Practice Returning

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” In a way, Jesus is telling his disciples here to not be distracted. He’s directing their attention.

The context of this is after the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday, the day before his crucifixion, when there is, in fact, plenty to be troubled by. Judas has already gone out into the night. Peter is only hours away from denying him. The disciples are confused and afraid, and Jesus is speaking to them as people whose attention is about to be pulled in every direction: toward danger, toward grief, toward their own failure, toward the frightening question of what comes next. And into that anxious room, Jesus says: look here. Believe in God. Believe also in me.

Now in today’s world, where we all have little things in our pockets more powerful than the technology which first landed men on the moon, we know something about scattered attention. We live in a world designed to interrupt us. Clips, messages, headlines, memes, notifications: little beeps and colours and lights asking us to look at them, drawing us away from whatever else we are concentrating on.

I wonder how long you are usually able to go without being distracted? Perhaps a sermon is the perfect time to practice noticing your own attention. How long before the mind drifts? How long before you wonder what you’re having for dinner or start planning your next vacation in your head? Of course it may also be that the sermon is sometimes a bit boring, but nevertheless, the question remains: where is your attention? And do you know how to direct it?

There is a lot of worry about this issue, especially from older generations in regards to the younger folks. But it’s not simply that we have as a culture lost the ability to pay attention. It is a little more nuanced. A more accurate assessment may instead be that our attention has become fragmented. We learn to scan, switch, and seek novelty, until distraction begins to feel normal. But we should pay attention to our attention because on a fundamental level, what we attend to, repeatedly, forms us. You are what you eat, in a physiological sense as well as physical.

So the question is more than, can I concentrate? The deeper question is, what am I becoming due to what I keep looking at? What is it that receives my best attention? What content, or people, or talking points, or trends, shape my fear, hope, imagination, and sense of what is true?

This is why Jesus focuses the disciples’ attention on himself. Their world is about to fall apart, so he tells them, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.’ ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled’ - not because nothing bad will happen, but because the disciples are not meant to carry that trouble alone. Instead Jesus invites the focus to rest on the gift of steadfast relationship with God, through himself.

In the end, whatever fears or troubles we may face, Jesus offers the hope and assurance of being with him, at home with God, enfolded in love without distance. But it’s also about so much more than just future hope or expectations. When Thomas says, quite honestly, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus doesn’t hand him directions. Instead he offers the ongoing reality of himself: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

This is the focal point Jesus directs our attention to. In reality, the Christian faith is not about trying harder to think about the right things, but it is about learning, repeatedly, to re-fix our wandering minds on Jesus, until his life begins to shape our own. We are formed by the things we give our attention to. So notice where God is. Notice where we are invited to be shaped into Christians - Christ people, Jesus followers. Now of course, as always, the disciples need a little more.

Philip asks to be shown the Father himself, and I think we can relate to this longing for something crystal clear, obvious and unmistakable. And the reply is a gentle sigh - Philip, you still do not know me? In other words, pay attention to what is in front of you. Look at Jesus, at his mercy, his welcome, his patience with the confused, his love of even the most stubborn, and here we see the Father. Here we see what God is like.

The question of attention is also highlighted pretty starkly in today’s reading from Acts. Stephen, one of the first deacons, stands before a hostile crowd who are angry and riled up against this new religious group, the new Christians. As he speaks, they become enraged. They cover their ears. They rush at him. They go to kill him. And in the midst of all that, Stephen does something very simple: he looks up. He fixes his gaze on heaven.

That contrast is striking. One kind of attention closes in - defensive, reactive, overwhelmed by anger and fear. The other opens outward, anchored beyond the immediate chaos. And what Stephen attends to, and has clearly been attending to, shapes him most powerfully. He sees Jesus in heaven, and in that moment of intense trouble, he begins to sound like Christ: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit… Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” These are not just instinctive words. They are the fruit of a life shaped by where his attention has rested. Stephen is formed, into his final moments, by his attention to Jesus. He is an example of the truth that what we fix our gaze on, over time, becomes part of who we are.

This is why in his letters Paul urges Christians to devote ourselves to the fruits of the Spirit - to love, joy, and peace. In returning again and again to Christ, even imperfectly and briefly, what is nurtured is by this repetition is holy. It is also part of what we are doing here. In worship, we are retraining our attention. We listen to Scripture. We pray. We confess. We share peace. We receive bread and wine. Again and again, we are gently turned back toward the one who says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

Not because there is nothing to trouble us. There is. But because we are not asked to carry it alone. We are never left in isolated anxiety, but instead our attention is being re-anchored in Christ.

So my invitation to you this week is to simply notice. Notice what captures your attention. Notice what fragments it, what pulls it away, what feeds anxiety or a troubled spirit. And then, without judgement, without guilt, practice returning. Turn again toward the Gospel, toward prayer, toward acts of mercy, toward the presence of Christ. For this is how we see the Father, and where he is, there we may be also. One day we will be with God in fullness. Today, we learn to catch glimpses. By grace, over time, we learn where, and how, to look. And there, with Christ, our hearts find their rest.

Amen.

Acts 7:55-60; John 14:1-14