CLICK HERE for a worship video for May 10
Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter – May 10, 2026
John 14:15-21
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Although we are still in the Easter season, our gospel readings for both last Sunday and this Sunday take place before the resurrection. We might think of them as flashback scenes. Jesus is preparing his disciples for all that is to come. He is telling them what will happen and what to expect in the days ahead. He is laying the groundwork for what his church will look like after his death and resurrection.
Jesus is also seeking to calm the hearts of the disciples, which, as we heard last week, had become troubled. Jesus had told them that he would be leaving them soon, and this news caused quite a stir. The disciples became nervous. They became anxious and afraid. And so, as we heard last week, Jesus said to them, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.”
Today we pick up right where we left off last week. Jesus continued to speak to the disciples, preparing them for what was to come. He had a lot more to say to them. In fact, Jesus goes on for four entire chapters with his farewell address to the disciples!
In the snippet we hear from this much longer farewell address, Jesus again speaks to the disciples’ troubled hearts. He addresses the fear they have of being left alone. He addresses the grief already creeping into their hearts at the prospect of his absence from them. And in doing so Jesus uses a word that is the same in both English and Greek. He uses the word orphanos, orphan.
An orphan, strictly speaking, is a child who has lost both mother and father, but Jesus uses the word more broadly here. He uses it to refer to the disciples’ fear of being cut off from him, cut off from this profound source of love in their lives – as orphans are. Jesus uses the word “orphan” to describe their fear of his departure from them leaving an aching absence in their lives, the absence of the one who gave them life.
I think there are many people here today who know what this is like. I think there are many people here today who understand why Jesus uses the word “orphan.”
Today is Mother’s Day. This is a secular holiday. It is not on the liturgical calendar. But that said, it is a holiday which Christians can certainly get on board with. The church should do more to lift up the vocation of motherhood, which is way undervalued in our culture today. One of the commandments given to us by God is to honor mothers, and while we should do this every day, while it should be a lifestyle and a worldview more than just a one-off event, it is a good thing to have a special day set aside to celebrate and honor mothers with joy.
But that said, I know that this is an emotionally fraught day for many people. It can be a painful day, for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is that many of us don’t have our moms around anymore. And so, this day is at least in part a reminder that we have lost a profound source of love in our lives. It is a reminder of an aching absence in our lives that never completely goes away.
My son’s wedding this past December was an emotional day for me. I was choking back tears most of the day, which will surprise almost none of you. I thought I was out of the woods after the ceremony was over, but at one point during the reception I was visiting with my sister-in-law. She was talking about what a wonderful time it was, what a beautiful wedding it was, about how great Luke looked in his Air Force uniform and how great he and Bekah are together. And then she looked at me with a sweet, loving, wistful smile and, with the best of intentions, said, “Don’t you wish your mom could have been here?”
There it was. There was that aching absence.
I know there are a lot of you who know exactly what I’m talking about. I have heard your voices catch when talking about a loved one who is gone. I’ve seen your tears.
This was the experience Jesus was putting his finger on when he used the word “orphan.” This is what the disciples were afraid of. They were afraid that Jesus wouldn’t be there with them anymore. They were afraid that they were about to lose the one who had given them life. They were afraid they were about to lose the one who loved them more than anyone else they had ever known.
And so, Jesus gave them a promise. “I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus said. Jesus promised that he would not leave them alone. He promised that he would be with them in a different way.
Jesus promised he would send what he called “the Advocate” to be with them forever. This is a vaguely legal term for someone who would defend you and protect you. The opposite of this is the Accuser, the devil, the Enemy who goes on the attack, trying to drag you into despair. Jesus promised to send the Advocate, someone who would forever be in their corner, defending them from these attacks, protecting them from the evil one.
This Advocate, however, also has a soft side, a tender, nurturing side. In fact, some Bibles choose to translate the word “Advocate” as either comforter or helper. So, this Advocate both defends and comforts. You might think of it as a Mama Bear who will hold her cubs close in the warmth of her love and tenderness but is also capable of ripping the face off anyone who messes with them.
This Advocate Jesus is talking about is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit holds us close in God’s love while fiercely defending us from our enemies of sin, death, and the devil. “This is the Spirit of truth,” Jesus said, “whom the world does not know, but you know, because he abides with you and will be in you.” And so, they will never be alone. His Holy Spirit would always be with them.
Jesus also promised the disciples that he himself will come to them. “I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus says, “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.”
This refers specifically to the fact that the risen Jesus will literally come to them, and they will literally see him in his resurrection appearances, many of which we have heard about this Easter season, but this also alludes to how Jesus will come to his church after his ascension. The Spirit of truth will make the risen Jesus known to us. That Spirit of truth is his Spirit, which will be with us forever, giving us life with him. Jesus promises that by this Spirit his disciples will know that he is in the Father and that they are in him and that he is in them. That’s a lot to get your head around, I know, but the essence of this is simply that Jesus will not leave his disciples alone. He will come to them. He will be with them. He will not leave them orphaned. He will continue to love them and reveal himself to them.
This all happens in the church, which Martin Luther called our mother. In the Large Catechism, Luther says that the church is “the mother that conceives and bears every Christian through God’s Word.”
The fear the disciples had still shows up among Christ’s disciples today. We are desperately afraid of losing the people we love, the people who love us. When we do lose them, there is an aching absence which never completely goes away. As much as Mother’s Day can and should be a day of gratitude and celebration and honoring of the mothers among us, some of us are missing the moms in our lives.
But it is good that we are missing them here, in the church, because the church is also our mother. It is here that we encounter the love of the One who gave us life. It is here that we rest in the presence of the Advocate who defends us and comforts us. It is here that the Holy Spirit abides with us. It is here that Jesus is truly present for us, revealing himself to us in Word and Sacrament, healing us and renewing us in his loving grace.
I know that there are worries and griefs and heartaches and longings of all kinds out there in the pews this morning. Our Lord Jesus speaks to every one of them when he uses the word orphanos, or orphan. In a fallen world filled with death and distance and aging and alienation and broken bodies and broken relationships, Jesus comes near to us with his mercy, his forgiveness, and his love, drawing us to himself. In a world full of loneliness, he promises us that we will never be alone. In a fallen world where we lose mothers and all kinds of other people who are dear to us, Jesus promises us that we will never lose him.
By his Spirit, he has called us here to our other mother, the church. And it is here that he speaks to your deepest fears. It is here that he speaks a word of promise that reaches into every aching absence. It is here that he says to you: “I will not leave you orphaned.”
And he hasn’t.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church