There’s a poignant intersection of the Church and secular calendars at this time of year. As the Church hears Jesus’s farewell address to his disciples before ascending to his Father in heaven, professors, teachers, and students are saying farewell to one another. As we speak, college students are walking on stages to receive their diplomas, with smiles and cheers. They must feel free: free to read for pleasure, free to focus on what they really love either in the workforce, a gap year, or further study. Their freedom is symbolized in the tossing of mortarboards into the air and the shared joyfulness as one chapter of life ends and another begins.
Graduations are called commencements, of course, because although something is ending, a new thing, usually an even greater, better thing is beginning. It’s the start of a new life. But there must also be a sense of sadness, of going one’s separate way and parting from dear friends. Students must feel bereft of the guidance of their professors as they move alone into the world. While the future is bright and there’s a hope that things will be better, there’s also the hard reality of moving into greater maturity. With a high school diploma or college degree comes more responsibility, of living as a mature adult in a scary world and of being on one’s own. It takes a leap of faith to move from being mentored and guided into the risks and freedom of independence.
I remember driving to my high school graduation with tears welling up inside my eyes, knowing that I would probably never, ever see some of my classmates again in this life. I remember packing up my things and moving to a dorm room, away from so much that was familiar. Years later, I remember settling into an apartment thousands of miles from my hometown, with sadness but also excitement. But no matter how difficult all that was, in each instance, I changed. And things did get better. I matured and deepened as a person.
And I learned that what I had been first taught was only the first phase of knowledge. There were things I couldn’t accept in my younger years, and yet when I could eventually receive new wisdom, my deepening knowledge was indeed built on what came before. Things got better because my horizon was enlarged, and even though maturing brought more pain and sorrow, oddly enough, my joy expanded, too.
Jesus’s earliest disciples must have felt many strange and disturbing emotions as Jesus approached the cross. They couldn’t have fully understood what Jesus was saying in his great prayer to the Father on the eve of his death, the prayer we’ve heard in today’s Gospel. It must have been as if he was speaking in code. But later they would have a greater appreciation for his words. After Jesus’s gory passion and tragic death, after his rising again and post-resurrection encounters with them, after his ascension to the right hand of the Father, and after the pouring of the Holy Spirit upon them at Pentecost, they would begin to comprehend Jesus’s final prayer to his Father before his death. For the disciples, things were going to get better. And though some of them would face premature deaths for their faith, things did get better because they had come to know that even death could have no power over their life in Christ.
But back on the eve of Jesus’s death, after he and the disciples had broken bread together, and Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet, and then after Judas had departed and gone into the dark of night to devise his plans of betrayal, the disciples must have felt intense sorrow in overhearing Jesus’s prayer to his Father. It was both a prayer meant for their ears and a charge that only later would they come to understand.
How could they have understood that it would be to their advantage for Jesus to depart from them and go to the Father? How could they have known just who the Spirit was and how they would experience the Spirit’s presence? How could they have been hopeful about their next steps? How at all could they have imagined that things would get better when things seemed so utterly miserable and disorienting? As we say in Sunday School with the children, “they didn’t understand, but they wouldn’t forget.”[1]
It may be that we, too, feel the disciples’ confusion and sadness. It may be that we feel a great loneliness as we navigate one of the loneliest periods of history. Are you feeling bereft of guidance and hope? Are you feeling a waywardness in your life? Are you confused and disturbed by what you see in the world and even in the Church? Are you overwhelmed by the demands of an incessant job, of the ruthless competition of the academy, or by the struggles of trying to live in a world structured only for the rich? If so, it might seem foolish to believe that things can get better.
But this is precisely what Jesus promises on the eve of his death when he foretells the sending of his Spirit upon the disciples. It’s precisely what we celebrate on this Day of Pentecost. It’s precisely what we say when we welcome a new person into the body of Christ through the sacrament of Baptism. Things will get better.
It's not that humankind moves from bad to good, from ignorant to sophisticated, from brute beast to intelligent human. When Jesus suggests that things will get better, he means that God always has something in store for our future. God intends for us always to have a future. And because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, that future is always better, bigger, and more incredible than we can imagine. It’s bigger and better because it can hold sorrow and pain with the fullness of joy.
And it’s all possible because of the power of the Spirit. It’s possible because Christ dares to entrust the care of the world to our fallible hands. It’s possible because Jesus invites us into more mature living, less infantilizing of ourselves and others, and more trust in what God can enable us to do. It’s so because Jesus sends us the Spirit to lead us into all truth. And at those times when we feel most forsaken or bereft, we know that there are still things we can’t bear. But one day, in the future that God has prepared for us, we will discover his astounding truth. And that truth will set us free.
Today, God is offering that gift of profound freedom to Douglas in his baptism. Things will get better for him. When he goes down into the water of baptism, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he will rise with Christ into a new way of living in and seeing the world. He will rise in the hope that things will indeed get better. His baptism is not an inoculation from the rough edges of the world, but it is a seal of hope that no matter what sorrow and troubles Douglas will face, God will always give him a better future. God’s future for us is always larger and brighter than we can imagine.
It was to the disciples’ advantage and it’s to our advantage that Jesus departed to his heavenly Father because it means that he’s with us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Salvation is no longer localized in the finite constrains of Jesus’s earthly life but is spread across the global Body of Christ. The possibilities are endless. Things can be so much better than they are.
And what glorious news this is to a Church struggling to find her place in a world that has increasingly less time for God. It’s such beautiful news for all who’ve found themselves sucked into the mechanical grind of systems that rob us of the fullness of life that God longs to give us. Things will get better. The Spirit is still speaking to us and keeping the Gospel alive. And just when we’ve had enough of violence and factionalism and cruel speech, we can hope and trust that things will get better.
Things get better because Jesus has given us the Spirit to lead us into all truth. Things get better because death doesn’t have the final world. Things get better because no matter what people to do our bodies, they will be raised and we shall live with God. Things get better because even though we may be rejected by our biological families, we have an extended family in Christ. Things get better because when we mature in Christ, we no longer live to ourselves or to the world’s expectations of us. We live to God’s expectation of us, and this always means fullness of life. Things will get better because the Spirit will continue to lead us into all truth, the truth that will set us free. By the Spirit’s power, we will do even greater things than Jesus in his earthly life. And because of this startling hope, we know that by God’s gracious hand, we have a future that is so much better than we can ever imagine.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday
May 19, 2024
[1] From the Godly Play curriculum