Sermon for May 10, 2026, Sixth Sunday of Easter

John 14:15-21 (Sixth Sunday of Easter—Series A)

“I Need Help”

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield CT

May 10, 2026

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our text is the Gospel Lesson recorded in John 14:

[Jesus said,] ¹⁵ “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. ¹⁶And I will ask the Father and He will give you another Helper in order that He may be with you forever ¹⁷the Spirit of truth, whom the world is not able to receive because it neither sees nor knows Him. You know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. ¹⁸I will not leave you as orphans. I am coming to you. ¹⁹Yet in a little while and the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me, because I live you will live also. ²⁰In that day you will know that I am in My Father and you are in Me and I am in you. ²¹The one who has My commandments and keeps them, he is the one who loves Me. And the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”

          Over the years I’ve discovered that one of the most special things a child can say to a parent is, “I need help.”  It was special to me when my kids would come to me and say, “Daddy, I need help.” And it still is very special, even though they don’t ask as much as they did when they were little. When a parent is called on to help their child, the parent then becomes for their son or daughter their advocate and their champion, the one called to stand beside their child in support. The parents become the ones whose guidance and support the child can rely on.

          We can see this happening all the time. Parents are called upon to help with homework. We guide our children through their questions and struggles as they grow up. We are the ones who stand up for our kids and champion their activities and accomplishments. We are our children’s advocates and helpers. That is our vocation as Christian parents.

          But even as adults, we are still children. We are children of our heavenly Father. And one of a child’s greatest fears is that he or she will be left alone. A child is afraid that she or he will be abandoned without a helper. As this is true for our children, it is also true for each one of us as children of God. You and I do worry at times that God might leave us as orphans. We do become afraid that the Lord might abandon us and not be our helper in our time of need. And haven’t we said as much? Haven’t we sometimes believed it to be so? “God, where are You? God, I can’t find You! God, I feel so alone and helpless!” 

          This has been the case for God’s children for centuries. Consider the psalms of lament in the Old Testament. In Psalm 10, David wrote by the power of the Holy Spirit, “Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psa. 10:1 ESV). David has written in Psalm 22, which Jesus Himself cried out on the cross as the One-of-a-Kind Son of the Father, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest” (Psalm 22:1 ESV).

          And we can relate. We know by faith that we are God’s children. God’s Word tells us that He adopted us into His family and put His own name on us in Baptism. His Word promises, “I have called you by name, you are mine” (Isaiah 43:1 ESV). We have Jesus’ guarantee, “I am with you always,” and “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Matt. 28:20; Heb. 13:5). Yet what we know by faith we do not always experience with our senses and feelings. We become overwhelmed by the changes and chances of this life. The brokenness of sin takes its toll on us through disease, worry, grief, loneliness, fear, depression, and anxiety. In guilt we feel the separation from God because of the brokenness of our sins and our willful rebellion against His commandments. We reach for and strive to get to God by our own means, as Paul told the men of Athens, “in hopes that they might feel their way toward Him and find Him. Yet He is actually not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27 ESV). But our attempts and tries fall short. We then come to believe ourselves abandoned, orphaned, and lost.

          In the confusion of the Upper Room on the night when Jesus was betrayed, I imagine that this was how the disciples were feeling—about to be abandoned and orphaned. Jesus said He was going away and where He was going, they could not follow. He promised that He would not leave His disciples as orphans, and yet, after that night, He was arrested, tried, and crucified. Following His death and resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven and was no longer with them in the way that they were used to. From that Thursday night on, for these disciples, everything was changed. Is it any wonder that they stood gawking up into heaven when Christ ascended, not knowing where to go or what to do now? They probably felt abandoned by the Lord, saying, “Now what do we do?” “Jesus, where are you? Jesus, I feel so alone and helpless.”

          In the moments when you are wondering where God is in the midst of life and at those times you feel totally alone, abandoned, and helpless, God’s Spirit turns your hearts and minds to the great promise of Jesus’ Word. This is Gospel comfort and assurance for us. Jesus said, “And I will ask the Father and He will give you another Helper in order that He may be with you forever the Spirit of truth.” If there is to be “another” Helper, there must first already have been a Helper. And there is—Jesus Christ! Jesus had been the disciples’ Helper and Advocate on earth. While He was with them physically, He had been their champion, One whose guidance and support they could rely on. But once Jesus accomplished the great saving work of His cross and resurrection, Christ returned to heaven in order to prepare a place for His people, promising to come again to take them to be with Him where He is. Another Advocate and Helper, the Holy Spirit, would then be given to Jesus’ followers to be with them permanently. The Holy Spirit would be available to all His disciples, and in a way, compensate them for the loss of Jesus’ visible presence, but at the same time, actually bringing Jesus closer to the disciples than ever before. In the power and grace of the Holy Spirit, Christ would not only be with them, but also in them.

          Is not this great comfort and consolation for us when we feel as if God is nowhere to be found? According to the riches of God’s glory, He strengthens you with power through His Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith (Eph. 3:16-17 ESV). We who have received the gift of faith in Jesus through the Holy Spirit are therefore never without Jesus. Because our bodies are also temples of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, Christ also dwells in us by the same Spirit of truth. As Christ Himself assures us in His Word today, “I will not leave you as orphans. I am coming to you.” And how does Christ come to us? Through the gift of the Holy Spirit!

          And the Holy Spirit has been given to you in Holy Baptism. God the Holy Spirit used the means of water and the Gospel Word to create faith in your hearts. It is that faith that receives what Christ Jesus won for you on the cross—forgiveness of sins. It is that faith which receives from Christ Jesus what His resurrection merited for you—rescue from death and the devil along with eternal salvation. Jesus’ resurrection life guarantees our unending life with Him who, by faith, is united to us through the Holy Spirit. As we confess in the Nicene Creed, the Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of life. He draws us to Christ by the Gospel in Word and Sacraments and brings Christ to dwell with us, delivering to us Jesus’ gifts of forgiveness and everlasting life.

          The believer in Christ as Lord and Savior is never separated from Him. While Jesus is not among us physically as He was with the first disciples, Jesus is with us, even more closely, through the power and grace of God the Holy Spirit. For where the Spirit is, there is Christ. Romans 8:10-11, “But if Christ is in you . . . the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” (ESV). This means that our very bodies are members of Christ! (1 Cor. 6:15). So we read in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20 ESV). As Martin Luther would so aptly explain it in his commentary on Galatians, “But faith must be taught correctly, namely, that by [faith] you are so cemented to Christ that He and you are as one person, which cannot be separated but remains attached to Him forever and declares: “I am as Christ.” And Christ, in turn, says: “I am as that sinner who is attached to Me, and I to him. For by faith we are joined together into one flesh and one bone.” Thus Eph. 5:30 says: ‘We are members of the body of Christ, of His flesh and of His bones,’ in such a way that this faith couples Christ and me more intimately than a husband is coupled to his wife.”^[1]

          This is the blessed work of our other Helper, the Holy Spirit. By faith He united us with Christ and Christ with us. Thus, Jesus can absolutely guarantee, “I am with you always.” The Lord can unequivocally assure us, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” By the power of the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us, Christ also dwells in us and we in Him, and so He is never far away from you and me at all. In Christ we do live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).

          One of the most special things we ask of our heavenly Father is, “I need help.” And long before that prayer was ever in our minds or on our lips, it was answered. The Father sent Jesus His Son to suffer for our sins, to die our death, and to rise again guaranteeing our forgiveness and resurrection life with Him. He sent us the Holy Spirit, another Helper, to bring Christ to us by faith, along with the gifts of Christ, which we receive through Gospel Word and Sacrament—forgiveness and life. We have a Helper always with us through the Spirit, our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. Let this be your confidence and assurance always—Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27). Amen.

^[1] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 26: Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 1-4, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 26 (St Louis: Concordia, 1999), 168–169.