Homily – May 21

Jesus is giving his farewell address to his disciples. It is nearly time for him to face the cross, and he is trying to pass along some final wisdom. In today’s passage from John, he tells them “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” This is very much in keeping with John’s gospel. For John, love is the theme, but it is not what we think of today when we use the word love. John does not mean it in a romantic sense, rather it has a fraternal connotation of brotherhood and care for one another. It is this love that we aspire to and for John, the ultimate expression of love is obedience.
That is a bit jarring to us in western civilization. We like to think we are rugged individualists and prefer to answer to no one but ourselves. An instinctive distrust of organizations has been inculcated in our civilization, one based primarily on the perceived failure of so many institutions. Our leaders have been corrupt, the institutions that are there to care for us are instead self-serving, or so bound up with process and red tape that they are almost laughably inept. So we have built a distrust of institutions and maintain what we like to call a healthy skepticism.
The church is one of those institutions. There are any number of people who have had a bad experience with organized religion, and if it hasn’t happened to you, you likely know someone who has been in that situation. So they doubt the effectiveness of the church in much the same way they doubt the effectiveness of the DMV. Going there is an odious chore, one that they avoid based upon their bad prior experiences. And when they do happen to come, they hear a gospel like this one which is telling us we need to be obedient. Ouch. Definitely outside of our mainstream culture.
But there is a significant potential here for misunderstanding. For the gospel today is not telling us that we need to be obedient to the church, but to Jesus. Jesus is NOT an institution, but God himself. He has given us the new commandment that we love one another as he loves us, and it is obedience to that commandment that John refers to. Perhaps that will sit a bit better with us, but it is no less daunting. In fact, it is much harder.
For if we are told we must be obedient to an institution, then we have the ability to make a value judgement as to the validity of the institution. It is really our choice to be obedient, even to a large institution like the government. True there are laws that we all must obey, and they are enforced upon us. But we also have the ability to question the government, and to disagree with it. We can even use civil disobedience to help change the government in ways we feel are unjust. Women’s suffrage and the civil rights acts were both born of civil disobedience, and changed our government and our world for the better.
But as I said, Jesus is NOT an institution. 2,000 years later, John is still telling us that we must be obedient to him, and the way we do that is by keeping his commandments. Unlike our man-made institutions, we don’t get to make a value judgment on the validity of his commandments and only follow the ones that appeal to us. While there may be a process for amending the constitution, there is no process to alter the commandments. For they are not made by men, but by God. God gave Moses the ten commandments and Jesus gave the new commandment to the disciples. These are not open to debate, but are just what they are called, commandments. If we are to be God’s people, then we are to be obedient to his commandments.
That is a hard thing. For while we like or dislike our elected leaders and their positions, Jesus is not in the same category. True, you can elect not to follow him at all. But if you do claim to be a follower, then the path to that is obedience to the commandments.
Jesus is leaving the disciples, but he promises not to leave them alone. “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 in you, and he will be in you.” Even when Jesus was with them on earth, the disciples had a hard time being obedient and keeping the commandments. What hope do they have once he is gone? Jesus knows this, and understands that the way will be difficult. So he tells them of the coming of the Holy Spirit; the spirit of God that will be with them as their advocate.
This is a poor word choice. For the meaning of advocate in our world is very different from Jesus’ time. We tend to think of it in a legalistic sense, which would mean that the Holy Spirit is really here to be our lawyer. That is not quite the idea. Other translations use the world Comforter, but that too is not quite it. True, the spirit is there to comfort us in times of trouble or grief, but it is far more than that, and to reduce it to only comfort is to minimize the role of the Spirit. The actual word is paraclete, which has a number of connotations. It means someone who stands with you when you are accused of something, but it also means someone who helps to build your courage when you face danger. It is someone who helps to instill bravery and confidence in yourself, to enable you to persevere, to encourage and enliven you.
Given this understanding, we can appreciate the mission of the spirit and the reason God sends that part of himself to us. For help, for comfort, for strength and confidence, and the heart to obey the commandments, even when it is truly difficult to do so. We are called to love one another as Jesus loves us, and the spirit is with us to aid us in this mission.
This past week we have been obedient to the commandment as we have hosted families in need through Family Promise. We have fed them, housed them, and most importantly, been in fellowship with them. This is more than an act of charity, it is part of our calling. Charity is easy, but building relationship and companionship is much more challenging. It is also much more fulfilling, both for our guests who need someone to talk to, but also for us. It has been said that it is more blessed to give than to receive, but often times, in giving, you receive more. That has been our experience with Family Promise. Epiphany is a warm and welcoming place, and we demonstrated that this past week. But in so doing, we have been changed by the experience. And this change is decidedly for the better.