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SERMONS

The Seventh Sunday of Easter
May 12, 2002

By David Christian

Today we gather to wait. This is the seventh Sunday of Easter, the Sunday after Ascension Day. As we just heard in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus has gone.

Since his resurrection he has been with his disciples on a variety of occasions. Only a few days ago they were with him on a mountain top outside Jerusalem. There he told them to return to the city and wait for the Holy Spirit. Then, Luke tells us, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.

He was gone.

So they have returned to Jerusalem to wait. And we wait with them. Jesus has gone. The Holy Spirit has not yet come. There is nothing for us to do but wait.

Waiting is not easy for us. There is a book by Dr. Suess; a book for adults called Oh, the Places You'll Go. One of the places Dr. Suess talks about is "The Waiting Place."

The Waiting Place is a place most of us-if not all of us-have been. We are in the Waiting Place as we sit outside the Intensive Care unit. We are in the Waiting Place as we go through that ninth month before the baby comes. We are there through that last, interminable semester of our last year of school. We are there as one job ends and we wonder if we will be able to find another.

The Waiting Place is that time from when your mother or father or spouse or child is wheeled out of the room toward surgery until you get the call from the surgeon that everything is finished. It is where we sit at the bedside watching for death to come.

We have all been in the Waiting Place. While we are there time seems to be suspended. Life seems to be on hold. Nothing happens. We sit or we walk or we make small talk or we try to read People magazine. And we wait.

That's where we are today, with Jesus' closest friends. He is gone. The promised gift has not yet arrived. We wait.

As we wait we remember some of what Jesus said to us. The words are recorded by John. They are words spoken by Jesus on the night before his crucifixion; words spoken as his waiting was almost ended.

The words are in the form of a prayer to the Father. But they were spoken, I suspect, with the realization that they would be heard and remembered.

Jesus prayed, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."

We think of time-of life-as somehow suspended as we sit in the Waiting Place. Life will begin, we say, once this whatever-it-is is over.

We think of eternal life as something that will happen at some time in the future- when we die or when Jesus returns.

But that's not what Jesus says. Jesus says that life, true life, eternal life, is something that happens now. It is something that we can experience-something in which we can participate-even here in the Waiting Place.

Eternal life, Jesus tells us, is to know God. To truly live is to be in relationship with the source of all life. It is that relationship that gives meaning and purpose to our existence.

In the end, that really is what the coming of Jesus was all about-to bring us life. Elsewhere in John's account of the gospel we hear Jesus say, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son; so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life." Again he says, "I came that they [that's us] may have life and have it in all its fullness."

For most of us most of the time, we are not in the Waiting Place. When we are not there the attractions of our lives can distract us from what we really need. The lures of money, of success, of esteem, of physical attractiveness, of power, can command our attention and energy.

But none of these ultimately can fully satisfy. As Augustine of Hippo said in the early centuries of the Church: "You made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." The gift of the Waiting Place is that there distraction does not satisfy. In the Waiting Place money, success, good name, power-all are useless. They turn to dust in our hands. In the Waiting Place we are stripped of all illusion of our own self-sufficiency. In the Waiting Place we realize our own helplessness, our own loneliness. But as we wait in the Waiting Place we have Jesus' promise: "I will come again." In fact Jesus is with us even there. Jesus is with us as we wait. Jesus waits too. He waits for us to open our eyes. He waits for us to see him with us. He waits for us to see him so that he can give us the gift he has come to bring. Life. Life that fills; life that transforms; life that renews; life that brings meaning and purpose and joy.

True Life. Abundant life. Eternal Life. Even in the Waiting Place.

David Christian
The Chapel of the Cross
Madison, Mississippi

Acts 1.1-14 1
Peter 4.12-19
John 17.1-11