NRS John 14
15 "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
18 "I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19 In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them."

Let's say you're in the Army Reserves and you get called up to active duty. It's a national emergency and you're sent with your comrades to a war zone where there's bitter fighting. Of course, you're scared and anxious, but once you're in country you realize that you're just one of tens of thousands of soldiers on the ground there. Actually, you're pretty far back in the rear with the gear, so there's not much chance of your getting in harm's way. Unfortunately, sadly, tragically, the fighting drags on and on, and as casualties mount and as troops rotate out of the line of fire, your unit is gradually moved forward, and month by month you get a little closer to the action. But still, there are lots of people ahead of you, and there's talk that this whole thing might be over long before you'll ever have to face the enemy. Until one day, unbelievably, you find yourself right directly on the front lines. There's chaos and destruction all around you, and to your utter horror, people are shooting at you and trying to kill you. Worse yet, there now are all sorts of other people in the rear with the gear, like you were not so long ago, who are secretly hoping that you get it before they do. And that's when you start to feel like an orphan.

That orphan feeling is not just what happens when you lose your parents. More generally, orphanhood is about losing your sense of security and personal safety. It's like being on the front lines of life without any buffer between you and a very dangerous world. In many ways the passing of the generations mirrors the experience of that hapless soldier whose duty begins far from the din of battle and over time ends up in the middle of the fray. By the grace of God, we typically start life in the bosom of our families, watched over by mom and dad and often grandmas and grandpas. We're surrounded with aunts and uncles and extended family whose simple presence can make us feel that the world's problems will never touch us. But over time, those ranks, of course, begin to thin. As we get older, too, we realize that there are now younger generations looking to us for protection, and the troubles we used to drop in mom and dad's laps are now suddenly in ours.

I hadn't been 40 years old for very long when I was chosen to be the president-elect of a fair-sized, not-for-profit agency. We had about 30 full-time employees and an annual budget of about $5 million. As I was elected to board leadership, we had already run into some real problems working with the agency's then executive director, who was actually a few years younger than I was at the time. Those problems continued to grow, and after many frustrating meetings, it became clear, to me at least, that the differences between the duties of the board and, let's just say, the philosophy of the director were incompatible. Following the protocols of our agency bylaws, the board finally, reluctantly voted to terminate the services of the director. The board then chose me and the outgoing president to deliver that news to the director at the end of business the next afternoon. We were also to present him with a severance package, watch him as he packed up his personal office affects, and escort him out of the building. That next morning my partner and I then met with the agency staff, some of whom were very upset, having been called by the now ex-director the previous night. During that meeting one employee called me by a slang expression for poultry excrement, while several others pointed angry fingers at me and some openly wept (sobbed, really). And that's one time when I recall feeling like an orphan.

In today's Gospel Jesus says, "I will not leave you orphaned," which is, I'm sure, exactly what the disciples felt when Jesus told them that he was going to the Father and that the world would see him no longer. For those disciples, Jesus had been their safety blanket, their strong defender and bulwark against a hostile world. The news that he would no longer be available to them in the way he had been must have been terrifying. The first readers of John's Gospel could, I'm sure, identify with that situation.
The Gospel of John was, you know, written toward the end of the apostolic age. The men and women who had known and seen Jesus in the flesh were passing away, and the baton of faith was being passed to a new generation, who questioned, deeply, whether they were really up to the job. Their calling was to take up where the apostles had left off, except that they had not been eyewitnesses to the divine drama of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. Jesus had not personally called them; they were not with Mary Magdalene in the garden when she first greeted her Risen Lord; they had not, like Thomas, put their fingers to the wounds in his hands or put their hands into his wounded side. They were second-generation Christians, and next to the great, holy apostles, they must have felt like midgets, or more exactly, like orphans. With nothing but their faith, they were being called up to proclaim the Sonship of Jesus to an increasingly hostile world that was already beginning to persecute the Christian community. Talk about being on the front lines!

Jesus, however, promised them that he would not leave them orphaned - that is, defenseless, overwhelmed, and under-equipped -- but instead, he would give them the Advocate. In Greek, the word is para,klhtoj, which can also mean intercessor, helper, or mediator. In some rare instances it can even be translated as lawyer or attorney, but more in the sense of taking up the cause of another. The Spirit was God's guarantee that Jesus would be as close to that second-generation as he had been to his original disciples. And having to gone the Father, Jesus guarantees us the same Spirit/Advocate as we step up to the front lines of faith. And on the front lines, you know, things are always tough.

The challenges of faith in our day are not the same as they were at the end of the first century, but they are challenges. We're challenged with bringing Christ to a world that looks more to the market than to heaven for its health and well-being. We're challenged with speaking to many alien philosophies that regard faith as a fantasy and religion as a blight. We're challenged with telling truth to power that typically does not want to hear about the poor or the weak or the vulnerable who are every day being pushed to the margins of life. But the challenges we face are not just outside the faith, but inside as well. We're challenged to convince our own fellow members that worship is not just something you do on Sundays when you don't have other plans. We're challenged to help people understand the Word of God as not just something you hear read at weddings and funerals, but instead, God's Word is living bread given for us to take into the core of our beings. We're challenged to persuade many of our own that the Body of Christ, the very community of faith and its mission in the world, is indeed worthy of their time, talent, and treasure, and that even in hard times, the sacrifice is worth it.

In any one life there are many times and places when we feel like orphans, but that is not how Jesus has left us. Jesus has given us the Advocate, who is the Spirit, the Power, the Glory of God to stand up, step up, and do the right thing.

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.