Sermon for Cantate, 2026

“For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.” His going away is the condition of that coming. And what comes, or more precisely, who comes in His going away is the Spirit of truth, the Comforter, the One who will take what is [the Lord Jesus’] and declare it to you. Namely: the forgiveness Christ won on the Cross, the righteousness He earned in that perfect life laid down, and the life that burst from the tomb on the Third Day. None of it reaches you without His going away. All of it comes to you through it. 

And so the unanswered prayers, the silence, the absences and heartbreaks that have filled you with sorrow: consider what may be happening in them. Not that God has forgotten you. Not that your cry has gone unheard. Rather, He works in the going away, in the dark, in the silence from which no prayer seems to escape. Jesus worked that way once, definitively, on the Cross. He works that way still. The darkness has not overcome Him. The silence is not indifference. He who went away into death for you has not stopped entering the dark places, even yours. 

You cannot see what He is doing in it, not yet. You cannot bear it now, as He Himself says to the Disciples here. Sorrow fills the darkness, sorrow which threatens to choke off your prayers. Nevertheless, He bids that you not stop asking, even when the asking feels useless, that you not seal yourself off from Him who speaks into silence. 

Readings:

• Old Testament: Isaiah 12:1-6

• Epistle: James 1:16-21

• Holy Gospel: John 16:5-15

• Sermon manuscript: download

Sermon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQX6fPdnvt4