Do Not Leave Us Comfortless

The Collect for the 7th Sunday of Easter - O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

I’m pretty sure this prayer comes under the heading “Be careful what you ask for.”  On the surface it seems reasonable, even hopeful.  Who doesn’t want to be comforted or comfortable?  That is what society tells us we should strive for all the time.  That is the ultimate life pursuit – to find comfort.  But if we really understand this prayer, we realize that we are not seeking comfort to the exclusion of all else, but the strength to deal with what Christ as also done.

Wait, what?  Do we mean the rejection, suffering, torture and death?  Yes, but not only that; it is also sharing the love, faith and hope he taught us, the revelation of God’s realm established here on earth.  In this prayer we are asking for the support and conviction to continue the work that Jesus started.  The only way we can do that is through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. 

This Sunday we celebrate Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, Christ’s promised gift of his eternal presence with us.  It is a day of awe and wonder, of joy and celebration.  It is also the day the Church (that’s with a capital “C” for the entire Body of Christ) gets its marching orders to share all that we have been given with each other.  Pentecost should be both comforting and discomforting.  Jesus does indeed fulfill his promise to send the Advocate to be with the believers.  It is comforting to know we can trust Jesus to do what he says he will do. 

The question I have is whether or not Jesus can trust us to do what he asked us to do, to continue his work in the work of teaching, preaching and healing?  Have we become so focused on seeking comfort that we have forgotten that that was not the intended purpose of the Spirit? 

The first disciples were a group of ordinary people who, we are told through the stories in the Bible, continued to misinterpreted and misunderstand Jesus’ teachings, even to the point of abandoning him when he needed them the most.  Jesus forgave them not only to comfort them, but also to empower them for what was to come next.  They needed to take up Jesus’ mantle and share God’s message of love with the world.   

We are the inheritors of this mantle. We are Christ’s disciples, fumbling our way through life, seeking to serve Christ by sharing God’s message of love with the world.  On the one hand, that sounds simple enough, but on the other, it sounds taxing, overwhelming and dangerous.  In a post-Christendom world, we are unsure of how to share God’s revelation with any authenticity or conviction without sounding exclusionary or self-righteous.

And that is why we need to say the above prayer.  We need the Spirit’s strength to overcome all fear and doubt, to continue to trust that Jesus will not leave us comfortless even in the direst situations.  But we need to be bold and ASK the Spirit into our hearts, souls and minds.  We need to be discomforted by what we see in the world in order to desire change – to do it God’s way rather than our way.  To love each other as we are loved, not naively, but unconditionally. 

Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to set our hearts on fire – and mean it!

In Christ,

Rev. Valerie+

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