Leaving the Wristwatch...Intentionally

Leaving the Wristwatch...Intentionally--June 23, 2017

“In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.” (Ephesians 1:13-14)

How do you get someone to trust that you’ll be there in their future? 

How do you convince someone that there will be more to come, no matter what may be going on in the present?

One way you do it is you leave something of yours with them.   Something important.  Something of yours that you are not really giving away as if you’ll never see it again, but something that you will need again.  Something, in other words, for them to hold onto, that you will have to come back for.

There’s this great scene in King Vidor’s 1925 World War I epic film, The Big Parade, where the character Jim is shipping out with the other American troops to fight in the war.  And in this huge cavalcade of marching soldiers, he is looking for his love, Melisande, somewhere along the way in the crowd, knowing this is the last time she’ll see him and he’ll see her before going off to combat in the trenches.  She is looking for him fiercely, as row after row of marching soldiers tramps past, and she calls out for Jim and looks for a familiar face in the sea of uniformed and helmeted men.  Jim, too, has been looking for Melisande but has just about given up when he climbs into the back of his unit’s transport truck.  And at that moment, he hears her voice and looks up.  He sees her in the distance, leaps from the truck, and runs toward her.  They embrace, and they kiss, and he insists to her (well, you have to do some guessing at what he’s saying in between the title cards because it’s a silent movie) that he is coming home, and that she’ll see him again.

They are there, just staring at each other, when the commanding officer comes and finds Jim and drags him back to the truck, where he dutifully climbs back in, while Melisande hangs on to his legs, and then to his extended outreached hand, and then to a rope at the back of the truck as it starts to pull away.  She is at the very edge of desperation, needing something, some tangible thing, to hold onto while she clings to the hope that they will indeed be reunited. 

So as the truck is pulling away, Jim has an idea.  We see him take off his wristwatch and throw it backward off-screen—to Melisande.  And then he reaches around his neck and tears off his dogtags—again, to her.  The camera cuts to Melisande, picking up these things Jim has thrown her—now, not just the wristwatch and the tags, but even a left shoe!  It is a beautiful scene—heart-rending and at the same time almost comical to see shoes tossed out as a sign for the beloved, a sign that says, “I’m coming back for this. There is more to come.”

So… how does God get our attention like that?  Or not just our attention—how does God gain our trust in the promise that we and God share a future together?  How does God say to us, “No matter what may be going on in the present, and what you will endure in the future, I will be in the picture with you in that future?”

God leaves something with us.  Well, not so much a something as a Someone.  It is the Holy Spirit.

Paul writes that the followers of Jesus have been, much like we say in the baptismal liturgy, “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit,” and that this Spirit “is the pledge of our inheritance.”  In other words, for whatever else the Spirit does in our lives, he is also what it looks like when Christ throws his wristwatch, his dogtags, and his shoe for us.

The Holy Spirit is a sign in our lives that there is more to come.  The Spirit’s presence in our lives, dwelling within us, is God’s commitment to us that God will be in our future, and that we can depend on that relationship, come what may.  When we are hysterical with fear about the future, when we are terrified at the prospect of facing the unknown alone, when we are at the edge of desperation, needing something to hold onto to assure us that we will be brought through, there is the Spirit in our lives—the very indwelling presence of God, who reminds us of the promise.

When you want someone to know deep in their bones that you intend to be in their future, even when you have to head out to war or to work, you leave something with them, with the promise, “I’m coming back for this. Keep it for me.”  When God wanted us to know the same, God gave us the Holy Spirit as a pledge, as if to say to all creation, “This is my own self who will dwell with you.  I am coming again to you--and in a sense I have always been with you.  Let my Spirit remind you.”

Day by day, we have been given this Spirit as a gift from God. And for whatever else the Spirit does, the Spirit is God’s way of leaving a wristwatch... even a shoe... for us to keep.  Hold that gift close when you need to remember the promise.

Lord God, let your Spirit’s presence be so real to us today that we will trust your promise that you will be in our future all our days, until that Day when we see you face to face.