If You Love Me - Easter 6 Sermon

Jamie Howison's Sermon for May 17, 2020 on Psalm 142:1-6a and John 14:15-21

We’re continuing our practice of having a psalm as our first reading through these seven Sundays in Eastertide, and most often a psalm of lament. Tonight it is most definitely a lament, and one that the tradition has long associated with King David. The Hebrew superscription to this psalm reads, “A Maskil of David. When he was in the cave. A Prayer.” A Maskil, which is Hebrew for an “instructional piece,” which suggests that it was preserved to teach something about the way we should pray. “When he was in a cave,” which refers to two stories in 1st Samuel, when David was on the run from King Saul, fearing for his very survival.

With my voice I cry to the Lord;
   with my voice I make supplication to the Lord.

And why?

[Because] there is no one who takes notice of me;
no refuge remains to me;
   no one cares for me.

It is a desperate situation, as the young man whom Samuel had anointed to be the new king is forced to flee to the hills, live by his wits, fight to survive. No refuge… except, the psalm continues,

I cry to you, O Lord;
   I say, ‘You are my refuge,
   my portion in the land of the living.’
Give heed to my cry,
   for I am brought very low.

This prayer in a cave is a classic lament, in other words, in its willingness to speak fully and openly about the awful shape of the writer’s current life, and then—almost as if through clenched teeth—call on God to heed the writer’s cry and be the promised refuge and portion. Laments, I think, are often prayed with both tears and clenched teeth; with raw honesty and stubborn, insistent resilience. In times marked by fear, anxiety, loneliness, and oh, so many unknowns, it is important to embrace that tension when we pray. How long, O Lord, how long…

But there’s more to be gleaned from tonight’s Gospel text. As we wind our way toward the end of the fifty-day season of Eastertide, tonight’s reading from the Gospel according to John invites us to anticipate both the Feast of Pentecost—two weeks from today—and also Trinity Sunday, which lands a week later.

If you love me, [Jesus said] you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. 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.

The setting is the upper room on the night of Jesus’ arrest, and having just washed the feet of his disciples he is now sharing with them the things that they will most need to know. This is a tense and important time, with the poor old disciples not at all clear on what is about to happen. In John’s telling, Jesus has a good deal to tell them—fully three chapters, plus a chapter long prayer—but little of it has to do with what to expect over the coming three days, much less how they should organize themselves when it is time to proclaim the good news. Or at least not directly, because Jesus does teach them how to “be” in God and how to position themselves in trust.

This section begins with the statement, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” How many commandments do you suppose Jesus gives in the Gospel according to John? One. Just one. It appears in the chapter prior to this teaching: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (13.34-35). This new commandment is then reiterated in the chapter that follows: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.” (15:12-13).

That’s not to say that John is encouraging the community to which he writes to ignore what Jesus teaches elsewhere—say in the Sermon on the Mount—but rather that all of those teachings ultimately fall under the rubric of this new commandment. To follow the Sermon on the Mount is to consistently practice love/agape; to steadily choose the path of meeting one another in love, servanthood, and friendship.

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate,” Jesus continues, “[an] Advocate to be with you for ever.” The Greek word here is paraclete, variously translated as advocate, comforter, and guide. “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.”

This is the Holy Spirit, whose coming among us will be celebrated on Pentecost. That story is one of power, wind, and fire, whereas the teachings in John speak far more to the day to day of life in God. Not that that isn’t also an extraordinary thing… by no means! This Advocate, this Spirit of truth, will be known by you, “because he abides with you, and will be in you.”

And here’s the thing. As Craig Koester points out, it is not as if “the Spirit is the Advocate who brings our case up before God in the hope that God will do something merciful for us,” but rather quite the opposite. “God has already given the gift of love unstintingly through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and such love is what creates genuine life. The Spirit is the Advocate who brings the truth of that love and life to people…”

Even more remarkably, passages such this from these chapters in the Gospel according to John unveil what Jaime Clark-Soles somewhat mischievously calls “the Quattrinity.”

In John, Jesus insists that the intimate relationship that exists between him, God, and the Spirit also includes believers. The believer does not stand close by admiring the majesty of the Trinity; rather, she is an equal part of it. John tries to push at this by grabbing hold of a number of terms and repeating them: abide, love, the language of being “in” (14:17 and 20), and later in the Discourse, an emphasis on “one-ness” (cf. 17:21-23). Johannine believers don't “imitate” Jesus; they participate in him wholly.

They are not left “orphaned” as the following verses point out, but rather they remain in Christ, in God, through the Spirit—the Advocate—and there find that they can choose to love selflessly, living out servanthood and friendship, one with another. And while we hear Jesus say that “the world” cannot see or know him, that’s not signaling that this is all meant to be a closed club which shuts out those deemed bad, undeserving, or worldly people. No, this term “the world” points to that which is alienated from God and hostile to Jesus and his followers. St Paul was “of the world” before, on that Damascus road, he recognized that Jesus was calling him, but as soon as he was able to swallow his pride and his fears and see this whole new reality—see it truly, even though he has temporarily lost his sight—Paul found himself very much re-located in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. No, not a closed club at all, but a movement, The Way, with the doors open to any and all who are open to being transformed—redeemed—through the loving, saving grace unveiled in the cross. Redeemed, and then sustained, sanctified, held and nourished in the presence of God’s abiding Holy Spirit.

Jesus speaks of these things on the night of his arrest, assuring his little band of followers that they will not be left orphaned. They won’t, even if there would have been days when it wasn’t easy to keep that truth in view, just as surely as it was hard for David to keep his soul from fearing that he might not get out of that cave alive. And yet could he pray, “You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.”

Even in the hard and anxious and worrisome days in which we live, we are not orphaned. Doesn’t mean that things can’t be tough or painful or even marked by the deepest losses and grief. But even death itself will not—cannot— have the final word. Because Christ is risen, and the Spirit of God abides with us, and will be in us.

Now and ever and always. Amen.