(Notes from the sermon)
To be continued…
-like the old movies (picture of Roy Rogers)
-like TV nowadays…
This week’s Gospel is the “to be continued part…”
-after the foot washing
-after Judas leaves
-the disciples are agitated and troubled
-believe in me says Jesus
-Thomas how do we know the way?
-I am the way…
-Philip, show me the father…
-I have shown you, if you love one another you will do what I have done…
And for this week, Jesus continues…
-I will not leave you alone
-send the Advocate (Gk. Paraclete)
-Spirit of Truth – will abide with you (in you)
-you will not be orphaned
-follow my commandments
– love me
Of course, Spirit would descend upon them at Pentecost. The Spirit rushing over them like wind or breath
Prince Caspian
-Aslan breathes on Susan to relieve her fear
-he breathes on others and they join his throng
Similar the Spirit will descend and all that tormented the disciples will be gone and new disciples will be formed. At the 10:15 AM service:
Bible – stories collected and given to us know for our faith and it is that spirit of truth that abides with us to learn from such stories ·
Our own blank journal, the part that hasn’t been written yet… what will be written of our lives? What has been? How has the Spirit (the Advocate) been with us? What has that abiding presence bidden us to do? What is left to write?
Finally a story about…
Little-known stories of World War II: the greatest art theft in history. While the Nazis marched across Europe in the early 1940s, Hitler and his deputy Herman Goering were systematically stealing civilization’s most treasured works of art. General Dwight Eisenhower formed a small band of art historians and museum curators — the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section — to minimize the damage to monuments and architecture and track down works stolen by the Nazis.
The 350 members of the unit, who became known as the “monuments men,” conducted the greatest treasure hunt in history. They tracked down and returned tens of thousands of pieces of stolen art and cultural artifacts. In the end, they had discovered more than a thousand repositories of paintings, sculpture, furniture and archives stolen by the Nazis, hidden in warehouses, caves and castles. Perhaps the greatest cache of loot was found in a salt mine in the Austrian Alps, where the Nazis had stashed hundreds of crates of paintings and sculpture, including stained glass removed from Strasbourg Cathedral.
The “monuments men” painstakingly searched archives, translated documents, collated records and extracted needles from thousands of haystacks to ensure that works were returned to their rightful homes. Their records are considered invaluable to art historians and curators today; some works are only now being returned to their original owners. The work of the “monuments men” is only now being recognized.
As one of the last surviving “monuments men” said, “We Americans, for the first time in the history of civilization, adopted a policy which said that to the victor do not belong the spoils of war.” [From Rescuing Da Vinci: Hitler and the Nazis Stole Europe’s Great Art — America and Her Allies Recovered It by Robert M. Edsel.]
The little-known story of the “monuments men” is a sign of the Spirit of God, the advocate who guides us into the Truth. May the Advocate whom God has sent into our lives, guide us in whatever opportunities we all have to restore hope, to heal, to make right what has been broken, to bring back the lost and forgotten and marginalized. (Jay Cormier)
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