Linus is building castles in the sand. He tells Charlie Brown:
"Working with your hands is good therapy...It takes your mind off your troubles... Whenever I feel depressed, I build sand castles...I've been feeling pretty depressed lately!" Behind him we see a dozen or so sandcastles.
In baseball they tell the story about the rookie who faced the great pitcher Walter Johnson for the first time. Johnson was in his prime. The batter took two quick strikes and headed for the dugout. He told the umpire to keep the third strike--he had seen enough.
Have you ever felt like that? Jesus promised his disciples, "I will not leave you comfortless." Have you ever felt comfortless? The RSV translation uses the term desolate. Have you ever experienced desolation? For some people this is no joking matter. Depression is the most prevalent and the least treated serious illness in America today. Because it is so prevalent and so potentially dangerous, I am going to list several possible signs:
* Changes in appetite
* Shifts in sleeping patterns
* Lack of energy
* Agitation or increased activity
* Loss of interest in daily activities and decreased sex drive
* Inability to concentrate
* Feelings of sadness, hopelessness, worthlessness, guilt or self-reproach
* Thoughts of suicide
If you or someone you know has at least four of these symptoms and they have lasted for at least two weeks, professional help probably should be sought.
Fortunately, most of us are not troubled enough to need professional help. We are glad, however, that Christ has promised that he would not leave us comfortless. There are times when all of us need to be comforted.
In this passage from John's Gospel Jesus is telling his disciples that he cannot be with them always--at least, not in the flesh. He must go away. He promises them, however, that he will send a Counselor to take his place. This Counselor is, of course, the Holy Spirit.
Christ's promise was fulfilled in a rather dramatic way on the day of Pentecost. The Spirit came upon the disciples and turned their worlds upside down. That same Spirit is still in the world today--still available to those who know how to receive it. That brings us to the theme for today. Where do we find comfort when our lives are desolate?
There are three themes that dominate this passage. THE FIRST IS LOVE. "If you love me," says the Master, "You will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father and he will give you another Counsellor...."
We could easily make a case that where there is no love, there is no comfort. Leslie Weatherhead once told of a woman who married late in life. She confessed to him that for many years she had been bitter, and sarcastic, and cynical about life. She had said many bitter things about her neighbors, often envying them their good fortune...being married, and having homes of their own, while she felt doomed to a life of loneliness. She had stopped praying years before, and even blamed God for the poor deal she felt she had gotten in life.
Then, rather late, love came into her life. A rather youngish widower asked her to marry him. She became radiant, a radically different person altogether. She became filled with love and laughter. Then she regretted those years of despondency and bitterness. She told Dr. Weatherhead, "If only I had known earlier how life was going to turn out...."
We are certainly not saying that romantic love is essential to comfort. That dear lady could have given and received love long before she met her future husband. There were her neighbors and, perhaps, other family members. Certainly, there was God. One thing is certain. Very few people crawl out of the valley of despond by themselves. We need to give and receive love.
Dom DeLuise, the comedian, knows what it is to be depressed. He also knows something about dealing with depression.
"People who are feeling down," he says, "don't take advice. The nature of their illness is that they don't take advice...If I were to give advice, I would tell them to find somebody else who is in trouble. Go to hospitals, go to a person in need, and do something for them. Leave all your troubles. Try to get a smile on their faces." DeLuise even indulges in a little theology. He says, "What happens is, God says, `Because you cared about others, I will give you a good feeling.'
"And that good feeling is genuine. It doesn't come from a candy bar, It doesn't come from cocaine. It comes from helping other people!"
That's pretty good advice. As someone has said, there are 10 ways to get over the blues. The first way is to help someone else. Next, repeat that nine times. Jesus says, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor..." What are Jesus' commandments? "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind and strength and...thy neighbor as thyself." (Mark 12: 30-31) Love is the first key when you are desolate--both giving and receiving love.
THE SECOND THEME OF THIS PASSAGE IS TRUTH. "...He will give you another Counsellor, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him or knows him..."
As George Buttrick noted years ago, this teaching flies right in the face of how the world perceives faith. The world likes to think that Christians are persons who will not face facts, who live in a world of unreal dreams. The world is wrong. People who think Christians live in an unreal world simply do not themselves have all the facts.
The question is, as Pilate asked long ago, what is truth? Is truth to be defined by what we can see, hear, taste, feel? Or is there more to life than that?
The famous agnostic Thomas Huxley was once lovingly confronted by a very sincere Christian. This believer stressed to Huxley that he was not in any way impugning Huxley's sincerity. Nevertheless, might it not be possible that mentally the great scientist was color blind? That is, some people cannot see traces of green where other people cannot help but see it.
Could it be that this was Huxley's problem--that he was simply blind to truth that was quite evident to others? Huxley, being a man of integrity, admitted that this was possible, and added that if it were, he himself, of course, could not know or recognize it. We believe Huxley was blind to a great many truths.
To people of faith, it is quite evident that we live in a created universe. To think otherwise would deny the facts of life as we experience them. Could such an extraordinary world have happened without a divine hand directing it? Could blind protoplasm work its way up into intelligent, dreaming, loving human creatures without any creative impulse from a divine mind?
Absurd. Believers cannot deny their faith simply because others are blind or deaf or insensitive to what seems to be plainly evident to us. As far as we are concerned the burden of proof is on the non-believer. And rarely are they as confident as they pretend.
Bertrand Russell saw himself as the enemy of faith, and opposed Christianity at every opportunity. First-year university students still read his superficial essay, "Why I am Not a Christian." Yet his own daughter in her biographical sketch of her father says, "He was in temperament a profoundly religious man...I believe myself that his whole life was a search for God."
The pull of faith will always be stronger than that of disbelief wherever truth prevails. A biographer of G.K. Chesterton received a letter from a person present when Chesterton debated George Bernard Shaw on the merits of Christianity. In that debate Chesterton spoke profoundly and forcefully for the faith. Shaw was a famous agnostic. Shaw appeared to have won that debate.
Nevertheless, afterward a young woman, a socialist, declared to the letter writer: "But (Chesterton) was right." So right that, according to the letter writer, this young woman "never looked back." Her entire life was changed as she listened to Chesterton's arguments. Later she died as the abbess of an order of Nuns.
When we are desolate, we need to open our eyes and ears and heart to the evidences of God which He has placed all around us. We need to contemplate His love, His power, His promises. Where is comfort to be found? In love and in truth--truth about life and about God.
THE FINAL THEME OF THIS PASSAGE IS PRESENCE. "...even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you."
Jesus was trying to say to his disciples that the only way he could be truly with them was if he went away from them. Henry Drummond stated it superbly.
"Suppose," says Drummond, "suppose He had not gone away; suppose He were here now. Suppose He were still in the Holy Land, at Jerusalem. Every ship that started for the East would be crowded with Christian pilgrims. Every train flying through Europe would be thronged with people going to see Jesus. Every mail-bag would be full of letters from those in difficulty and trial. Suppose you are in one of those ships.
The port, when you arrive after the long voyage, is blocked with vessels of every flag. With much difficulty you land, and join one of the long trains starting for Jerusalem. Far as the eye can reach, the caravans move over the desert in an endless stream. As you approach the Holy City you see a dark, seething mass stretching for leagues and leagues
between you and its glittering spires. You have come to see Jesus; but you will never see Him."
Why? Because you are crowded out. Jesus resolved that this should never be. It was necessary that he go away so that the Spirit could come and make God known in the heart of every believer.
Love, truth, Christ's presence through the power of the Holy Spirit--these are the keys to avoiding a life of desolation. He has promised us a Counselor, a Comforter, an eternal Witness to Himself. The Spirit is available to all who would receive it.
In his book, SYMBOLS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, Gordon Brownville tells about the great Norwegian explorer Ronald Amundsen. Amundsen was the first man to discover the magnetic meridian of the North Pole and to discover the South Pole. On one of his trips, Amundsen took a homing pigeon with him. When he had finally reached the top of the world, he opened the bird's cage and set it free.
One day his wife, back in Norway, looked up from the doorway of her home and saw this pigeon circling in the sky above. Immediately, she knew that this was her husband's way of communicating his love all the way from the North Pole.
The symbol of the Holy Spirit is not a homing pigeon, but a dove. Still, the story fits. Christ could not remain with us in person. So, he sent a dove into our hearts to bear witness to his love. Under such circumstances, who could be comfortless? "I will not leave you desolate," he says, "I will come to you." How? In love, truth, and the indwelling presence of his Spirit.
