consider ourselves the greatest, but Jesus challenges us, like he challenged his disciples, to see that greatness in God’s eyes stems from becoming lowly and welcoming even those whom others despise or overlook. Who can you welcome, who can you serve, who can you love that everyone else misses or hates?

Trust: The Wisdom of Infants

“I thank you Father for you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants” Luke 10:21. (This sermon is based on Luke 10:17-24.)

I spent last week with two two-year-olds. They are not infants, but this message from Jesus is not lost on me after attempting to corral my twin nephews for a week at Disney World. They did not have a care in the world, and yet, everything they needed was provided for them.

My family and I were busily attempting to plan out the best way to spend each day, where we would eat, what rides we would go on, and when we would attend what shows. The twins and even their older sister were able to avoid all of the minutiae of plotting everything out, and somehow enjoy everything even more than I did (if that is possible). How did this happen? They trusted!

We are missing the beginning of the story in today’s good news. Jesus sent out 70 (or 72) of his disciples like lambs to the slaughter without purse, without bag, and without any spare underwear. Try doing that at Disney World! And yet, not only did everything go well. The disciples (all seventy of them) not only came back without blemish, but they also came back having casted out demons and not even needing an extra tunic to accomplish it.

The thought of not going even on vacation with an overnight bag and all my things makes me go a little crazy. I can make even simple trips way too complicated! As I observe my tendency to always be prepared, I notice that I like to be in control. Putting myself in control means so often that I miss opportunities to trust God and to trust my neighbors. We all have probably heard it said, “If you want to hear God laugh tell God your plans.” Somehow though I, and maybe you too, still manage to try and plan out everything according to my own will.

The story of sending out the pairs of disciples provides the perfect opening for us control freaks to wonder what it might look like not to rely so much upon what we think is best, but instead to expect that the Holy Spirit and our neighbors will provide care for us. My nephews did not worry about what they would eat or what they would drink or what they would wear. They believed in those around them to provide. What if we did like the disciples and like infants?

Sometimes we hear sensationalist stories of gunfights, riots, murders, and disasters on the news. These reports create a fear-filled perception of the world. We may think that it is best to stay in our own little bubble. Maybe this is true. On some level the newscasters base their accounts in reality. Bad things do in fact happen in our world. Jesus even acknowledged as much when he sent out his disciples in Matthew’s account of this story, “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” And yet, what happens when we no longer rely upon those around us?

Trusting God and trusting our neighbor cannot just happen. We must remember this ability to believe in others with which we were born. Sometimes though this is difficult. Perhaps what we need is the opportunity to build up this “trust muscle” within us like we any other part of ourselves. One does not hop off a couch and run a marathon, nor does one hop on stage and perform on Broadway, and no one makes a career out of something one has never studied. The same is true of our ability to trust. So what are we to do?

The Church at its best can be that place to try out trusting others. Churches are not perfect, for they are made up of imperfect people; however, my hope remains that we can practice trusting in one another here at St. John’s. When Jesus sent out the seventy they stayed in strangers’ homes, they ate what was provided, they healed others, and all of this showed their ability to let go of the details, the planning, and the control. Instead, they trusted in God and their fellow human. Let us too practice believing in one another. Be like infants who do not worry, but trust!

Divorce, Remarriage, and Adultery: For it is to such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs?

Does Jesus mean to say that divorce and remarriage equals adultery? Picture from David R. Taylor's Blog.

Today's Scripture Lessons, which inspire today's sermon.

Unlike me all of you have most assuredly never had any relationship issues. Whether with friends, family members, or a spouse, your interpersonal interactions shine with only happiness, peace, and love. You are supposed to be laughing right now. Truthfully, I know that everyone struggles in his or her own connections with loved ones; however, so often what these tussles devolve into resembles something I like to call, “The Blame Game.”

I am not beyond this game. In fact, I wrestle with those sticky feelings whenever I try to acquit myself from wrongdoing in an interaction that seems awry. When I find myself passing the proverbial buck I think of Peter denying his relationship with Jesus three times before the cock crowed. Not only did Simon-Peter not take blame for any rabble-rousing, but he also refused even knowing Jesus. When I come face-to-face with conflict so often I want to push away my part of the problem.

Shoving away responsibility in relationships is nothing new for men. The religious and social norms of Jesus’ day did not give much power to women. In fact, the Pharisees’ concept of divorce focused strictly on the husband ending the relationship. If a man felt as though something in the marriage was inadequate, then it clearly was the woman’s fault. Does this at all sound familiar? Not just my seemingly male-given right to deny any culpability, but think back even to the first partners. Adam when pressed by the Creator immediately passed the blame to Eve. In today’s gospel lesson, though Jesus attempted to reshape this typical pattern. Taken at face value contemporary Christians have seen this gospel story as a means to proving that only men and women belong together. That was not Jesus’ concern.

Jesus centered upon the equality of marriage in this encounter with the Pharisees. He did not speak on our current debate about the equality between heterosexual and homosexual marriage, but rather Jesus critically shifted the fault in the matter of divorce away from merely women. Christ Jesus diffused the blame game when it came to matters of adultery. Essentially he said, this is not just about the spouse that society sees as the weaker. No longer shall a man use a woman as a scapegoat for the demise of a marriage. This partnership, which God joins together requires the work of both people.

So what do we do when partners divorce and remarry? Are both to wear a scarlet A on their garments? My parents got divorced when I was eleven, and both have moved on with their lives. Some of my dearest friends have been divorced and are remarried, so are they all adulterers? On the surface it appears that from Jesus’ perspective divorce and remarriage equals adultery and therefore sinfulness. However, the story of the children coming to Jesus falls too closely on the heels of his assessment of divorce and remarriage for us to completely avoid it.

Even more so than women, children occupied the lowest rung on the societal ladder of Jesus’ day. Unlike today, children were not seen as cute, although their place in the religious institutions back then strangely mimics our own. They were not to be seen or heard during synagogue meetings, or most of the rest of the time either. So if Jesus wanted to bring to him even those who occupied the weakest place in society, what did he yearn to do with those who were considered adulterers, tax collectors, and sinners? How did Jesus treat the least among him?

Jesus’ sense of love extended and still reaches beyond any of our social constraints or our understanding of who deserves love. He was radical in his inclusion of those outside the normal boundaries that were created by the systems of power. Who is it that we are supposed to love that does not typically fit within our understanding of who God loves? What group of people resting outside our understanding of God’s Chosen people need us to welcome them inside God’s Church? Who needs you to show God’s love? Let them come to you, like the little children came to Jesus, and learn to love them without blame, guilt, or conditions! Amen.