I Will not Leave You Orphans

For many people in today’s world, this gospel won’t make sense. Because Jesus, as he himself puts it, is speaking about something the world cannot receive, a truth that is outside the world’s comprehension.

The world sees only with physical eyes, and if you see only with physical eyes--if, as for many folks in the West, you regard as real and true only that which can be scientifically verified in the lab or presented as evidence in a court of law, then, for you, this gospel reading will make no sense.

But if you think it’s possible that poets and musicians and artists and lovers may also have something to say, that shamans and sages and many non-Western peoples down through the centuries may also have a shot at the truth--even though it’s a different kind of truth--then these words of Jesus may speak to you.

His words may teach you something about how to die and about the connections we have with loved ones who have gone before us.

He is speaking these words to his disciples at a very difficult moment. An excruciating death is about to take him from them. They are about to have their hearts and all their dreams broken.

He’s trying to help them make some sense of what will happen to them, what his going away from them really means.  A few verses earlier, he told them “It is better for you that I go.” He wants his death to be a blessing for them and not a curse.

Over the years, I have met people for whom a loved one’s death had been a curse. The dying person said some hurtful things, or did not say the words of forgiveness or reassurance that were so desperately needed. This can leave a deep wound the person left behind must carry for the rest of their lives.

There is a tradition among many Christians to pray for a holy death. The idea is that, in addition to preparing a will, getting finances in order, and delegating power of attorney, some soul-work is also required. Maybe some forgiveness needs to be given to someone, or some words of reassurance need to be said.

It’s an important question for all of us no matter our age: How do we, like Jesus, make our dying a blessing and not a curse to those around us?

To his own loved ones who would feel abandoned, orphaned, and hopelessly devastated by his death, Jesus speaks strong words of reassurance: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.”

He’s going to leave them in one way but remain with them in another way. His death leads not to loss and abandonment, but rather to a deeper way for him to be present.

It’s in his going away that he can fully enter their hearts, get into the marrow of their bones, be with them in a way far more intimate than simple physical presence allows. By his going away, he becomes, as St. Augustine would say many years later, more intimate to us than we are to ourselves.

This is not something we can discern with our physical eyes. It takes spiritual eyes to see this.

Lovers know how this works. True, the marriage vows say “...until death do us part,” but I think many of us suspect that something more is going on in our loves, that our relationships transcend death.

It’s this “something more” that many poets and artists and indigenous peoples know. It’s a conviction of the heart that when a parent or a lover or a spouse or a friend die, they do not go away from us, but rather, despite all physical evidence to the contrary, their spiritual union with us deepens. Barriers that might have stood in the way are overcome. Our intimacy with them becomes deeper than their physical presence could allow.

"I will not leave you orphaned," Jesus tells us. "I am coming to you."

And then he takes this one step further. He says that in his going away from us, in his death, we will know that he is in his Father and we are in him, and he in us.

The image is one of a Creator continuously present in the creatures she has made, at every moment keeping them in existence, breathing life into them.

The Greeks used a simple but beautiful word to describe what's going on here. Perichoresis. Dancing around. God is like three persons caught up in one big joyful dance. Their life and work are bound together. Perichoresis. A joyful dance.

In Jesus, the second person of that Trinity, you and I are brought into the dance, into the relationship. Perichoresis. It says as much about us as it does about Ultimate Reality. It says that your life and mine--seemingly so small and insignificant in the scheme of things, with all our joys and delights, our bodily pleasures and pains, our triumphs and disappointments, our loves and our fears--our lives are precious because they are swept up in something so vast and magnificent.

This is what the mystery of the Trinity is getting at: that, like the One in whose image we are made, we are caught up in a joyful cosmic dance, a dance not for divine persons only, but for us as well. Because of Jesus, all of our lives are now part of this vast and beautiful cosmic dance.

This dance is going on right now, just beyond what our physical eyes can see. Music is playing just beyond what our earthly ears can hear. This is the love and life Jesus wants to leave with his disciples as he says farewell.

As we listen to a gospel passage like this, our consciousness expands a little. It’s time to lace up our dancing shoes.