Here we go Rodney!

Sundays sermon so eagerly waited for.

My friend Rodney thought it was worthy of hearing again!!

"No wonder we do not loose heart" and again, "Set your troubled hearts at rest" John 14

I have used these many times at funerals and at other times of crisis, it is patently so obvious that it is far easier to say them than to take them to heart, and to feel really comforted by them.

In reality we do often tend to loose heart and our hearts despite our Faith, continue to be troubled.

We have all known people, if not ourselves who have carried very heavy hearts with them for a very long time, lives crippled and crumpled by suffering.

What real impact will that comfort have, because we all feel that for these people something plainly awful has happened, or is happening, something which rightly brings us and them to question an understanding of life, probably makes us want to in some way question the importance of Faith, and for many to will raise questions about the so called "God of Love" who as far as we are concerned should not allow these sorts of things to happen, especially to the people we feel close to.

So where are we really to find comfort and strength if words fail us, and formulas seem to have lost some of their potency even if they had any

Strangely enough these issues and problems have beset people of Faith and the Christian church for many thousands of years. We have plainly become more complex and clever as the years role by, but the fundamental questions remain the same

The Jews developed a fairly rigorous system to allow and enable them to get through life. It became known as the Torah and with this to hand alongside other books of careful interpretation of it, the nation grew and developed into a nation of sincere and faithful people. The whole of their lives being bound up with God, and at the same time the way in which this was made possible was through the keeping of the Torah, (teachings)

The Early church too began to develop a fairly strict list of rules for all baptised followers. This became so guarded at one time that only the initiated were allowed to know it, and scholars have named this, "the disciplina arcani" the hidden disciplines, because they were so secret. This developed partly due to the scene in which the church had to live, often with lives threatened and frequently under persecution, but it also developed because of the tendency for any group of people to begin to regularise things in order to keep everything tidy and to some extent under control.

There are problems with this approach, and Johns Gospel seems to be aware of these difficulties, and appears to have been written, to combat the move towards presenting the gospel of Jesus as a series of rules and procedures, against thinking it could be contained in a set of doctrines and creeds.

The writer of John's Gospel feels that The gospel of Jesus was running the risk of being made to impersonal, and he wanted to redress the balance towards the relationship between the believer and Jesus.

This is the meaning behind the sixth of the "I am" sayings found in the Gospel, "I am the way the truth and the life." It is not a statement about the exclusiveness of the Christian way, but rather a pointer, an antidote, to those who tended to govern their faith by rules and prescriptions. instead of the person and example of Jesus.

For to have seen the Son was to have seen the Father. Jesus was the way.. It all comes down to the relationship between the believer, Jesus and the Father.

John Fenton wrote on this point,

" Jesus himself is the way; there is very little teaching of Jesus in Johns Gospel except on the subject of who he is. He will be present with his disciples through the paraclete; and his presence will make it unnecessary for them to have any teaching on what is the way in which they are to live. Similarly, he does not provide them with knowledge in the forms of doctrines to be believed; he himself is the truth, and they will have the truth only in their relationship with him. And the life that he brings cannot be separated from him: gift and giver are identical; in him was life."

This brings us back to the point where I started, "Set your troubled hearts at rest, Trust in God... Trust also in me."

Our support, doesn't come in the form which we really feel that we want very often. We would often like neat answers, and certainly an end to what we feel is tragic and awful sadness and suffering.

Our support is deeper and more important than that, it comes in the form of a person, the person of Jesus. Not in the form of answers or words. Just as often for us our support comes from those who are just with us and loving us, instead of trying to give us advice or answers to the problems we blurt out to them.

Cast your burden on me, come to me he said if you are heavy laden. Share yourself with me and I will share myself with you, and in the Eucharist we believe we do this in the most intimate of ways by allowing his own being to physically rest within us, to become part of us "that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us."

Jesus does not give us the answers, he gives us his love and shares himself with us. This is where the power to overcome will proceed from.

Sharing our love with those who are suffering and with Jesus who suffered for us yet was raised to be our comforter.