Year A Easter 6 2023 Speaking of Desire

 Year A Sixth Sunday of Easter, 14 May 2023

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“Speaking of Desire”

Collect: O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

John 14:15-21

Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 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.

“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 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.”

This morning we prayed one of those dangerous prayers, like in the Lord’s Prayer: 

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. 

The forgiveness part is far from dangerous, but the “forgive me like I have forgiven them” part. That conditional addition goes into some scary territory. 

This morning we prayed in our Collect: 

Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire.

We have settled for Sunday faiths not weeklong. For ease and not transformation. For smiles not ecstasy. The metanoia God wants is far from the polite courtesies we are prone to give.

We should love the Lord our God with all we’ve got, it should be first place in our lives, and yet somewhere along the way we settled for less than that. 

We are reading again in our book club an old favorite, The Screwtape Letters. We just got started so it is not too late to jump in. It is a fictional book of letters, an epistolary novel between a Senior Demon Uncles Screwtape and his nephew Wormwood. It is British wit at its finest. This week Wormwood’s human charge that he is commissioned to have damned to hell became a Christian, but to get him off the track to heaven Screwtape advised to keep him focused on the ordinary, the mundane, to settle, as it were, for the humdrum of walk-about life. It reminded me of another quote of Lewis in his sermon “The Hope of Glory.” I have used this quote before, but it speaks to so much!

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” 

God’s desires for us are what we prayed for, so that we can receive God’s “promises which exceed all that we can desire.” Like in an infomercial, “all this, but wait there’s  more!”

God does not want us to settle. God wants what is best for us, and God’s expectations and hopes, dare I say, God’s desires for us exceed anything and everything that we can imagine.

The week before last the Bishop strongly urged us to be at the Clergy Retreat. It was a profound time. Martin Smith was the speaker and his topic was Desire. I was intrigued. For like in the Lewis quote, I was so often told to flee desire. To shun Desire even.

But Father Martin, like Lewis, said that our Desires are not strong enough. We ignore and shun them at our peril. Even acknowledging the ones we know not to give into have lessons for us, and a counterpoised Longing-For from God that our desires can lead to.

Today’s Gospel is Jesus’ last shot with the Disciples. At the Last Supper lessons from John’s Gospel which we have been exploring these last few Sundays is Jesus giving those last minute instructions we humans are prone to do. Our loved one’s calling out as we leave with the “Be safe!” is just another way of saying “I love you.”

Jesus was no different, he wanted his followers to have the best and to be their best. Nothing wrong with that. He promises that the Holy Spirit will come, and that we will have the Spirit with us through thick and thin. And then Jesus promises not to leave us orphaned. He sits at the right hand of the Father, and will work on our behalf. The Trinity resounds with love for us, and because of that love, they desire what is best for us and for all.

Jesus in his chapters of saying goodbye in John repeatedly comes back to those simple words of obeying his commandments. Do what you know to do. Simple. And that is what God desires for us and expects from us.

My oldest is heading off to university next year. Hard to believe how fast 18 years can come and go. I am already thinking of those last minute reminders that I will have to say, not because it needs repeating, but for Stephanie and me it is another way of saying “We love you.” The instructions, after 18 years of living together, have already sunk in if they were ever going to do so. Jesus had three years of on the job training with his team, and his final words were a comfort for both Jesus and the Disciples.

Jesus desired for them to be the Kingdom of God incarnate, the Ekklesia, the Called-Out Ones, the Bride of Christ, the Church. It cannot be more clear than that. He desired so much for them.

When we speak of desire, it is an inner longing, and like emotions, they are. We are not responsible for our emotions. They emerge. They happen. The ones we consider negative have much to teach us about who we are, what we have gone through, and what things we had to do or skills we had to develop to protect ourselves along the way. When I have an emotion come up, especially one that I do not want to be having, I will try very hard to not succumb to it. What I will do is observe that it is there. I may ask myself, “Where did that come from?” or “What triggered that emotion?” or even, “What did this situation remind me of that caused that feeling?” These are all legitimate questions, and it helps me use my emotions rather than having my emotions use me. Our wants and desires are the same. They tell us something about ourselves.

When we are fully mature we have our desires, the things that we want most and have shaped our lives to enjoy or eventually obtain. We play the long game. We don’t toy with those immediate desires, but root out what we really want, what we really desire, and we go for those.

That is the way God works with us, as well. God plays the long game. God wants to be in relationship with us and for us to have the best.

When we have desires, ask the “What question.” What was I feeling? What do I really want? What made my mind and heart go there? What was I really going for but missed?

And once we become those reflective practitioners of the faith, we will indeed begin to get those desires of the heart. Those things which we want most from our innermost self. And I trust that we will be desiring God. 

Desiring God.

To the faint of heart that sounds like an oxymoron. But loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength means that we need to desire God with all that we have and all that we are.

Think of the Olympic athlete whose parents got them up in the wee hours to practice before school, and after school, and every weekend. There must be in the heart of that young person a fire that cannot be quenched until the race is run. Or as Jesus put it in two one-sentence parables:

‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

Friends, it is a story told in every faith and practice under the sun, for us to get what we want we have to be all in. Period. Quarter-time and half-time will not cut it. We must desire God, but, as Lewis wrote, “We are far too easily pleased.”

It takes time to shift our responses. It takes time to shift our actions. It takes even longer to move our inner desires to be in tune with God’s. But when someone loves you deeply and fully, it is far easier to love them back. And he first loved us and is working toward our fullness and completion, then and even now.

As Jesus promised: 

“Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 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.”

We live because of him. He becomes the blood in our veins and the breath in our lungs. He becomes the song we sing and the thoughts we think when we get up in the morning and when we go to bed. He becomes our all-in-all. 

That is my hope, and my desire. When we speak of Desire, may we not be ashamed. May we stand before God and be unashamed, because we have been transformed in his love for us. Thanks be to God! Amen