Making it Through

John 14

I wonder if you’ve ever had a moment when you thought, “We’re not going to make it through this.” I remember a snow storm on our way to Upper Michigan, and for some reason we weren’t prepared and we were keeping the windows down so we could scrape the snow off the front window. And we got to this hill, and the semis were sliding back down. And we were at the bottom of that hill and we were all thinking, though no one said it, “There’s no way to go back, how can we keep going? We’re not going to make it through this.”

Maybe you’ve been effected by something less physical and more emotional. You’ve had a fight with your partner or spouse. Maybe a fight with your kid. Maybe a fight with your partner or spouse about your kid. Someone has to be right and someone has to be wrong, right? Everyone is hurting and no one is ready to apologize and nowhere near a place where you might find a third way, where no gets to win and no one has to lose. Right now, it’s just angry words on a better day you wouldn’t mean and you think, but probably don’t say it, “There’s no way to go back, How can we keep going? We’re not going to make it through this.”

And maybe you don’t. Maybe the “we” has become an “I”. Maybe you’ve lost something or someone. A job, a house, a loved one. Whatever had been, whatever could have been or should have been, isn’t. YOu’ve never felt so alone, like no one would get it. And you think to yourself, “There no way to go back. How can I keep going? I’m not going to make it through this.”

I wonder sometimes, when the disciples first had that thought, when they said to themselves because who would want to admit it to the other disciples, “We’re not going to make it through this.”

I wonder if it was these moments, this Passover Meal that they shared together, when Jesus started saying thing that didn’t really make sense. Soon you won’t see me. And that he wouldn’t be around and that friends were going to betray and deny him… these were strange things to be saying and they didn’t make much sense and they can’t be true, because if they are, “We’re not going to make it through this.”

I wonder if it was the moment that Jesus was arrested, when he had become the #1 criminal in the city of Jerusalem. Even when Jesus got himself out of this situation, how could he continue traveling and teaching and healing if they want to kill him so badly. “We’re not going to make it through this.”

And when Jesus was killed, when he didn’t pull off some miraculous escape, when he didn’t conquer Rome, when he didn’t set the religious leaders right, when he had, in fact, abandoned him, I wonder what they thought. Jesus wasn’t the only person in that time with disciples. There were many rabbis or teachers and they all collected students or disciples to join him, to be trained, to carry out the learnings and messages. If this rabbi were killed, were crucified? A death that was shame-filled. The disciples would be called orphans, they had no one to lead them, no one to guide them, no one to advise them on what to do next. These disciple orphans would go looking for another teacher to follow. They would take up new learning and a new way of following. But remember, these disciples were not the best of the best. They were farmers and fishers, they were uneducated and from the outside. They were not the ones that would usually be chosen to be disciples of anyone. Would someone choose them? They had given up EVERYTHING to follow Jesus: their families, their work, their business, their homes. There was nothing to go back to. They had traveled with these people for years, but at least one of them was a traitor, were they friends? Traveling companions? Acquaintances? Strangers, really? Would they stay in touch? Remember fondly the time they followed that man around? Did they say, “We’re not going to make it through this.” 

I get it. 

But in the midst of all the uncertainty of Jesus saying good-bye before any one really understands what’s happening, Jesus makes a promise. “I’ll send you another.” You won’t be abandoned or forsaken or orphaned. You won’t have to search for another rabbi to follow. You won’t have to go back and try to re-start life as it had been all those years before, because we know too much had changed. 

You won’t have to look at the past with nostalgia, because the present is lacking. You won’t have to look for advice else where. I’ll send another--we’ll get through this. 

There is no rational reason why this moment, why the death of Jesus wasn’t the end. There is no reason why we still read the stories that his followers told about him. There is no rational reason why we follow this crucified rabbi. 

Except, Jesus promised and delivered on Another, who would travel with the disciples, give them courage and strength, who would bring visions of what this Way we are following would look like. There is a Spirit, an advocate, a counselor, a guide, a traveling companion, a teacher, another, like Jesus who makes the irrational real. Who turns, “we’re not going to make it through” into thriving. 

Because there are countless times when the church shouldn’t have made it. In Acts 7 we have the story of Stephen, who was killed for telling the story of the Resurrected Jesus. The church shouldn’t have survived when its preachers started being killed. We have lived through Reformations-when it looked like to many the church was going to tear itself apart from the inside. And not to mention the countless times it was the church doing harm to another, and having to repent in our own ashes and sackcloth. 

But we did. The church survived the persecution, its own splintering, its failure to live into the mission. Again and again the Spirit comes as advocate, as counselor, as vision giver, as encouragement and one who walks along, to bring us life, to renew life, to offer courage, to remind us again and again that this moment is not the end. 

Church, this moment is not the end. 

Sometimes it might feel like the end. Who are we? Who are we becoming? What if we can’t gather? What if we can’t sing? What if… “We’re not going to make it through.”

But the promise of Jesus for the disciples on that night is a promise to us, too. We are not abandoned, we are not forsaken or orphaned. This is not the end. There is another who brings and breathes new life. Who brings courage and a vision for who we are to become. Who brought us through and brings us through again. 

It is this Spirit who walks alongside us when we feel we are alone, when we don’t think anyone will understand our pain, when we don’t know that there will be an end to it. It is this Spirit that has brought Emmanuel through all its struggles and will do so again, even as it looks different from what we had thought, even when it seems impossible. 

And so we take a deep breath, we remember all the times we shouldn’t have made it through, in our lives, in our community, in the history of the story of God, and we remember that we did, we have. We breathe. We will make it through this again. 

But we do so knowing that making it through has never been of God. We don’t just survive to the next moment we thrive, we propel, we leap fearlessly into the next. We are in the ongoing and eternal process of becoming fully who God is making us, living more fully into the mission that is Love. When we get up from this pandemic, when we gather, when we are prepared to go back to who we were before and how we lived before, breathe. We have Another who walks alongside us and calls us to grow in love, and that love has action. 

We are making it through this, but who we are on the other side will be defined anew, as we are always being remade, by the Spirit of God who does not leave us abandoned. So be filled with courage, church. We will make it through. We are being encouraged by love.