Pascha VI

The Sixth Sunday of Easter

Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; Psalm 66; 1 Peter 3:15-18; John 14:15-21

My mother, brother and I were around the bed when dad breathed his last and died. As I looked across the bed to my mother I realized in that quiet moment she gently moved from being a wife to being a widow.

About twenty years later, I was in my mother’s position and again in a peaceful moment in the middle of the night my brother and I went from being a son to being an orphan.

At some time we all become orphaned and we are alone in the world. Suddenly there is no one to run to for advice, comfort, help or protection. Even as adults there still remains within us a small child. It is the experience of dying soldiers on the battlefield who cry out for ‘mother’. Now we are the ones people are looking to for comfort and advice, experience and help.

How many of us here are orphans?

Maybe we never think of our lives in these terms since our cultural image of orphans is children. From Dicken’s Oliver Twist to Rowling’s Harry Potter, from Baum’s Dorothy to Dahl’s Matilda, from Barrie’s Peter Pan to Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Captain America, and the Flash…all orphans. Why do orphans appear so prominently in our literature?

In the sacred scriptures from priestly law to psalm, from teaching to exhortation, God shows a particular preference for orphans and widows. In their cultural context orphans are non-persons having no status; a status child-orphans still inhabit.

How many children are being orphaned through the war in Ukraine, the famine in Yemen, the unrest in Afghanistan, the civil war of Sudan, the mass shootings in our country and the separation of children from their parents at our southern border? Does not separating a child from their parents not make them in some manner orphans?

Jesus today says, “I will not leave you orphans…” Notice he does not say we will never be orphaned – “I will be with you only a little while longer” – but that he will not leave us as orphans – “I will come to you. I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always,the Spirit of truth… you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you."

The Spirit of truth, the Advocate will be in you. I am in the Father, you are in me, and I am in you. It is like a Russian nesting doll each one sitting inside the other. We are not alone. We are inserted into the divine life.

I think of Dorothy and her companions the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow. Have you ever considered that the qualities of the three companions are within Dorothy? She is the one with courage, intelligence and compassion. Her journey is not to OZ or back to Kansas but the most difficult of journeys – the journey within herself. We need to ask would she have become aware of those qualities and use them if she were not orphaned. Being orphaned compels us to explore the Spirit of truth about ourselves and within us. There is no longer mom and dad to run to.

We speak of the Holy Spirit giving us gifts: wisdom, insight, understanding, strength, knowledge, reverence, faith, the ability to heal and perform miracles, to prophecy and discern between spirits. Have each of us made that journey inward to discover what those gifts are? What is the truth about ourselves? If we haven’t than we are orphaned. Dorothy returns to Kansas only when she has made the inward journey. 

Consider Harry Potter with Hermione and Ron. Orphans have an uncanny ability not to replace their parents but form bonds with other people. Might that be another meaning Jesus has in mind when he speaks of the Spirit of truth? We were not created to be orphaned or alone. Right at the beginning of Genesis we hear God reflect, “It is not good for the human to be alone. I will make a helper suited to him.”

This night before he dies, Jesus speaks in paradoxes. Might it be that he intuits he nears being orphaned from heaven and earth on the cross? He tells us that he is leaving us and at the same time dwelling within us. We are orphaned and yet not alone.

Being an orphan is not an easy place in life to be but it is what we are living.

Listening to people, I believe many of us in the Church feel orphaned, lost, abandoned, unsupported, and betrayed. Many have left the Christian way of life, others have formed their own small Christian groups or have chosen the solitary journey, while some are exploring other religious traditions or creating their own. For myself, wandering is a word that expresses my experience.

Being an orphan can be an opportunity for growth in the spiritual life. I expect that is what Jesus is inviting us to discover.

How are you faring?