Senior Sunday
By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, May 25, 2025)
In the name of God, who makes and saves and sustains us. Amen. "Do not let your hearts be troubled," Jesus says, "Do not let them be afraid." I've been preparing this sermon for several days, and I didn't know even through all that preparation how much I wanted to hear those words read this morning, and it's sort of a tall order to say to us here in this place, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Do not be afraid." Lots of reasons to be afraid. I know students, our international students and scholars, are full of uncertainty and fear. Immigrants in our community are full of uncertainty and fear. The past several weeks, we had the release of these task force reports, and we know that a quarter, almost a quarter of Jewish students here at Harvard, are afraid to walk around campus. Almost half of our Muslim students are afraid to walk around campus.
And so they should be these murders in Washington and assaults and violence against Muslims throughout the country, there is reason to be afraid. And the disciples in this lesson are afraid, too. This is why Jesus says to them, "Don't be afraid." It's a different situation, not altogether different. They're afraid because Jesus is leaving them. The lesson this morning comes from the Last Supper Discourse in John. These are Jesus's final words to his disciples, and he's been saying goodbye to them. He's saying to them, over and over, "We're coming to the end of this discourse." It's called the Farewell Discourse, and he's been saying to them over and over again, "I'm leaving you. I'm leaving you." And they're confused and they have all kinds of questions for him. First, he washes their feet. Peter asks, "Why are you washing our feet?" Then he says, "I am going, and where I am going, you'll not follow, but you'll get there eventually."
And Thomas says, "Wait, if you're not going to tell us where you're going, how are we supposed to find our way to you?" And then in the lines just before this morning's passage begins, Jesus says to them, because they're afraid, because he has told them he's leaving them, Jesus says to them, "I will not leave you orphaned. If you keep my commandments and love me, I will reveal myself to you. And Judas responds, not that Judas, the other one named Judas, who's still there with the 11. He says to Jesus, "How is it that we will see you but no one else will?" And this is a fair question. Remember what they're expecting from Jesus. Jesus's people, his nation, is occupied by the Romans. There is violence against them everywhere. His disciples believe that He is going to be the one that will make them safe again, that will throw off this oppression.
And Judas is asking, "How will all that happen and no one will know about it except us?" And that's the moment when this lesson starts. The first words of this lesson that Hannah read are, "Jesus said to him," the him is Judas who would ask then this question, "How will this be that no one will know you, that none of the transformation that you have affected in this world will be apparent to anyone else except us?" And then we get Jesus's answer this morning. "Those who love me will keep my word and I will come and make my home with them." The word make my home with them, it's a Greek word that means more like abide with them. I will remain with them. I will dwell within them. So this is what Jesus is saying, "I'll go and you won't see me and they won't see me. But if you keep my word, I will remain with you. And then so don't be afraid. Don't let your hearts be troubled."
Again, the words I want to hear this morning, but I feel like I want more from them. What does Jesus mean with this? It matters because Jesus is saying goodbye to them. They're afraid because Jesus is saying goodbye. And Senior Sunday, another way we might put it is Goodbye Sunday. To some degree, everybody is leaving this place today. Some of you will be back in a few weeks for summer services, others of you will go for longer. Maybe a few months, maybe a few years. Some of you we might not see again. For some of you, this goodbye is expected, maybe even exciting. If sad for others depending upon forthcoming litigation. If you are forced to go, it will be an outrage, and it will be an awful sadness.
And even this weekend when we meet it's Memorial Day, right? This church is dedicated to the memory of those who gave their lives. What is Memorial Day but a long goodbye. Jesus comes to us in the midst of this, comes to his disciples in the midst of these heartbreaking goodbyes and says, "Don't be afraid. If you keep my word, I will remain with you." Now, I think, this is a very kind of Harvard thing, right? But I think there's a play on words here. I'm not sure that the pun is enough to give me the comfort I want from Jesus today, but I think there is a little bit of a play on words when Jesus says, "If you keep my word, I will remain with you." Because this comes from the Gospel of John, and the Gospel of John, unlike every other gospel, begins in a very distinctive way. It begins by saying, "Jesus is the word."
Jesus is the word of God. Jesus is the word of God's love. Jesus is the word of God's love made flesh in our world. So to keep that word of love, to make that word of love flesh in your life means that Jesus is with you. When we make the word of God's love flesh, when we live that word of love, Jesus, even though others may not see it, Jesus returns to us, remains with us, abides with us. Those of you who have been coming to this church for one or two or three or four or more years... Well, I guess I've only been here four years, right? But you can see where I'm going with this: love one another. That's Jesus's answer. It's so often Jesus's answer to all our fears, to all our sadnesses, and especially in this Easter season.
If you've been coming for just a few weeks and hearing me preach since Easter, I have said, and I believe it's true, that if we look at the resurrection appearances in the gospel, Jesus shows up when somebody risks loving somebody else in his memory. That's when the stranger that we welcomed or the person we didn't recognize, their face is suddenly transformed into the face of Christ. This is the kingdom that we are meant to proclaim and to establish what Jesus in His ministry to the poor and the outcast and the suffering and the alien and the enemy proclaimed, what He made flesh is now ours to make flesh. "I will not leave you alone," Jesus says, "If you love me, then go out and love the world and you will find me. Keep hold of my love and you will keep hold of me."
And I think this tells us something about goodbyes. I think of those that I've loved and lost, and those goodbyes are hard and they continue, but I still feel bound to them in love. I think of the names on this wall, some of the people in this congregation who have family on that wall. That's a long, hard goodbye. But I know because I've spoken to you who do have family on that wall that you still feel bound to those people in love. And it may be, as we say our goodbyes this morning, it may be that what's true of our long farewell to Jesus, our long farewell to those we love and lost, our long farewell to those on this wall, it may be that what we learned from that goodbye is true of today's goodbye also.
Let me be more direct. Some of you are leaving us this week. Some of you, again, depending upon future litigation, some of you may be leaving us later this summer. Some of you we hope and expect to see in the fall, some not for a while longer. Some, again, we might never see again. All of us are saying goodbye to one another, but let me say also this as you go, however you go, wherever you go, whenever you go, on behalf of this church and those who remain behind, we love you. I get up here, it's such a Harvard thing, another Harvard thing, I get up here and preach about love so much. I intellectualize it and I probably don't say enough, what's in my heart.
We love you, I love you, and as you go, those are the ties that will bind me and us to you however far you go for however long. You all know this already, but I'm a preacher, so I'm going to say it, a church is not a building, it's a people. It's not columns and carvings, it's you. And the word religion, I'm going to give you one last etymology, the word religion comes from the Latin word for ligament. It's about what binds us together. You gathered here have made us who we are. All we have said and done and shared has been given to us by one another, by you. And if that is true, if who we are has been made by who you are, then the echo of you will still ring true in us even after you have gone. And I hope an echo of us will also continue to ring true in you.
As we do for the names that are written on our hearts as we do for the names written on that wall, we are going to do our best after you have gone to live up to our memories of one another. In other words, again, we're going to love one another and we're not going to stop loving one another just because we've had to say goodbye. The beauty of the Christian Church is that it is constantly reborn, continuously reshaped by those who comprise it, even those who come and go because you're never really gone if the church is a community bound together across time and place by love. That's what the body of Christ is. People bound across time and place in love. It's suitable then this morning that as we bid farewell to some of you, we also bid. Welcome to someone new, to Wyatt who will be baptized today in just a minute after I stop talking, Wyatt is going to approach this font and be baptized.
And I want all of you who are here today who are not Wyatt, even if you are leaving here today, I want you to pay close attention to the words that you will be asked to say to the role that you will play in Wyatt's special moment in this church. Because even if you're leaving, even if this is your last time here, every single one of us is going to promise this morning to do all we can to support him. Every one of us is going to promise to make ourselves accountable to him, to make our lives accountable to his life. And if you are leaving, if you're going away, that means what you are promising is to go and try and create the world that he deserves to grow up in.
You're going to ask God to let your vow to him shape your life to come. You're going to ask God to be transformed by him just as he is going to come to this front and ask to be transformed by all of us. This is what it means to live in and as the body of Christ. It means to allow ourselves to become, to allow ourselves to be transformed by our care for others and by letting them care for us. And so this morning, in the undying and ongoing promise of God's love, in this bittersweet flux of endings and beginnings, in little Wyatt and also in every one of you, we will become, once more, in this place, forever and ever, God's one holy, an apostolic church. As we go our separate ways then, may we hold on to one another, however great the distance that separates us within that holy mystery. Amen.