May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard.  Amen.
Now, one of the delights I have had as I have been slowly clearing out office clutter, is dusting off some old parish picture directories, scrap books, bulletins and such.  Saw our Sexton Don Gibson with really long hair – he claims it was even longer in High School.  So, one of the things I found was something titled the Christ Church Anthology, which is a collection of stories told by parishioners put together in 1983 for the 125th celebration of the church.  Many of them from older parishioners who told of the earliest days of the church, and there were historical letters too (like the one from one priest declining the invite to be the rector, given the requirements as outlined by the vestry – to tell you the truth, I would have too, based on what he wrote).  Some of these were funny, and one I’ll share with you is by a Samuel G. King, who recalls how “Occasionally, one of the preachers would ask a rhetorical question and a certain parishioner would shout out “yes” or “no,” which may have upset the speaker, but it woke up the congregation and enlivened the proceedings.”  He continues, “On one Halloween, the rector asked that everyone leave the names and addresses of their deceased relatives and friends at the retory so that they could be remembered on All Saints Day.”  Wait for it…  Apparently, according to Mr. King, it was very funny to the choir boys.  Funny to me too.
This weekend, we remember and give thanks for all those who have died in service to our country, and those close to us – family, friends, and relatives.  And I promise I won’t ask you their current address – I think we know the addresses of our deceased ones – at least I hope so.  But, during Memorial Day weekend, we take the time to bring these loved ones to mind and heart – why?
Why do we visit gravesides of those lost to us, whether on Memorial Day or otherwise?  Why do we gather together to lift up the names of those who have gone before us.  Or why do we have plaques, as we have here in this church, with the names of the deceased? Well, actually, we have the remains of the deceased here too – our columbarium – and by some accounts, a few ghosts  as well.
I think we need what the disciples needed, and we hear Jesus today giving them food for their souls.
Jesus is about to leave them, and this gospel is from the night he was betrayed.  Now, I know, it seems a bit odd to have this gospel, or the one before it last week, in Eastertide, I mean – didn’t we already do this in Holy Week?  Yes, but next week Jesus will leave his disciples for the last time in the Ascension, and so we are reminded again of the words he spoke to his disciples before he died, and in some ways, don’t we always go back over our loved ones final words.
Now,  “this gospel is written […] in the midst of a community for whom Jesus was only a memory. Most of those in the [Johannian] community, [the ones who wrote this fourth gospel] had never met Jesus.  [Written toward the end of the first century, around 60 years after the death of Jesus], most, if not all, the disciples were dead. The temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed-a sign for many that the end-time would soon come. But the end-time didn’t come. Life went on and that was, in many ways, the hardest part of all. Jesus hadn’t returned even when all the signs seemed right. This community of believers felt pushed to the very edge of despair, and despair could defeat them.”  And yet, out of this gospel comes the most poetic theological and Christological writings of our faith.  This community wanted to remember Jesus, but it is what they remember that is so valuable to us today.
Jesus tells them “I will ask [and you will be given] another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees […] nor knows. You know, because [the Spirit] abides with you, and […] will be in you.
We understand that Jesus is referring here to the Holy Spirit – the one we know to be the sustainer in our Holy Trinity.  Why would Jesus feel this was so important to tell us?  Or, perhaps more accurately, why would the Johannian community feel this was important to say?  I think it is about how we perceive death, and what we do with that perception.
At funerals, I often ask those who are grieving to recall what they loved most about the deceased, and then hold that in their heart, and every day, seek to live into that part of their loved one that held such meaning for them.  In this way, they are never really gone – but live forever in every one who does this.
This is what Jesus is doing as well.  This is part of what is known in biblical circles as the “Farewell Discourses.”  It is Jesus’ farewell tour with his disciples, and he knows he has to try to cram in as much stuff as he can before he goes.  And the most important thing he tells them, other than that they must love one another, is found in this text.  He tells them that the Spirit (another Advocate – note the use of “another” – are we talking another Christ, another prophet? – another sermon will have to cover that one] – the Spirit will be with them, and in fact, he says, is in them.
Jesus is making it clear that God has never abandoned us, and never will.  But, sometimes we get a bit lost.  Sometimes, like I am sure that Johannian community felt in that time decades after Christ’s death, we can start to need something we can touch, see, hear, because the spiritual and mysterious can also sometimes be elusive without something on which to focus our attention.  This is why we have icons in the Christian faith, and it is also why many of our manual acts – the visual things we do in worship – become so meaningful for us.
In many ways, it can help us understand those Athenians to whom St. Paul was talking as he stood in front of the Areopagus.  The Areopagus was a large rock with an equally large history.  St. Paul says, “”Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, `To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands […]  `In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,`For we too are his offspring.’”
The Athenians had been known for centuries as a people searching for the truth, searching for knowledge, searching for God.  They were, however, quite discerning and rather unforgiving with those they felt had a message that ran counter to their sensibilities, so St. Paul was quite literally taking his life in his hands here (hence the opening compliment, which today sounds rather snarky).  But his main point is that God is in us, because we are God’s children.  There is no need to look around for something to worship, just look inside, and the truth of God will emerge.”
Now, back to that anthology for a moment, because also sharing in those pages was Barbara Genin, who was recalling stories passed down to her by her grandparents Thaddeus S. Genin and Barbara Hay Sanderson, who worshipped at Christ Church when it was a “small wooden building on the corner of Liberty Street and Austin Place, where St. John’s Lutheran Church now stands.”  She told this story…”On the night of January 11, 1893, a snowy, windy night, the little church burned.  I don’t know how the fire started, but when it was finally out, there was little left of Christ Church.  One thing that was saved was the communion plate that was used at that time.  Grandfather, whose two main community interests were his church and his membership in the Bloomfield Fire Department (completely volunteer at that time) raced from his home through the storm to the burning building and managed to climb through one of the windows, grabbed the communion plate, and got out again, escaping the worst of the flames.  The plate was kept at my grandparents home and services were held there the following Sunday, January 15, 1893.”  Barbara Genin then goes on to describe how the members from Glen Ridge, who had been planning to leave to build their own church scrapped those plans, and with those from Bloomfield, built the church in a more central location – and here we are today.
That is our history – and it offers us a lesson today.
We carry with us the very genes of our loved ones who have gone on before.  Their DNA, and our memories of them, live on in us.  As God’s children, God’s beloved creation, we are made in God’s image, and we carry with us that God stuff – it is in our DNA, and if we listen to Jesus in his Gospel, it is in our memory, in our heart, and all around us.  The Spirit of Truth is God still speaking to us today.  I love the UCC tag line and logo.  It is a quotation mark, with the words “God is still speaking.”  And God is!  We need only listen, and the God that is Jesus, the God that is the Holy Spirit, is sustaining us, guiding us is there for us to hear.
We are the church, not people in the church.
And at Christ Church, we know that better than many, because this community lost the entire building that once was our place of worship.  And as someone who loves history, I am grateful that the communion plate was rescued, and while I would tell you it was not worth risking ones life for it, I do understand the love we can feel for our spiritual home.  I feel it here in the wood, the way the light streams through the stained glass windows, the beautiful  sound of the organ when played by someone like Bill.
But, as Jesus makes clear, even his physical presence with his disciples didn’t mean the end of him – in fact, it was the beginning.  Death is always a beginning, most especially for those who died, but also for those left behind, even if it takes us humans time to grieve our loss.  Because in the end…there is no end.
St. Paul was right, God is in us, and we in God.  And that can never be destroyed.  We, as the church, no matter what happens to this building or any other house of worship, continue on, because Jesus continues on in us.  And guided by the Holy Spirit, those earlier Christ Church members took that communion plate, and built another house of worship around it.  They didn’t wait until this new beautiful structure had been built, but met in a house, because they knew that their faith was not built around “altars to an unknown God,” or to a God who died and left his disciples standing at the cross.  No, their faith was built on the foundation of the living God, the God in us, the God in Jesus, the God in the Holy Spirit that is calling us forward and sustaining us.
So, perhaps on this Memorial Day weekend, we might think about what it is that we leave behind for others.  Jesus left his disciples with a model of love that lives on in the body of Christ alive today.  When those we love have died, we take with us memories and perhaps even models of how to live our lives.  So the questions I think we all should consider as we leave here today are these:
What will those left behind after us choose to emulate in their lives?
What models of love are we, as the body of Christ alive in the world today, providing to those whom we encounter?
And here’s the thing…the answers to those questions will always be evolving, always changing, as we grow in our faith, if we open ourselves to the workings of the Advocate – the Holy Spirit of Truth – in our hearts and in our lives.
That is the gift that God gives continually to us – the beloved children of God.  May we live into our legacy and leave behind a world changed for the better when our time here is gone.
Amen.

All sermons posted are as written and not necessarily as delivered on any particular Sunday.

The Rev. Diana Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
May 25, 2014
Sixth Sunday of Easter – Year A
1st Reading – Acts 17:22-31
Psalm 66:7-18
2nd Reading – 1 Peter 3:13-22
Gospel – John 14:15-21