Easter 6
May 14, 2023
William G. Carter
Jesus says, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”
”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
We are winding up our journey through the Gospel of John. Today we return, and two more weeks after this. Some of you have told me how you are hearing a resonance from week to week as one story leads to another, as one text echoes with another. That’s what happens when we dwell with a significant text. We hear something more than once. Or we hear deeper dimensions to something we might have zipped by in a hurry.
That’s certainly true with the Gospel of John. As he gives us the teachings of Jesus, John builds in a lot of echoes. He doesn’t merely say something and keep it straight. Rather, the truth moves in a spiral. We hear something once, then we hear it again, and again. It’s more than repetition. To use one of John’s favorite verbs, we are dwelling with the text.
This morning, Jesus speaks of love. Or rather, he speaks love. Five times in eight sentences. Love, love, love… Fresh from telling us, “I am the Way,” he’s making that way clear to us. His way is the way of love. The truth of the Gospel is that Jesus reveals love, even love for a world that doesn’t love him in return. The life he exemplifies is a life of laying ourselves down for one another. “There is no greater love than this,” he teaches.
Yet I could not read the text without flinching. Did you hear how he begins? “If you love me…” And when I hear those words, I wait for the shoe to drop. There’s a yellow flag signaling future conditions and iron-clad expectations. “If you love me…” (fill in the blank).
If you love me, you will take out the garbage.
If you love me, you will clean up your room.
If you love me, you will remember me at Christmas time.
If you love me, you will buy me something on my wish list.
If you love me, you will make a favorite meal for my birthday.
If you love me, you will phone me once a week.
If you love me, really truly love me, you will come to church with me on Mother’s Day.
If you love me, if you love me… Hear those words enough times and affection is hardened into obligation. Freedom is padlocked to responsibility. Joy is demoted to drudgery.
And then comes the full sentence, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Most of us pause to consider that. If we are here today, we probably saw those words circling two stone tablets on the front of the worship bulletin. Keeping the commandments is the fundament moral requirement of faith: worship no other gods, keep Sabbath, don’t murder, covet, or steal – and all the rest. We are commanded to keep them. But to quote Tina Turner, “What’s love got to do with it?”
Let’s face it. Some of the Bible teaches conditional love – like most of the book of Deuteronomy. “If you do this, then…” For instance, Deuteronomy 5:16 – “Honor your mother (and father, too), so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you…” That is, honor your mother, followed by an implicit “or else.”
This is one of the venerable ways for scripture to keep people in line. “Do this and live.”
The difficulty is that sometimes we can do what is commanded and life may not turn out as we’ve been told. I know people who never smoked, but contracted lung cancer. There are some who kept to the straight and narrow, yet their lives came to ruin. In fact, I know a few or more who cared for their parents even when the road was difficult; and it did not go well with them. It seems that old Deuteronomic “do this and live” formula is not as airtight as it promises.
And our text does come from the Gospel of John. This is the book where faithful Jews ask Jesus, “Who sinned, in order that a man was born without his sight?” They assume causality or consequence, and Jesus doesn’t go there. He knows what you and I know. Sometimes tough things just happen.
So I went back for a second look at what John is telling us about Jesus. And I had a little help from a scholar named Dale Bruner, who had a few things to add.[1]
Here is the first: our text has been translated poorly into English. We think it says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” What it should say is “When all of you love me, you will be keeping these commands of mine.” It’s not “if” but “when.” So cancel all those notions of condition and consequence. Jesus speaks to those who will be loving him. Rather than an obligation, he offers an invitation: “when you love me,”
Next, if we follow up on that invitation to love him, we are not keeping the Ten Commandments. Nor are we keeping the 613 commandments of the Jewish Bible. We are keeping his commandments. Or as the original text put it, “these commandments of mine.”
So pause for a minute: which commandments are his? You can probably think of one of them. He says, “This is my new commandment, to love one another.” (13:34) Of course – when we love him, we will love one another.
But are there other commands, especially in the Gospel of John? Dale Bruner says, “Yes, there’s one more. And it’s Christ’s first command. We skipped over it in the chapter before this one.” That’s the foot-washing chapter, chapter 13. Jesus says to Simon Peter, and then to us, “Unless I wash you, you won’t have a part of me.” Bruner says this is the Gospel in a short sentence, namely this: “Let me wash you. Let me forgive you. Let me love you.” Christ offers a cleansing that is pure grace. It’s his gift, and he commands Simon and the rest of us to receive it.
Dr. Bruner says it this way: “Forgiveness of sins will be the foundation of our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ – constantly – or there will never be a firm foundation or good relation with Jesus Christ or with his Father… This is hard on our pride, but it is medicine for your soul.”[2]
So Jesus says, “When you love me, you will keep these commands of mine.” First, we let him love us with the soapsuds of forgiveness and grace. Second, we love one another as he loves us – presumably, with forgiveness and grace. Love flows from him through us. That’s the Christ life. That’s the way to walk.
Just as soon as he says
it, more promises swirl as a spiral around us:
They who have my
commandments and keep them are those who love me;
and those who love me
will be loved by my Father,
and I will love them
and reveal myself to them.
Those who love me will
keep my word, and my Father will love them,
and we will come to
them and make our home with them.
Whoever does not love
me does not keep my words;
and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.
It’s a lot to take in, a verbal tornado swirling around us, yet the key to it all is this: the love of God is a gift for us all. God sent Jesus to show love, to be love, to offer love, and to command love. According to the Gospel of John, if you love, you are part of Christ’s life, his risen, abiding life.
He demands no further obligation from us, does not require us to do something we are unable to do, and he never asks us to be religious, pious, or reputable. Neither does he expect us to figure out the mysteries of heaven nor the deep questions of earth. He doesn’t tell us how many candles to light, nor does he shake us upside down until all the quarters fall out of our pockets.
All Jesus commands of us is to let him love us, and then for us to love one another.
And to this, let me say one more word. There are no experts in these things, and that’s OK. We live by the grace of Christ, not by a twisted sense of our own accomplishment. Loving, like believing, is for beginners only.
If we wish we could believe, we are already
believing.
If we want to love, we have begun to love.[3]
We stay with Christ, we dwell in the love of
Christ,
and he will keep polishing our love until we are finally lovable.
In the meantime, the
world will know we are Christians by our love.
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