May 10, 2026
Easter 6 Year A
Acts 17:22-31; John 14:15-21
Epiphany, Winnipeg
“I will not leave you orphaned.”
There was this church in a big city on the Canadian prairies; some of you know it quite well. They had thrived and grown, they grew close together over the years. So close that some people called it a family, but we know what happens with families now and then. Troubles settled in in this church not so long ago, and the church split in two. Some stayed, and some went off on their own. Maybe you know this church? Some people saw the trouble coming. Some sort of made the trouble happen, although they thought they were just preventing more trouble. Some of the people, maybe most of the people, were caught completely off guard, and everyone was thrown into a tizzy and worry. What’s going to happen now? How will we survive? And then they remembered hearing a voice that spoke at a dinner table a few thousand years before: “I will not leave you orphaned.” The ones who stayed here heard the voice: “I will not leave you orphaned.” The ones who went away from here heard the voice: “I will not leave you orphaned.”
It’s a voice we’ve been hearing for, oh, about two thousand years now. The church has seemed to be coming apart time after time, and after time, you know. When the Roman Empire persecuted Christians, the Body of Christ wondered if they could live through this, and they remembered a voice: “I won’t leave you orphaned.” When bishops fought in Nicea over whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone or from the son too (they say that Saint Nicholas, one of those bishops, punched another bishop named Arius right in the jaw; remember that when we say the creed in awhile), or when the whole church throughout the whole world split in two, the orthodox in the east and the catholic in the west in the year 1054 – there’s your church history lesson today – people remembered Jesus saying, “I won’t leave you orphaned.” Troubles have come again and again. And again once more. And people have remembered that voice that said, “I will not leave you orphaned.”
There were women who felt like they had no place in the church and their voices were not heard. And they kept remembering Jesus say, “I will not leave you orphaned. You are at home with me.” So many who came from LGBTQ communities were left out or told to keep quiet and leave who they are at the door. They kept remembering – you kept remembering that voice that spoke so long ago and said, “I won’t leave you orphaned. You’ve got a home here.” And you helped us all remember, and we heard that voice together: “I will not leave you orphaned. Any of you.”
The story goes back so long ago. There’s a table in a room in Jerusalem. It’s in a hotel or an inn or in someone’s home, we’re not really sure. Jesus is there with all his disciples, having dinner together as they look forward to the big Passover festival that’s coming up soon. Passover’s always such a good time, and the disciples look forward to it, but Jesus knows that everything will go wrong very soon; he’s got a pretty good idea about an arrest and a trial and a crucifixion, and he knows his disciples well enough to know that they will be completely at a loss what to do when that happens. They won’t know where to go, they won’t know if they can keep going, they will be made numb from the trauma, and they won’t know what to do with their grief. So Jesus says, “I won’t leave you orphaned.” His disciples probably have no idea what he’s talking about when he says that. But when everything does start to go wrong they might just remember Jesus saying, “I won’t leave you orphaned.”
That promise was being spoken long before that too. When Jesus said “I won’t leave you orphaned,” he might very well have been remembering words from a prophet named Isaiah, who said to a people who were in the middle of everything falling apart, “I will never forget you, my people. I have carved you on the palm of my hand. I will never forget you – and then Jesus improvises – ‘I will not leave you orphaned’ - I will never forget my own.” And even Isaiah might have remembered old stories too, like the one about a flood when God ended up saying, “That won’t happen again. I won’t leave you orphaned.” Or even a really old story about two people leaving their home in a garden and God saying, “I won’t leave you orphaned.”
Some time at that same dinner table Jesus says something else too: God is going to send you a comforter, someone to speak for you and speak to you, somebody to be with you. God will send you the Spirit of truth - and remember how Jesus said, “I am the truth?”
In a few weeks it will be Pentecost Sunday, and we’ll celebrate the gift that God has given to us: the gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised when he said what we heard around the dinner table today. God will give you the Spirit. Whatever else we might hear or think about when Pentecost Sunday rolls around, it’s the day when Jesus says, “See? I told you so. God’s giving you the Spirit. I’m not leaving you orphaned.” And that Spirit has gone with us ever since then. The same Spirit that spoke through Isaiah and all those prophets before. The same Spirit that blew over the water when God first started to say “Let there be”, and everything started to begin. And God said, “Wow, that’s good.”
The same Spirit that Jesus promised at that dinner table. That Spirit goes with us, and reminds us now and then, especially when we as a church and we as a world most need to hear it: “I won’t leave you orphaned. You won’t be left all on your own.” And that same Spirit stirs us up to do what Jesus commanded us to do at that same dinner table…especially when we as a church and we as a world most need to hear it and do it: “Love one another, as I have loved you.” Or maybe it’s like this: “Love one another. Don’t leave anyone orphaned, just as I will not leave you.”
I don’t usually say things like this, but I will today: I’ve received a vision, a look into the future, that I’d like to share with you now. I know what’s going to happen this coming Friday, at 8:43 in the morning. I know what will happen, let’s say it’s a vision I received from the Spirit. You received it too. What will happen on Friday morning at 8:43 is…now write this down…something that none of us know yet.
See? It’s easy to predict the future.
But when whatever happens next Friday happens, when whatever happens in days and months to come in Canada or Iran or Gaza and Lebanon and Israel; when whatever happens in Alberta or Ukraine or Sudan; when whatever happens with our church right here or in Canada or around the world happens…. When whatever happens at that next appointment with the doctor or the hour with the counselor happens… When whatever happens happens, and we just don’t know what that will be, we will remember this voice, we’ll hear so clearly what Jesus has said for so long. We will recall this voice that said to us once dinner was finished and we reclined for a minute to catch our breath before we move on: “Remember: I will not leave you orphaned.”