Sermon preached on the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year A), May 14, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by the Reverend Stephen Crippen
Scripture readings: Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:7-18; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21
Dash (top), Flambeau (lower right), and Keiko, our three dogs.
There were several times in my childhood when my father would hold me close, hold me tight. Then a mischievous spirit would steal over him. He would begin to tickle me, and as he did so he would embrace me even more tightly. And then he would begin a chant which always delighted me. He would say this, with increasing energy and excitement: he would say, “You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away. You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away. You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away.”
Oh, how I treasure that memory, and the unshakeable bond it reveals that holds me close, even now, to my father. And how I long to form and share this bond with others. I do not have children but Andrew and I are closely bonded, and we vigorously welcome dogs into our household and our family. As I’ve said to a few of you, one of our current three dogs – yes, three! – one of them has wandered into the very center of my heart. Now, I do truly love all three of our dogs. I do. But I confess I sometimes take Dash into my arms and hold him close, and I whisper a chant inspired by my father, but corrupted a little by the guilt of my sin of favoritism. I whisper to Dash – very quietly, because I am absurdly afraid the other two dogs will hear it – I whisper, “I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most. I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most. I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most.”
And so you can see that my father is, unsurprisingly, a better man than me: he can bond with another being without ranking that being favorably against others. And that is saying something: I am one of seven children. It wouldn’t be hard to rank us. (I could help with that.) But both of my parents worked hard – and successfully – to love all of us with abundant and freely distributed love.
“You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away.” “I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most.” What might your favorite chant be? What is the chant that your heart most longs to hear?
I ask because it is your heart that Jesus chants to. It is your body that Jesus wants to embrace and hold tightly. It is you who Jesus loves – and yes, loves the most. God in Jesus loves all living beings; in fact, God in Jesus loves all created matter: as the universe is created, God repeatedly proclaims everything good, which can rightly be understood as God lavishly loving all beings, all things. (And when God creates human beings, God proclaims us very good.) And so unlike me, God can love you the most without loving me or other people any less. God in Jesus loves all of us the most. And God in Jesus tells his friends and followers that they will never get away, they will never get away, they will never get away.
“I will not leave you orphaned,” says Jesus. “I will not leave you orphaned.” Not “I surely like and respect you, and so I will make provisions for you when I’m gone.” Not “When I ascend into all things and am no longer directly with you, I’ll be sure someone takes over for me.” And certainly not “Oh, you’ll be fine without me, don’t worry.” “I will not leave you orphaned”: Jesus speaks of his departure as a looming cataclysmic trauma for his followers. Even as a metaphor, “to be orphaned” is terrifying to them. Being orphaned in their day amounted to a death sentence: it was not merely the loss of one’s parents, sad and hard as that would be; it was the loss of identity, the loss of property, the loss of all bonds of kinship that hold a person in the community, that hold a person in life.
Holy Scripture often frames God’s love as that of a patron or lord who rescues the orphan and the widow. In our day we can miss the tremendous depth of meaning in that metaphor: to be an orphan or a widow in the ancient world was to be as good as dead. God in Jesus loves his friends and followers so deeply that God sustains them in life. Without God’s love, they would die. And with God’s love, they overflow in life-saving love for actual orphans and widows.
This was true for my childhood self in relationship with my father: only on the most surface level can we laugh lightly at a father being silly with his young son, holding him and tickling him and playfully saying that the kid will never get away. No, this is a life-saving action on my father’s part: he gave me the life-saving, life-transforming gift of secure emotional attachment. Everything I am and everything I do today is possible because my parents rescued me from solitude; they rescued me from a life without love; they rescued me from death and held me in life by loving me unconditionally, by loving me so powerfully, so viscerally. They loved me with their whole being. (And my living father still does.)
Dash, in turn, may “only” be a dog, but he too is a living being who was saved by love. He was sent back by his first adopted home because Dash was (quote) “too much” for their young child, and the family didn’t want a dog who was so outgoing and energetic. This fact in Dash’s rescue file sears my heart. They sent Dash back?! He does not show any sign of emotional damage, and for all I know he wasn’t thrilled to be with them, either. In any case it only deepens my commitment to love him the most, to love him the most, to love him the most.
And that is what we are talking about today, on the Sixth Sunday of Easter, the 36th day of Eastertide, this day of Creation, this day of Resurrection. We are talking about life-saving love, love that is vastly, infinitely more than a mere feeling, love that forms a pulsing community of abundant life that saves countless beings from death, love that pours God’s inexhaustible love out and down, in and with and under all people, all beings, particularly those who have been rejected by the world, sent back, left for dead – all the orphans and widows.
Today we will plunge our siblings in Christ, Patrick and Wyatt, into the water of God’s abundant love, where they will drown. They – particularly Patrick, who is going all in at our full-immersion font! – they are being pulled down into the depths of God’s heart, where we all drown to sin, drown to our old and lesser selves, drown to the forces of evil that tear people and communities apart, drown to everything that separates us from God. And then Patrick and Wyatt will rise up from the water, up into God’s embrace, up into their best selves, up into the forces of good that hold people and communities together, hold them close, hold them and remind them that they’ll never get away, they’ll never get away, they’ll never get away … and that God loves them the most, God loves them the most, God loves them the most.
“God holds our souls in life,” the psalmist sings. Yes. And Paul sings that “in God we live and move and have our being…We are God’s offspring.” If you have not felt this way; if you fear that you never have been held this closely; if you have come to believe that you are on the outs, that you do not matter, that somehow you have lost out; if you have been turned into an orphan or a widow – that is, an outsider, someone outside the pulsing heart of God; then hear this Good News: God in Jesus holds you close, holds you tight, holds you here and now with all of us, folds you into this community, knits you fast into the fabric of this Body, and God in Jesus whispers this in your ear, over and over until you finally will let yourself hear it:
“You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away. I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most.”