198. Bryan Adams "When You're Gone"

"When You're Gone" is a song by Canadian musician Bryan Adams, from his album On a Day Like Today (1998). The song features Melanie C of the Spice Girls. The song was written by Adams and Eliot Kennedy. The song peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart and spent 15 weeks in the UK Top 40, with nine of these in the Top 10. With sales of 676,947, "When You're Gone" was the 82nd-best selling single of the 1990s. It has sold 730,000 copies in the UK as of March 2015. The CD single of "When You're Gone" also included a solo version by Adams. The song is frequently featured at Adams' concerts. He usually picks a female out of the audience to sing the song with him. As such, it appears on several CD and DVD releases. In recent years, he also performed it entirely solo, both fully acoustic and with his full band. (Wikipedia)

I've been wandering 

around the house all night
wondering what the hell to do
i'm trying to concentrate 

but all i can think of is you
well the phone don't ring 

cuz my friends ain't home
i'm tired of being all alone
got the tv on cuz the radio's

 playing songs that 

remind me of you

baby when you're gone 

i realize i'm in love
the days go on and on

and the nights just seem so long
even food don't taste that good

drink ain't doing what it should
things just feel so wrong

baby when you're gone

i've been driving up and down these streets
trying to find somewhere to go
ya i'm lookin' for a familiar face but there's no one i know

this is torture - this is pain 

it feels like i'm gonna go insane
i hope you're coming back real soon

cuz i don't know what to do 

This song is a classic love and breakup song. Even if you don't like Mel C it's still a good song by Adams. The lyrics are about realising what you have had in a person now that they have gone. Familiar lyrics that share a lot in common with other great rock songs. The video that goes with this song reinforces the fact of looking for someone that you once shared life with.

In the scripture passage this morning we have the same feel. Jesus is going away from his disciples and is at the point of telling them. they are fearful of the future and are discussing with Jesus the news that he is going. We turn to John 14:1-14 for the full story.

This passage from the gospel according to John is the beginning of Jesus' ‘Farewell Discourse’, which will go on for several chapters. Now before your eyes glaze over and you begin to make a mental grocery list because ‘farewell discourse’ sounds a bit churchy and very possibly boring, I want to suggest that most of us give farewell discourses fairly often. In fact, nearly every time I leave, on a road trip or a weekend away, I give a farewell discourse to my family. I seem to forget that my wife and children have lived with me all their lives and that they actually know how to care very well for the home, they think to turn off lights, recycle, take out the bins, dont talk to strangers, keep the music down, dont have wild parties….well, the list is often endless. These things I believe they absolutely need to remember and for the most part they do.

Jesus, it seems, feels much as we do when we are leaving. His words read almost as if he fears the disciples and followers will not be able to recall anything they have all done together. He wants to say it all again, but that would literally take years, so he tells them simply enough, “Keep my commandments, keep my words, do what I have done. Just remember to love each other, love your neighbour and, most difficult I know, love your enemy.” The question Jesus is asking without saying it is: “can my friends and followers love this much? Will they remember and have the courage to do this love thing?” When Jesus is no longer there in the flesh, will they be able to love this much?

The truth is it would be very natural for Jesus’ disciples to retreat to the upper room, behinds walls, to close themselves off from the rest of the world, to pull inward, behind a closed door and busy themselves with swapping stories of how it used to be. It would be safer in fact to keep a lid on the whole, rather sordid mess, by not including anyone who wasn’t part of this from the beginning. They could reassure each other that they were keeping his command by loving each other really, really well. Pulling together, closing ranks and taking care of just those they already know would be good enough – in fact, doing only this will be hard to do. Give a good pat on our collective backs and be done with it – “we kept his commandments well, didn’t we?”

Jesus is reminding them so that this very withdrawal will not happen. He encourages and challenges them to go out into their world and do the work of being in relationship, of sharing the good news of God’s very real love for all creation. He means for them to let go of their fear, to move boldly into life, to risk offering themselves in relationship with any and all others, he means for them to be in community with people who are like them and with people who are very unlike them. He means for them to continue to do what he has been doing, even though he will no longer be with them physically.

Living out the heart of the gospel message will mean offering ourselves in unconditional love to another. Offering unconditional love to people we don’t like, to people who don’t like us, to people who we would rather judge than love. Living out the gospel message will not mean loving when people do things our way, when they look and talk and dress and eat and pray and worship just like we do. Loving each other as Jesus loved will not be easy and we each may need to spend more than a little time taking stock of our prejudices, our fears, our angry responses, our secret places of unhealthy and painful unhappiness. Becoming and being a Christian will, in the end, be about what we do because being in relationship with Jesus does not depend on his physical presence, as his followers would soon discover, but on the presence of the love of God. And the love of God is made present when people, when we, keep Jesus’ commandments. "When You're Gone" is a song from Bryan Adams and Mel C. but more than that it's a statement and reaction from disciples that serious about following the way, the truth and the life - no matter what happens.