Departing Friends

Shortly before his crucifixion Jesus explained to his disciples that he was going to leave them (John 14).

It's a situation that we face also in our lives here.

Maybe it’s a friend or neighbour who is having to move away. We’ve come to know them, to love them, to depend on them. And then, all of a sudden, we find out they they are going away.

What will we do? How will we cope? How sad it will be.

Like Jesus’ disciples, sometimes such departures are the result of a death. The person may have been ill for a while, or they may have died suddenly. Either way, we are sad, upset, in mourning.

The disciples were used to sudden death. It was commonplace in these days. Even in our country, until 50 or 60 years ago, death was a frequent occurrence. It was just around the corner. Although we never expected it, we knew how to deal with it.

With the excellence of our present-day National and Private Health Services there is sometimes a belief that nothing can deprive us of our three score years and ten. But serious illness can strike us at any time. Accidents are no respecters of persons.

And so when death strikes it can undermine all our confidence. It shakes all our assumptions. And sometimes it leads us to question our beliefs about who God is and what life is all about.

That’s the circumstance that Jesus was addressing with his disciples.

Since he had been baptised by John in the wilderness a short three years previously, Jesus had gradually built up a core group of 12 disciples. They were the guys that refused to leave when everyone else had gone back home.

They have been everywhere with Jesus. They have seen him do mighty miracles - with Peter even walking with him across the Sea of Galilee. They have become one with each other.

Jesus has always been there for them. Even when he sent the seventy out in pairs, and they came back rejoicing that even the demons submitted to them, Jesus was still there.

His physical presence underwrote everything that happened. Sometimes people only needed to touch his cloak to receive healing. The centurion’s son was healed at a distance, but only after his father had had a physical meeting with Jesus, and Jesus spoke the word.

How would the disciples manage without Jesus?
What would they do?
How would they carry on?

You may already be wondering why on earth I am talking about the Holy Spirit just now. The time when we usually celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit is at Pentecost, in May, 50 days after Easter.

Wit it being only a fortnight away from Advent Sunday, surely we should be getting ready to be getting ready to celebrate Jesus’ birth?

All that is true. And that’s why today we are not looking at the story in the Acts of the Apostles about how the early church started that first Pentecost.

Here we are, coming up to the end of the church year. It’s time to think back over all that’s been going on since last Christmas. It’s time to remember some of Jesus’ last words to his disciples, before we go start thinking about how Jesus was born as a real baby.

And you may feel that it’s all a bit irrelevant now. I mean it’s 2000 years since Jesus spoke his final words to his disciples. What use is it for us in these days to spend time studying what Jesus said so long ago? How can Jesus’ words mean anything today, in this world of computers, internet, and mobile phone?

I can see that point of view. The way we live our lives today is almost totally different from the way Jesus’ disciples lived their lives. We eat and drink like they did - but almost everything else is different.

I think the relevance comes from thinking about what we are doing here this Sunday morning (at Kingscavil Church). Why have we come to this place? Why do we sing about Jesus, read about Jesus, talk about Jesus?

Is it not because we are trying to Follow Jesus?

Just like his disciples that walked with him, talked with him, and even sang with him, we too want to shape our lives according to the way that Jesus taught.

Indeed, in another of his ‘I am’ statements, like the ‘I am the Bread of Life’ statement that was our focus last week, Jesus said,
“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No-one comes to the Father except by me.” (John 14:6)

We too want to find our way to the Father. Jesus offers to us all the resources of heaven if we love him and obey his commandments.

Jesus said that we should "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And love your neighbour as yourself." (Luke 10:27).

Jesus was preparing his disciples to carry on his work after his death. He was telling them of the central role that the Holy Spirit would play in empowering them and directing them to be God’s people.

Instead of Jesus having only 2 hands, 2 feet, and 1 mouth, now the Church would have millions of mouths speaking God’s word in every nation of the world.

And not only speaking God’s word, but performing signs and works like Jesus did. And even greater things than Jesus did.

Why? Not because we are greater than Jesus was. But because the Holy Spirit is the same today as in Jesus’ time. He can do more because there is more opportunity to do.

Jesus submitted himself to baptism by John. Not because he needed it, but because God had commanded it. (Matthew 3:13-17)

Although Jesus was God, he was not to act in his divine authority, but he was to act and speak as a man, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

In John 14:16-17 , Jesus says he would ask the Father and he would give us the Holy Spirit, who would be with us for ever, - be with us and in us.

And in verse 19, Jesus tells his disciples, and tells us, that through the Holy Spirit we will know that Jesus is in the Father, and we are in Jesus, and He is in us.

This is the culmination of John’s teaching about who Jesus is.

This is John’s declaration of the Trinity of God. That God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, are in each other, and are One.

And by the Holy Spirit, given to each one of Christ’s followers, we are invited to become part of God’s family, just as he becomes part of us.

In my previous job as an electronics engineer, one of the things I had to do was to make sure that every electronic part communicated properly with its neighbour.

In your computer, if you have one, the Processor talks to the Memory, and to the Graphics Card, and to the Hard Drive, etc. All the parts must operate correctly, and communicate with each other accurately and efficiently; otherwise your PC is just a bunch of metallic, ceramic, and plastic junk, lying in the corner.

The Holy Spirit is here to enable us to communicate with God.

He comes into every part of us. He is the breath of God. God breathes out, and it’s like we breathe Him in.

And just as we breathe in the Oxygen in the air, that through our lungs, enters the bloodstream, and supplies every cell in our bodies, so too the Holy Spirit seeks to enter and energise every part of our lives.

He wants to be part of our thinking, our feeling, our talking our loving, our working, our learning, our sleeping, our worshipping - every part.

Only with the Holy Spirit in us, can we hope to be followers of Jesus. Real followers. People who act like Jesus, who speak like Jesus, who love like Jesus.

That’s an awesome challenge for us. None of us is perfect. Everyone falls short of who God wants us to be. Jesus was the only one who lived life perfectly.

We let God down. We are not good disciples. We might even admit that we are bad disciples.

Yet we are all the disciples that Jesus has got. He loves you and he loves me. He forgives us of all our failures and our misdeeds. He wants us to follow so close to him that we know we are with him; that we are in him, as he is in us.

Look around you. There’s just us. There are no crowds outside the door, thronging the streets, clamoring to get in and become part of our community.

Jesus twelve disciples were not perfect either. Peter was impetuous and foolhardy, denying Jesus during the crucifixion. James and John argued over who was to be the greatest. Judas betrayed him.


Yet those twelve disciples turned the world upside down.
Twelve is enough - and we are more than Twelve!

In only 300 years the Roman emperor, Constantine, had acknowledged that it was not the Roman Caesar who was God, but that Jesus is God.

Now Christianity is present in almost every nation, and is still growing strongly, especially in Africa and many other Third World countries.

But we have lost our direction here. The Church of Scotland is struggling to survive in many parts of Scotland. One in every six churches is having to make do with temporary ministry while they search for someone who will become their Parish Minister.

There is much for us to do also in this place. To be the people that God wants us to be, we must breathe in the breath of God to every part of lives - healing, loving, forgiving, empowering, directing, inspiring - bringing us abundant life, life to the full, full and running over, forever, eternally, with Him.

As we approach the Christmas season, let us look over this past year, and prepare to go forward into the new Christian year, as it begins on Advent Sunday.

That’s the day that we officially begin our preparations for Christmas. Not from the end of August like we see in the world round about us!

It’s our chance to take a fresh look at what Jesus is all about.

He came amongst us as a baby, rose again from the grave, and sent his Spirit to be with us now and always.