When you apply for a job in the secular world there are things called K.P.I.’s.

KPI is the TLA*  for Key Performance Indicator. So if you work at the check out in the Supermarket, a Key Performance Indicator might be how many items were processed through your check out in any given shift.  Fortunately, the Kingdom of God does not work that way. It is with a great sense of relief that I can tell you that the number of people in the pew on a Sunday is not a KPI in the 21st century. Further, there weren’t any in Our Lord’s time either.

In today’s gospel, The Master has recruited 70 people and sent them out ahead of him. There’s no job description and no K.P.I.’s are mentioned either.

But we are given a hint as to what Our Lord expects, and you and I should find this very reassuring.

The Teacher goes on to say "That when you heal know that the kingdom of God has come near to you". Yep, that sounds about right.

But then he also goes on to say that when you are a flop and you are turfed out of the town, know also that the kingdom of God has come near.

So the kingdom of God coming near to you is not dependent on the sort of KPI that you and I might think is desirable and measurable… There is no mention of the number of lepers you should heal, the number of people you need to feed, or the number of haemorrhages stopped. The kingdom of God comes to us simply by being faithful and giving it our very best shot. And it matters not if there are 26 broken toes healed or none, 37 people anointed with holy oil or none. Whether you are welcomed by the community or not. The question is not how many confessions did you hear or how many Facebook likes did you get. The question is much harder. In the kingdom of heaven the KPI is, did we turn up the next day, the next Sunday, and the next.. and next … to try again and again and again. Did we continue to say our prayers and yes maybe even sometimes shake our fist at God.

The kingdom comes near to us just by faithfully having a go and being eternally consistent about it.

Some of the most endearing clergy and the most lovely people are those who did not convert oodles of people and have rip-roaring stewardship programmes and a cast of thousands. Some of the finest people who have patiently taught me most and fired me with inspiration are the chipped and the flawed and the busted. The ones who have been spectacular disappointments to others and most painfully of all to themselves. For in their shattered-ness they are quite magnificent and bless ‘em… they never ever gave up and that is what made them exquisite and amazing and awesome. The sort of people I would like to be when I grow up.

In Our Lord’s words, they rejoice not because they remained unscathed when they stomped on a protected species of wildlife and got away with it. They are at peace and are blessed because they know irrefutably that their names are written in heaven.

“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants”

It is not the wise, the witty, the intelligent, the good looking and the glamorous that have KPIs in the KOG. It is the infants, the naive, the innocent, the un-beguiling, the trusting, the faithful, the people just like you and me who struggle and giggle and stumble and yet still turn up at the altar knowing how much we need to be fed.

And yes there are times when it might all seem futile and too hard and we are left bewildered. The times when we don’t feel as though we have the K.P.I.’s, the gifts and the talents to set the world on fire and to fill the church.

But it is precisely to people like this, like us, Human beings with feet of clay and hearts that are shattered, that God sends out to transform and transfigure, slowly bit by bit in ways and times that we will never know.

By any K.P.I. you care to name, St. Theresa of Avila would have to be right up there. So next time you think that you are failing to meet the K.P.I.’s you have set yourself and the task would be far better suited to the talented and the dazzling Jimmy and Jessica who are always articulate and dashing, you might find St. Theresa’s words are helpful.

“Christ has no body on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out to the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless others… now”

*> TLA - Three Letter Accronym

Meet Mother Silence  - your new best friend.

I was trying to negotiate an important phone call the other day. The content of the conversation was life-changing for the person at the other end. Fortunately, the effect was for the better. The things that we were chattering about would make a lot of people smile.

When I put the phone down I felt humbled and responsible. This was not something to be taken lightly and there were a number of convoluted intricacies that needed to be weighed carefully.

My guess is that each of us will have to make and receive such phone calls in our lifetime. Some will end in grins. Some will end in anger and tears.  Some we will have to initiate and some will find us. But the thing that I have found most helpful is to pause frequently and in large quantities. Let the Mother silence do the talking. Mother silence is a very effective communicator. I know it sounds odd, but saying nothing allows the speaker to gather their thoughts and find the best fitting words. Mother silence also allows the listener to process the information, in a timely way and to assimilate it, even if the news is not gorgeous.

It’s OK to allow Mother Silence to have some space in the conversation. In fact, I would argue that it is essential that you give over to her frequently. She has done this sort of thing heaps of times before and she is really good at it! She has "the words" when we have none.

The conversation does not have to be jam-packed with words. The conversation will be far more fruitful if you let your new best friend Mother Silence speak for you. Go on… just take a deep breath, close your mouth and listen to your new best friend.

“Name your demons”. A reflection for Pentecost 2.

Today it might be helpful to begin with a little geography lesson.

The sea of Galilee is roughly oval in shape. It is 21 kilometres long and 11 kilometres across. It is a four hour boat trip from top to bottom for the sea of Galilee and the voyage is fraught with danger.

In today’s story Jesus begins right at the top of the sea of Galilee and he travels all the way down to the bottom to the country of Gerasenes.

Its quite a feat and it would have been a whole lot easier for Jesus not to have made this trip at all. Surely there would have been heaps of other people to see, heal, feed and teach.

So the first point I make is that Jesus went out of his way to visit this tormented man. We are reminded that the Master Healer will go to any length, to any place, to seek out and heal those who are tormented.

The Gospels don’t say how Jesus heard about this guy but it is very clear this is why he made the ferry crossing. As soon as he lands there, Jesus is met by this man, and as soon as he has accomplished this exorcism he leaves.

The One through whom all things were made, went into the country of the Gadarenes in order to rescue this one solitary wretched man. The demoniac is not an interruption or a kindly detour. This was always going to be part of Jesus’ itinerary.

Now as Jesus steps ashore the demon shouts "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”

Knowing your opponent's name was regarded as a means of establishing dominance. The demons seek to establish power over Jesus by stating his name. But Jesus turns the tables on on him and asks ‘What is your name?’ Jesus demands their name and the demons submit to him. And we know how the rest of the story goes. The man is exorcised and the local swine herd go for a dip in the ocean.

It’s a splendid piece of pastoral work and you would have thought that everyone would want to get Jesus to stay on for a bit. But not so. They implore him to leave. Why?

Well for one thing the owner of the herd of pigs would not have been impressed. He was probably just fattening up his swine for market next week when… hey presto … next month’s income vanishes thanks to that intruding, uninvited Jesus guy.

Further we are told that the locals were full of fear. Fear of the outsider, fear of someone and something different, fear of relinquishing that which is comfortable and known. And the fears that they could not or would not name.

The ‘Outsider Jesus’ confronts this community just as surely and effectively as the foreigner, the newcomer, the interloper confronts us. We fear disruption and we are challenged when what has always been unshakeable comes crashing down around our ears. The outsider coming from outside of our perspective and our world makes our certainties rumble and quiver. And while this may be disquieting and unsettling it will also do us a whole lot of good.

For the healed man, Jesus being encouraged to get back on the ferry must have been quite sad. His hero and healer was leaving him.

My guess is that there are times when we are like the healed man. It seems that we are the only people who ‘have got it’. The more insidious truth is that there are times when we send Jesus away. Yes there is some lovely gooey yummy stuff but messing with my whole life Lord, that’s just a bridge too far. Am I really prepared to change… everything?

My name is legion… for I am many.

Do we know the names of our personal demons? Can we identify the ones in our community? Can we name them, for in naming them, we confront them and in confronting them, we banish them? And then we say sorry for the damage they have caused?

It is difficult to over emphasise the need for this process. To name our demons and say sorry when we have damaged our relationship with God and others.

We say sorry not to try and placate a grumpy God. The focus should always be on cementing, refreshing and renewing a friendship with the one who we have turned away.

The story of the demoniac is about the promise of God's ability to defeat and re-order the disordered powers that afflict individuals and communities

And if we read carefully, it will also teach us that our loving God has been searching us out, finding us, healing us, embracing us and reconciling himself to us, long before we realised how tormented we really were. Remember the perilous boat trip was 21 kilometres and four hours long.

Right at the end of today’s gospel the people ask The teacher to leave their neighbourhood… And he complies. The healed man begs to get on the boat with Jesus, but Jesus  has a different plan for him. ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’

And if it is good enough for him…

When I have completed my snowman and ark I shall be able to write more words like this.

“Let’s do some ironing” a reflection for Trinity Sunday

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”

On first reading of these words a sense of frustration bubbles up within me.  How come I can’t know the many things God wants to say to me today? I can deal with it. I can take it and by the way what exactly are those ‘things?’

Surely I should know, surely I have a responsibility to know, and dare I say it …I have a right to know… and yet… the Masters words and their meaning are quite  clear. Not yet.

It would be irresponsible and possibly  damaging for me if I were to know those ‘things’.

So we might look back and think about some of the painful things we have learned over the years. If we are honest and had known how adventurous and challenging and yes how painful the journey was going to be, then maybe we would not have signed on at all.

We would have typed a quick letter declining God’s very generous offer of the role of a cross carrying, foot washing, endlessly forgiving servant. We would have packed sun tan lotion and bathers and headed for an apartment on the Gold coast.

But we didn’t type that letter and here we are, sometimes years later, still signed up and showing up. We also realise that if we had given up we would have missed out on some of the most sumptuous and exquisite ministry both given and received. Moments of unlooked for, indescribable beauty and exquisite love. The undeserved moments that found us simply because we were open to the possibility.

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”

So I wonder what else God might have in store for us in the future. When we are ready He will whisper these things to us and lead us into situations and encounters that we could never have dreamed of. Things that we cannot bear on the 12th of June 2022, but will be ready for next week, next month or even next year.

So today’s gospel is really about all time.

This is our experience, that we need time to understand what Jesus said, for it is often not a question of theoretical knowledge, but of things of the heart: the meaning of love, of suffering, the presence of God in our life, in others, in the Church.

So the Masters words are liberating and refreshing. It’s OK not to have all the answers given to us on a platter yesterday. It’s OK to go on questioning and asking and listening and praying and waiting. Today’s gospel is not just about the present, its about having confidence and trust and faith into the future.

The world will keep turning as it always has from the beginning of time. The church always finds itself trying to understand and live its faith in the midst of social, cultural, and global circumstances that change rapidly.

The Holy Spirit will keep on leading, challenging, nudging and prodding us. As we totter along through time, all we have to do is be open to the hints that he feeds us even when and especially when,  we might find them unpalatable.

It might have been tempting for John to devalue any new understanding of the Christian message that emerges when Jesus is no longer visibly present.

But no, John places firm confidence in the Spirit as continuing the ongoing presence and revealing of Jesus within the Christian community. For John, the church does not need to fear learning and practicing its faith in Jesus in the midst of a changing world marked by Jesus’ physical absence. The Spirit “will declare to you the things that are to come” In other words, the Spirit makes possible a “deep understanding of what Jesus means for us here and now in the year 2022, without betraying the core truth of Jesus’ original teaching in the year nought.

The trick is to be totally focussed on the present, whilst being open to what will find you in the future. And here’s a story about how to do that.

Imagine yourself doing the ironing. Right now, doing the ironing is the most important thing in the whole wide world. It’s all you are and it’s everything you are doing. You are not hanging out the washing, or typing an email or chattering with Mr. Guffoops about chooks and the footy. Right now, at this very moment, you are doing the ironing. You are not thinking about anything else.

New things do await you. New things will happen; exciting and disappointing escapades will find you. Nothing surer. But at this very second you are completely absorbed in just doing the ironing.The things that God has to say to you will come in His time, not yours.

‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.’

Perhaps we will be most ready to bear them, when the ironing is pressed, folded and stored tidily away.

“When we just don’t get it.” A reflection for Pentecost June 5th

Today I want to monkey around with Philip’s challenge.

 Philip said to Jesus, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’

The word ‘us’ is intriguing. I wonder whether the disciples had been gossiping about Jesus and decided that they needed a publicity stunt to convince them that they had voted for the right guy.

Phillip’s statement has all the hallmarks of

“A few of us were talking the other day Bishop Gary. We reckon you ought to do A, B, C, Q and Z.3 and then we will be satisfied.”

Now I could be hideously wrong here, but I suspect that Philip might be the self appointed spokesperson. Further, I think this challenge to our Lord is not a spontaneous conversation, but one that has been bubbling for some time.

Now I think that if I had been the one to have been confronted with this challenge, I might have retorted with something very unhelpful like…

‘And if I don’t show you the Father Philip… What then’?

At best, it’s understandable response, at worst its a very unhelpful one. Calling someone’s bluff whilst ignoring the underlying issue never goes well.

A better question is … ‘What has led Philip and probably the others to this point?’

Now while we’re not explicitly told there is a clue. ‘Show us the father and we will be satisfied. Ergo… Philip and his buddies are not satisfied. And here I think of the people Moses led out of Egypt.

Having escaped slavery and Pharaoh who refused to go to the Fair work commission, they wander about the desert and complain about the lack of water, the lack of food and the lack of meat. They recall the smorgasbord of things that they eat whilst being paid below the minimum wage. Moses goes up to get them no less than 10 commandments and he’s gone far too long and so is replaced with a golden calf. They are not satisfied. They have never been satisfied and frequently God and Moses get pretty jolly grumpy with them.

The good news is that Philip’s challenge is not about being satisfied. It is not about being full and yummy and complete and then walking away. If anything, our encounters with God, the times that we glimpse him out of the corner of our eye, should always leave us wanting more. They should tempt and tantalise us, drawing us further and deeper into the relationship. These brief skirmishes with the divine are not supposed to leave us complete and sated forever and ever.

Something else about Philip’s challenge.

What if.. What if Jesus had said.

‘What a splendid idea Philip. Jeepers, I can’t think why I haven’t done this before’. And Abracadabra, in a puff of magic smoke the Father appears in all His dazzling glory.

And after the first 5 minutes of taking it all in, would they really be satisfied? Like completely and utterly and never ask for anything else again?

From what little I know of human nature, my guess is that with the passing of time they, like us, would want something else. Another sign, another magic trick. And there is a very slippery slope just waiting to dash us all here. Very quickly it becomes ‘we have seen the Father and you haven’t.’ ‘Us’ versus ‘them’. We're better than you because we have enjoyed this beatific vision and you haven’t. Therefore you must be somehow lacking or sinners, or both. And once that division occurs, it is very difficult  to mend.

So Philip doesn’t get it. It’s not about a magic trick.

Jesus understandably responds with a tirade of 3 rhetorical questions.

1. ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?
2. Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”?
3. Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?

The Father has been active and present before Philip’s eyes all the time. Jesus and his Father are inseparable and to have seen Jesus at work is to have seen the Father at work.

Now it’s all very easy, glib and trite for us to disparage Philip. We have the benefit of hindsight and we have John’s splendid gospel. But the briefest moment of self reflection will show us that we all have ‘Philip like’ moments. There are times bless us, when we just don’t get it. And we ought not to be too hard on ourselves and others when we just don’t get it.

And we are tempted to say that it was easy for those first 12. They had the real deal right before their eyes, we don’t. So where do we go looking to see Jesus and thus see the Father?

There are moments when The Master reveals himself and it is lightning and rainbows and lovely and peachy. And we ought to delight in and celebrate those moments. But we also see Jesus and the Father in moments of brokenness.

We see him in broken limbs

We see him in broken bread

We see him in broken lives

We see him in broken hearts

Perhaps most of all in the times when we just don’t get it. May we see the Father in our ‘Philip moments’. The moments of our own brokenness, the moments when we just don’t get it.

The lesson of the scrap bucket.

We have a scrap bucket in the rectory. Well actually, it's a recycled 4 litre ice-cream container. No lid, just the base and it sits hungrily on the kitchen bench. Into it goes my apple core from breakfast, the veggie scrapings and various other unmentionables. It’s a handy device and needs washing out from time to time. It also needs emptying on a frequent basis.

So out I go, ‘scrap bucket’ in one hand and shovel in the other. I find a bit of spare ground in the garden, dig a hole and plunge the contents into the waiting soil. Then simply back fill the hole, put the shovel away in the garage and the scrap bucket back on the bench.

At this time of the year it’s chilly and I don’t relish the time outside. But this is the right thing to do for a couple of reasons.

First, it enriches our garden soil and helps us to grow worms, fantastic veggies and flowers. Secondly it cuts down on landfill.  But ultimately there is something very important that I learn and relearn from this couple of minutes in the blithering cold.

That everything, literally everything, has a meaning and a purpose. Nothing is to be wasted, everything has value. We have learnt this in our multi colour bin lids and the way that we package things. And I realise afresh that even when I have had a rubbishy, scrappy sort of day, I am still treasured and vital in the Masters eyes. And if this is true of the priesty guy who lives at 39 Griffin street, then it is most certainly true of everyone, everywhere, in every street, nation, colour and creed.

Everything and everyone has purpose and value. This is the lesson of our scrap bucket.

It was a privilege to cook some sausages recently. Yep,..a little gang of us gathered outside a supermarket and cooked some sausages. It was a rip-snorter of a day even if the weather wasn’t exactly tropical.

One of us cut the onions, another made sure the sauce bottle squirted, another was in charge of the cash, while I simply turned over the sausages until they went some very interesting colours. Thanks to the lack of my culinary skills some of them went a little darker than perhaps I might have liked.

Then there was a little catchphrase. Not “Hi my name’s David. I’ll be your Masterchef for the day.” Rather it went “Would you like onions,… sauce … tomato or BBQ…?? Thanks for that, have a great day.”

We made more cash than what I thought we would have and that was nice. But that was not the most important thing. We cooked a lot of sausages and people ate them and everything and that was marvellous. But that was not the most important thing either. We were well supported by the supermarket and by the community…  and by each other . Ah, …now we’re getting close to what was really the most important thing.

The most important thing was a relational thing. The encounters with people I knew and the ones where I just got to do my little mantra of ‘Sauce, onions and Thank you’. That was by far the most enjoyable and the most essential part.

Welcome back … welcome home…A reflection for Easter 7

Have you ever wondered what the homes were like in Jesus’ time?

We are often told that people went to each others’ home but we are not told about the corner spa, the wall paper or the front fence.

For example

Jesus heals Peter’s Mother in law at Peter’s house.

Or perhaps a little more on the up market side of town.

Matthews house when Jesus goes to the dinner party.

Did it in fact have 3 bedrooms, flushing loo, extensive manicured garden, swimming pool and room for a pony?

And there was the upper room of a house where the Eucharist was given to us.

I’m beginning this inspection of real estate because today’s gospel is all about where you live. In fact if you had to reduce today’s gospel today down to just a couple of pertinent words on the self cleaning oven in the shiny newly renovated Masterchef kitchen you would probably be left with two words

Indwelling and unity.

When you read today’s gospel carefully you begin to understand an awesome, terrifying and boggling truth.

That the closeness and the love that Jesus has and enjoys with his Father is the very same closeness and love that you and I are called to have and to enjoy with God.

Furthermore,  it is the very same closeness and love we are called to have with our brothers and sisters. Now when it happens it is marvellous and exhilarating.

But… when we fail to have that unity, or we fail to show it to the world, then we let our brothers and sisters down, we let God down,

and most painfully of all we let ourselves down

For John nothing was more important than this unity, this indwelling business. He is writing against the backdrop of the internal divisions within the Church and he is writing about the persecution on the church from without.

So you and I, must live the same unity that Jesus and his Father have.

That sets the bar dizzyingly high and there have been times when we have blundered, fizzled and fallen over well before we even got to the bar. When this has happened our community is quite right to call us out.

A long time ago we might well have thought of those who happened to grow up in another denomination as pesky Presbyterians or those revelling Roman catholics.

I wonder might happen if we began to think of them as our separated brothers and sisters… or if we are very courageous, thought of ourselves as the separated ones. Wouldn’t that turn things on their head and what would it call us to do?

The work of reconciliation begins with us and it does not begin by trying to sort out our theological niceties and academic intricacies. Rather it begins by building relationships, getting to know each other and discovering with joy that there are things we can easily agree on. Then we begin the very important and vital work to discover how to support and encourage each other along the road.

Jesus prays today’s gospel reading just before he is arrested and taken away. He is about to break free from the constraints of time and space as we know them and he is about to embrace eternity and heaven.

When we know that unity with God, with our brothers and sisters and within ourselves, then we are truly indwelling with each other and God. Then we too break free from time, space, sin and disappointment. When we accomplish this very special type of unity  and indwelling, we too will have already begun to embrace eternity and every part of us will be infused and bursting with divinity.

Jesus put it this way.

Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am.

So where are you? So where do you live? A street number, an avenue, a town, an RMB number. A house with four walls, loo, shower, kitchen and room for a pony?

Where do you live? Where is your true home?

The one you don’t ever have to leave. The one where you are most comfortable. The one where you can kick off your shoes, reach for a beverage and the remote.

Where is the place where you are most authentically yourself? The person you have always been and the person you are called to be.

The holiest and loveliest people are those who are relaxed and comfy in themselves. They already know they are at home with God. There is nothing to prove, or fight for, or get grumpy about. They are home and they are just them.

So where do you live? Where do you ‘indwell’?

Indwelling is a relational thing. It is living in relationship. It is not and can not, be confined to any one place, any one time, any one person. Indwelling is for all places and all time, for there is no place and no time where God is not.

We are so easily distracted, that it just took us a little while to catch up and catch on to this simple but profound and lovely truth.

We make our home in Him, because He has already made his home in us.

So we say to Him and we say to the person in the mirror.

Oh.. it’s you!

Welcome back… welcome home.

Elections… they’re a piece of cake

One of the bonza things about living in Australia is that we have a choice come election time. There are political parties in various colours ( a bit like the Wiggles someone cheekily suggested) with different policies, different points of view and we are free to choose. Sometimes we whinge about our lot, but compared to some other nations we really do have it pretty jolly good. We vote people in and we vote people out. Sometimes they are voted out by their peers before we get a chance. It’s all a bit of hurdy gurdy but we do get to have a say and leading up to the election, people in high vis vests do seem to listen and travel a lot.

This celebration of choice happens again on Saturday May 21st. By  the time you get through the line of folk who smile and give you bits of paper, then get your name crossed off and mark your ballot paper, you will probably need a bit of sustenance to take home and enjoy. That’s where our Food and Produce stall can help you out. It all happens from 9am  to noon at our Parish Hall where all are very welcome on polling day.

There will be a smorgasbord of options to choose from. Chocolate is bound to be there, sponges and maybe the odd cup cake which is pretty nifty along with plants to grow and flourish.

It’s also a great way to rub shoulders with folk, swap stories and pick up a bargain or two.

Thanks to the bakers, and the folk at the polling places whose work is largely hidden but always appreciated. Elections… they’re a piece of cake.

Today the Easter Jesus is preparing his disciples for his imminent departure. He is also promising to send them the Holy Spirit who will be with them forever. So He is saying a farewell.  What He says and the way He says it, are important for us on at least two levels.

First, His ascension and the ensuing Pentecost are articles of our faith. Its what we believe. It is part of our story and part of who we are.

But Jesus farewell discourse has a salutary lesson for us.
All of us in our life time, will say many  ‘Goodbyes’.

Some are long lasting and seem permanent. Some are fleeting and only temporary.

For example…’I’m just ducking down the shops for a bottle of red ned and a bag of salt and vinegar chips.

Our Lord always chose His words carefully and that must be true of us also. The words we use to say our farewells and the way we say them matters. It matters to us and it matters very much to the listener.

So how does the Master do it?

He begins by leaving behind some pretty clear instructions.

“If you love me, keep my commandments”.

By saying this Jesus shifts the focus from himself and his departure, to the disciples and the future. He gives them plenty to go on with and plenty to think about.

“And my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

Here is the reassurance of The Master that the sense of intimacy, closeness and friendship that they have enjoyed will not be diminished, but will in fact be enhanced and even more potent into the future. Dread and fear are transformed into anticipation and hope. The loving will take on a whole new dimension and joy. What has gone before is the flyleaf to the book to come. Because of the unsinkable relationships that have been forged in the adventures of bread and wine and healing and denial and dispute and life, death and resurrection and parties; the  chapters that are about to unfold, what is to follow, can only be more exhilarating, exciting and loving than what has gone before.

The relationship does not end with Good Friday or the ascension. The love is amplified exponentially because The Fathers love is also poured out upon them. The Father and Jesus will make their home in each and every one of those funny old disciples just as surely as he makes his home in each and every one of us.

Now, the choice of the word ‘home’ is quite deliberate. Home in this sense is the permanent place of dwelling and enjoyment. It is not a physical, postal address or even a post code. It is that place deep within us that not even death can destroy. It is where joy, peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness live together in perfect harmony and love. This is our true home and it is His home as well.

Something else to think about.

That unique, precious something that is forged between true friends and true lovers can never be demolished. The adventures and hijinks might cease and the relationship enter a new wobbly undulating terrain, but the even the dark river of bitter death if navigated correctly and patiently, can enhance, sweeten and strengthen everything that was and is and will be.

But there is more that Jesus says in his Farewell.

 ‘I have said these things to you while I am still with you. ²⁶ But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.

It is not until Jesus has completed this Easter stage of his ministry and ascended, that the Holy Spirit can be sent to the apostles and begin His work. So far from being orphaned and abandoned,  the disciples have a superfluity of divinity. It will be more than they can cope with, more than they can ever need, desire or hope for.

So the art of saying a healthy Farewell is not just about looking back and being so very grateful. It is not just about giving those left behind something to get on with. Some work to do. It is also about looking forward into the future and reassuring those left behind that the loving presence that they have been enjoying will blossom into something far more mysterious and compelling and enjoyable than they can ever imagine.

And the new chapter that the Master encourages his disciples to embrace, is exactly the same one that he asks us to sign up for every day and every moment of our lives.

But…how do you conclude your Farewell? How do you sum it all up, sign it off and leave it tidy.

Perhaps this will help.

⁸ You heard me say to you, “I am going away, and I am coming to you.” If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.
Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.