The Emptiness that Hungers

Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A
Text: Acts 17.22-31; 1 Pet 3.13-22; Jn 14.15-21

One of the earliest dreams I remember having was probably when I was about 3 or 4 years old. I remember that I had spent the night in my parents’ bed with them. I dreamed that I was standing outside of our house and watching my dad drive away in a red convertible. I ran after him, calling, because I knew in the dream that he was leaving us, leaving me.

Why I had this dream, I don’t know. He would never have left us, and I never worried that he might, and we certainly never owned a red convertible. For all I know, it could have been images playing along to a country song from their clock radio in the morning while I slept. What I do know is that the idea of losing him was so terrible, so devastating, that even now, 35 years later, just remembering that dream, I can still feel the echoes of that desolation in my chest. It isn’t just an emptiness, it’s an emptiness that hungers. It’s like a gaping chasm, a hole too great to ever be filled though the whole world should fall into it.

I can’t help but feel that hungry emptiness in St. John’s story. I can hear it in the disciples’ questions: when Thomas wonders, “How can we know the way?” or when Philip says, “Show us the Father,” or when the other Judas asks “How will you reveal yourself to us?” I can hear Jesus trying to stave it off as he says again and again and again, “I love you. I am with you. Even when I am gone, another will come. I will not leave you orphaned.”

That word “orphaned” is used very intentionally, I think. This is not just the story of a group of friends losing one of their own, this is the story of a community who are afraid of losing their connection to God. St. John says that the religious leaders have lost sight of God to the degree that, when God’s own Son, the Word made flesh, stands among them, their response is fear, hatred and violence. These people, on the other hand, have seen the Father in the Son, and now that Son is being taken away from them. They aren’t just losing their friend, they’re losing their Father, their Mother, their Parent.

I wonder if it is this sense of abandonment, this painful feeling of isolation, that drives us when we are at our worst. I know that in the times when I fail to love, I am often feeling the need to defend, protect or grasp at something that I am afraid is being taken from me—something like control, resources, time, or energy. It’s the times when I am feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for myself, for others, or the world around me and simply don’t feel up to the task.

As I think about the people we hate and fear most in this world—people like Hitler, or Putin, or Stalin—I wonder if they might be driven by those same things: the need for security, order, wealth, power, or even simply respect. I wonder if, somewhere inside, they are simply doing what they think they have to in order to survive, to secure whatever it is that they are afraid of losing.

On the other hand, I think back to last week’s story, to Stephen who, while having everything taken from him, wished only to give more. Everything that the world spends its time seeking, Stephen seems to have found, and it isn’t in the places or the ways that the world is looking. Stephen has no power, no control, no security, no justice, and yet it’s not that lack that defines him, but the presence, the abundance, the “with-ness” that determines his story.

Reading this story and thinking about Stephen’s experience, I get the impression that what Jesus is trying to impart to his disciples is the polar opposite of that hungry emptiness that I experienced in my dream so long ago. Instead of abandonment and orphaning, Jesus promises his friends a kind of togetherness that transcends time and space and even death itself. Though he will be leaving, another Advocate is coming, and through that Advocate, Jesus himself will be with them, with us. Instead of an experience of leaving, Jesus’ departure paradoxically endows them with an experience of coming home, of permanent dwelling and enduring presence. An experience of abiding.

When Paul walked the streets of Athens, he saw a city filled with idols and temples to different gods. Such a sight would have been proof to other Jews of the god-forsakenness of that Gentile capital. But Paul saw something different; instead of rampant idolatry, he saw the abiding presence of God, alive and active in a people who didn’t even know who this God was.

In our searching and groping we erect idols to many different gods, from money to power to race to national identity. We religious folks have our idols, too: idols to tradition or creed or doctrine. Even as we fall short of the God for which we are searching, the idols themselves are a testament to that which we seek, a sign of what we are searching for to fill the hungry emptiness.

As we look all around us for external things to fill the void, Paul and Jesus both want to assure us that the abiding presence we seek is closer than we think. “You will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you,” Jesus says. Did you hear that? The God whom we seek abides in us already. We need not fear the hungry emptiness that drives us to defend and protect and acquire and possess, because we abide in God, and God abides in us. Thomas Merton even observes that one cannot know God apart from knowing oneself, and one cannot know oneself apart from knowing God.

I am convinced that is what Jesus means when he says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Our English ears seem to want to hear that as an imperative: “I love Jesus; therefore I must keep his commandments,” but that’s not what he says. He’s stating a simple fact: those who love him keep his commandments. It’s like saying, “if the sky gets dark, it will rain.” And in John’s gospel, there is only one commandment Jesus ever gives us to keep: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

I wonder if we fail to keep this commandment because we fail to believe God’s love for us. It is so much easier to believe in our own faults and shortcomings than it is to believe in our inherent worth; to believe that what is wrong with us or the wrongs we have committed are what define us. Could that be what makes us unable to look past the faults and shortcomings of others? If we cannot believe in our own belovedness, how can we possibly believe in the belovedness of others? When we give our sins the power to define us (or others), they become our idols, joining the idols of others along the streets of Athens.

But our own inability to love does not negate the love God already lavishes upon us. That love alone—the love that creates us and animates us, the love in which we live and move and have our being—is the only thing that can show us the truth of who we are in God: that God creates us as expressions of God’s love. You are the love of God given flesh. Only the infinite love of God, infinitely pouring itself out upon us and for us, can wash away the stain of our own shame and guilt.

Even as we erect our pagan temples to gods that we hope will give us satisfaction and fulfillment, even as we worship at the altars that we pray will save us from the hungry emptiness, God abides in, with and under us. God chooses to make God’s home with us. To believe this of ourselves helps us to believe it of others, and to believe it of others helps us to believe it of ourselves. We abide in God and God abides in us when we abide in one another.

I think that is the mystery Jesus is trying to share with us, the mystery that allowed Stephen to respond as he did. The recognition that God abides in his murderers just as God abides in him helped him to love them, and that love revealed Jesus to him. I think that it was seeing this truth that showed him the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God, and that revelation moved him to compassion beyond human imagination.

As I think about this story and what it might mean for us, I wonder what might be keeping us from recognizing the infinite love God is pouring out on us. I wonder what keeps us from seeing God abiding in ourselves, or in one another. As we consider what it might look like for us to love others who make themselves so hard to love, I wonder what we might learn from the example of Jesus, or of Stephen, or of the other faithful people throughout history who have followed their Way. As we continue to search and grope for a God hidden just beyond our sight and sense, I wonder where that God might be revealing Godself to us in things as ordinary as water, bread, or wine.

My friends, it is so easy to look out at the world and see where God is absent, to see the people and places and situations that are God-forsaken. It takes strength and determination and—above all—love to look at the world and see it saturated in God’s abiding presence. We cannot do it on our own; thankfully we have an Advocate, a helper provided to us by God’s own deep love to bring us to fuller life. I pray that She may help you to see the depth and power of God’s love for you; that She may show you that God abiding in you, and you in God; and that in God, we abide in one another—for this is what Love is.