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Sixth Sunday of Easter (C)

by Joe Parrish

The Gospel: John 14:23-29

Jesus said to Judas (not Iscariot), "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me. I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, 'I am going away, and I am coming to you.' If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe."

Dear Lord, lead us to your peace that passes all understanding. Amen.

Frequently the question that we hear when we go to worship each week with the refugees in the Elizabeth Detention Center is 'how do I get out of here?' That would seem to be a reasonable question that anyone in a total confinement situation would want to have answered. But it is also a question that may be of interest to just about anyone. Underlying that question of 'how do I get out of here' is the thought that 'I am not at peace here.' And that question is one that today's gospel seems to try to address. How does one find peace when one is under stress, unhappy, bored, or quite a number of other situations in real life?

Peace is not necessarily the absence of warfare or strife. Peace, the peace we all seek, is more of an inner satisfaction with our lives, with our work, with our relationships. It is something that is not easy to quantitate, rather it is a quality of life. Do we have enough of satisfying components in our lives to be reasonably happy, or do our worries and anxieties tend to get us down, even interfere with our sleep?

In recent days I have had to orchestrate a number of changes in my life. For one, I have had to back away from my involvement with our Habitat for Humanity organization, after having served as its founding President for six years, the maximum term of office according to our bylaws. We are in the midst of quite a series of negotiations for an extension to one of our pieces of property in order to be able to build on it-it is two feet shy of the minimum lot length according to City building codes. That does not sound like such a big deal, but we have been trying to get the building underway for over two years now, and at every turn we seem to find one more new restriction that has to be overcome. We have finally narrowed the options down to a limited few and are proceeding to a resolution hopefully in the next few weeks or months. But having to leave the process in the middle of the negotiations has been tricky. So my personal task was to be sure there were competent people on the Board of Directors after I leave it, people who will be capable of carrying on the task at hand. Fortunately, Habitat is a Christian organization, and we call forth the working of the Holy Spirit just as regularly as one might in a church. And the Holy Spirit has again come through for us. We have several fresh faces on our Habitat Board now that have a good amount of expertise, people whom we did not even know at the beginning of this year. One might call it serendipity, a fortunate find, but I rather prefer to think of it as a Holy Spirit experience. What we needed were people with contacts in the construction industry locally, and we found someone who had exactly that resume who just called us up one day 'out of the blue.' Then we needed someone who had a financial background and the time to take over our bookkeeping tasks, and wala, we found the person during a fund raising presentation to one of the local large companies. Again, the person came to us through someone else. We only knew our needs, and the needs were satisfied. And the peace that I had sought came suddenly and without notice. Peace just came.

One of the detainees at the Detention Center came up to me after a service there a few weeks ago, said he was an Anglican and asked if I could help him find a lawyer to plead for him. That is a bit of a task, believe you me, since many of the refugees have absolutely no money, not even for telephone calls. However, one can work for about a dollar a day and get telephone money there at the Detention Center. So he did, and called mehere at the church. I spoke to someone in the INS, and possibly that may have gotten some reconsideration of the person's case, I do not know for sure, but in two days they were paroled to live with a friend in the Bronx. The night they were paroled I drove them up to their friend's home after midnight. The peace that seemed so elusive to them was suddenly at hand. Their prayers were answered.

I think part of the miracles that we experienced were set up for us by getting us to articulate what it was we needed. One person needed freedom, and got it. I needed some expert help, and got it. But each of us seemed to have to analyze what it was we needed first, and then the specific need was satisfied. I rather think the process was dependent on us preparing ourselves for the miracle we needed. If we had not struggled with the problem of finding a lawyer and initially failing that, then we would not have recognized the opportunity parole would have for us. If we had not realized that we had too limited construction expertise and financial wherewithal, the solution that was thrust upon us would not have seemed so right, to exactly fit our needs. It was as though the Holy Spirit was saying, 'Well, what do you want? I'll do it for you.'

One of the tasks we always struggle with here at the church is how to finance our operations. We seem to gradually raise our pledges each year, but our expenses always outpace the pledges by a large amount. We have been 'fortunate' in getting the right advice at the right time for our endowment, and this past month one of our investments returned a very large amount of money, not too much, mind you, but it certainly answered some of our prayers. And today the Vestry needs to meet and decide how to conserve our gains-not such a bad situation to be in, I don't think. We seem to be having a number of miracles that have come to us almost without notice. But thanks be to God who has always been responsible for our good fortune! If we had planned for 'normal' situations, we would have been so discouraged that it is not unlikely that our uncertainties would have paralyzed us. The stock market seemed to collapse at just the wrong time, but our stock picks countered most of the downturn. Our portfolio just rose and rose again. And when the person needed some advice on an immigration lawyer whom they probably could never have afforded inside the Detention Center, now they have a whole community of folks from their native country helping them right here in the metropolitan area. And our Habitat struggles seemed to be resolved by just doing what we were always doing, but finally with a great burst of fortune. Our diligence finally paid off. Just by doing what we felt we should be doing anyway was all it took-following up leads, telling our story, being open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus himself probably wondered from time to time how it would all come out. At least he said his humanity did not know the time or the date of things. So Jesus was just as much 'in the dark' about exactly how his life would end as anyone. But he could 'see the handwriting on the wall' and knew his end was nearing. So he comforts Judas, not Iscariot, by telling him that the Father in heaven would send him the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Counselor, who would lead him in the ways Jesus taught even after Jesus was gone away from them. And note the very circuitous wording Jesus used-"I am going away, and I am coming to you." On the surface of it, that is a totally internally self-contradictory statement, isn't it? How could Jesus be going away from his disciples and coming to them at the same time? It was a riddle that was solved only by Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, and ascension. Unless Jesus withdrew from them to heaven, he was limited by his physical body that could be in only one place at a time. But in his spiritual body, Jesus could be with everyone at the same time. So in order to come to them, Jesus had to first go from them. Isn't that clever? That is surely not the solution of an earthbound thinker.

My first real job after graduate school was at a large pharmaceutical company who was struggling at that time with the new federal drug laws. Before about 1968, one could get a new pharmaceutical product on the market by simply having a handful of doctors try out a company's new drug and then giving their testimony about its good features. But in about 1962, the new federal drug laws went into effect, and they required each company to show that their product was not only safe but also effective in doing what they claimed it was doing. That required a whole host of changes in the process of developing new drugs. For one thing, personal testimony would no longer 'cut the mustard.' One had to have enough patient statistics to prove within a certain degree of certainty that the drug actually did work most of the time for most of the people, and also was safe. Prior to 1962 that was not necessary. My first full time job in 1969 was to figure out how long it would take using this new scheme to bring a new pharmaceutical product to the market. And to do so, I was told I had to learn to do a "PERT" process. I had never heard of the term in my life, but I became an expert in so-called "PERT charts," tables of presenting operational steps in such a way as to discern critical paths, bottlenecks, and the like. It was a technique developed by the United States Navy in the construction of the first nuclear powered submarines, believe it or not. So I diligently learned how to make PERT charts; I even used a computer, a primitive system that I learned to program myself that linked by telephone to a mainframe computer at a General Electric facility several miles away-this in 1970 was truly a precursor of the internet. And I busied myself in learning about all the steps required to test a new chemical and bring it to market. At the end of this rather laborious project I determined to my satisfaction at least that it would take a minimum of seven years on average to develop a new pharmaceutical product following the government's stricter guidelines. To say my findings caused consternation at the highest levels of my company was an understatement, but finally others confirmed what I had predicted, or rather, what I had calculated, and the company set about redesigning itself to compete in the new world of drug regulations. If they had realized beforehand what would be needed, I doubt they would ever have gotten together the resources required in adequate time to carry on their work. But the world's way of planning is so meticulous that the work of the Holy Spirit could hardly be allowed! Of course no one can keep out the Holy Spirit! But if we each took apart the needs of our every day lives, we would quickly become discouraged in figuring out how we could possibly accomplish our required tasks. Our personal PERT charts would have so many uncertainties that we would be paralyzed and unable to work or live. But in this confused and inexact state, the Holy Spirit does come to us, just as Jesus promised. And the things we could not possibly do for ourselves get done by the Holy Spirit. Surely you have seen this happen in your own life.

What this all leads to is that we should not let our hearts be troubled, we should not let our hearts be afraid. Jesus' Spirit knows our needs even before we are able to articulate them, and help is already on the way if we are doing God's work.

What a miracle! Our needs are being fulfilled even before we know what they are! And knowledge of that is what brings us the peace that passes all understanding. The world gives us anxiety and worry. The Holy Spirit gives the antidote to that anxiety and worry.

And when we see these mighty miracles in our own lives, we will believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living and dependable God. Amen.