When We Love

[Below you'll find the message shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, earlier today, as well as video of both worship services.] 

John 14:15-21

Do Jesus’ words at the beginning of today’s Gospel lesson make you uncomfortable? He says “If you love me, keep my commands.” (John 14:15) 

Does Jesus seem to be contradicting Himself and the rest of the Bible?

Elsewhere, He famously says, for example, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

And also: “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29)

The apostle Paul summarizes all this teaching from Jesus by saying, “For we maintain that a person is justified [that is, declared innocent of their sins] by faith [in Christ] apart from the works of the law.” (Romans 3:28)

The distillation of these passages of Scripture and many more is that we who are born sinners cannot and are not saved from death, the condemnation for our sin, by anything we do; we are saved solely by Christ Who died and rose for all sinners through the faith in Christ we receive through the Gospel Word about Jesus.

So, what is up with Jesus’ words at the beginning of today’s Gospel lesson: “If you love me, keep my commands”? It sounds as if Jesus is saying that our relationship with Him and our eternal salvation from Him depend on how much we love Him and on our obedience to His commands.

There are schools of thought within Christianity that teach this is exactly what Jesus is saying here. They think their salvation depends on what they do and the depths of their love for Jesus. People taught this way are constantly turned in on themselves, trying to police themselves of doubt or sin.

But, friends, this kind of thinking can only lead us to one of two endpoints: Either false pride when we think that we really are obeying and loving Jesus perfectly or despair, even unbelief, at the realization that we cannot obey or love Jesus perfectly.

Jesus and the whole Bible are clear though that we won’t find life with God by diving more deeply into our personal sewers of sin and self-obsession.

Freedom from sin and death only come from outside ourselves through Jesus Christ!

So, what is Jesus telling us in the first verse of our Gospel lesson? There are two words in the verse that say much more than we might realize and will help us understand what Jesus is saying.

The first word is if, “If you love Me,” Jesus says.

The word in the Greek in which John wrote his gospel is ἐάν, a conjunction that usually means if. But there is an irregular use of the word and almost every time it appears in John’s writings, this irregular use is meant. Let me give you a few examples of this use.

In John 12:32, Jesus says, “And I, when [that’s our word, ean] I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Another example, 1 John 2:28 : “And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when [there’s our word again] he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.” (1 John 2:28)

One more, 1 John 3:2: “...we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

So, Jesus isn’t telling us, “If you get yourself convinced that you love Me.” He’s saying, “When, by the power of my Word, given in Scripture, preaching, teaching, and the Sacraments, that all your sins are forgiven and that you have been justified by grace through faith in Me…”

Jesus is assuring you: “When you have been told, ‘I therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,’ you will love Jesus.”

That’s the power of His forgiving, loving Word; it incites love for Him within us.

“This is love,” the apostle John writes elsewhere, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)

We love Jesus when His Gospel Word allows us to experience the love He has given to us from the cross. It was this very love that the disciples who betrayed Jesus would experience after His resurrection: forgiveness and love despite their sin.

The second word is keep. “If you love me,” Jesus says, “keep my commands.” The word here in the original Greek is τηρέω. It means to watch over, to guard, to observe. To keep the commands of Jesus, of God, is to acknowledge their authority over us. It doesn’t mean perfect obedience to God’s Law, which God’s Word tells us no sinful human being can muster.

Jesus, you’ll remember, used words from the Old Testament to summarize God’s commandments for the human race.

He summarized commandments one through three–that we have no other gods, that we not take His name in vain, that we hold His Word at the center of our lives–by telling us to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37).

He summarized commandments four through ten–that we honor our parents, not murder, not commit adultery, not steal, not bear false witness, and not covet–by commanding us, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39)

Honesty compels each of us to acknowledge that we do not obey God’s law of love. We are worthy of condemnation.

But, friends, we keep these commands of Jesus every time we come to Him and acknowledge, formally or informally, together or on our own, “We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” We keep His commands whenever we respond to His Word and take up our crosses daily and follow Him. (Luke 9:23)

We love Jesus and we keep His commands, acknowledging His grace and authority, whenever He comes to us with His Word assuring us that through Him, all our sins are forgiven. This is what Jesus explains to us in the rest of today’s gospel lesson. Jesus sends His Holy Spirit Who comes to us in the word of forgiveness and rebirth we receive at Holy Baptism, in the preaching of His Gospel Word, and in the forgiveness and power for living we receive in Holy Communion.

When Jesus tells us today, “If you love me, keep my commands,” Jesus isn’t turning us in on ourselves to engage in a morbid inventory of our sinful selves. He’s freeing us from both the sewers of self-congratulation and self-condemnation.

He calls us to look to Him, the One Who died and rose to set us free from sin and death.

It’s good and right for us to confess our sins to God. But when Jesus’ words of forgiveness come to us, our old sinful self is crucified and, with the words of absolution, we rise to newness of life!

Pastor David Schmitt talks about a friend who, as she puts on a coat to go outside, says with a smile of her deceased dad, “My father always told me to wear a coat.” These are the words of a woman who knew how deeply her earthly father loved her, that his “command” wasn’t arbitrary but came from love, and so, even now, out of his immediate presence–even when she forgets to put on her coat, she “keeps” her father’s “command.”

When the Holy Spirit–the Spirit of truth–turns our attention to Jesus and we know that He has already paid the price for our sin and already given eternal life to all who believe in Him, we are filled with the love of children who know they are deeply loved by God and, from love, reverence, and respect, will always gladly acknowledge His authority over us.

Receive the forgiving love of Jesus and you will love.

That is Jesus’ Word for us today.

Amen

You don't have to love. You get to love! (AUDIO)

Here.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This is the message from this morning's worship services.]

You don't have to love. You get to love!

John 14:15-21
A renowned theologian made a confession to a group of people who were celebrating his career. “For forty years,” he said, “I’ve told people, ‘You’ve got to love.’ Now I realize that I’ve had it wrong. The message of Jesus is, ‘You get to love.’”

It’s so easy for us to get the message of Jesus wrong.

It’s so easy to become Christian Pharisees, turning Jesus into a law-giver, and boiling our faith down to being obedient to His command (and the entire Bible’s command) that we love God and love neighbor.

But how confident are we of our ability to be perfectly obedient to God’s law of love? I hope not very confident.

Otherwise, the confession of sin we offered to God together at the beginning of worship today was a meaningless exercise.

Even more seriously, if you and I are confident in our ability to obey God’s law of love, we’re placing our trust in ourselves and not in God.

“Wait a minute,” you might say, “I’m not such a bad person. I do a fair job of loving God and loving my neighbor...to a point.”

To those who may be inclined to offer such a hedged defense, may I remind you of what’s involved in God’s law of love, as summarized in the Ten Commandments?

• You shall have no other gods before God. 
• You shall not take the name of God in vain. 
• Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. 
• Honor your father and your mother. 
• You shall not murder. 
• You shall not commit adultery. 
• You shall not steal. 
• You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 
• You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. 
• You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, his workers, his livestock, or anything that else that is your neighbor’s.

“I’m good at nine out of ten of them,” some might think. Or, "I obey most of them."

But James reminds us: “...whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10).

And Jesus tells us that even to think of committing these sins is the same as committing them. “The things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart,” Jesus says in Matthew 15:18-20, “and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person…”

Considering these facts, the conclusion reached by the apostle Paul is unavoidable: “...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” (Romans 3:23).

And since “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), Paul’s question for himself in Romans 7:24 is one that every member of the human race should be asking themselves: “Wretched man [or woman] that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (ESV)

This, of course, is where Jesus comes in.

God looks on the children He created in His image with compassion, even though we are sinners who fail to abide by His law of love. It saddens Him because He doesn’t want us to condemn ourselves by remaining enslaved to sin, putting our trust in our own “pretty good” behavior. Every baby born into the world today is destined for death and condemnation for sin unless God acts to saves them.

That’s why He sent Jesus to bear the condemnation for sin we deserve and to rise to become our trailblazer to eternity. 

And that’s why He sends the Holy Spirit to teach us and to remind us to turn to Christ and be forgiven, turn to Him and live, turn to Him and be given new, eternal lives.

Today’s gospel lesson finds Jesus not laying down laws that will earn us salvation. No such laws exist.

You and I can never be good enough to be saved.

Instead, Jesus describes the life that He, by His death and resurrection, makes possible for those who trust in Him. 

He isn’t telling us, “You have to love,” but, “You get to love.” 

And, He tells us that we get so much more by the power of His grace and deity. 

Let’s take a look at what He says this morning in John 14:15-21.

Verse 15: “If you love me, keep my commands.” Already, Jesus has promised the disciples (including you and me):

• that all who follow Him have an eternal place in His kingdom prepared by Him (John 14:1-4); 
• that He is the way to life with God (John 14:6-7); and 
• answers to prayers to the Father offered in Jesus’ name (John 4:13-14),

for all who believe in Him.

Now, let me ask you something: Knowing that God has loved you so much that He does all of this for you as a gift to the one with faith in Jesus, what is the only appropriate response from you (or me)? 

Love. Trusting, grateful love!

We love God, as the apostle John writes elsewhere, because God loved us first (1 John 4:19). 

Once trust in Christ and gratitude for God’s grace infects a soul, love is the response.

And so, Jesus offers here not so much a command, but an observation. When, by faith, you have come to love God and God resides in you, you will do what God commands.

Not perfectly. Our old sinful selves get in the way.

But as we live in daily repentance and renewal, daily surrender to Jesus, the great arc of our lives will bend increasingly toward Jesus and His loving way of life.

You’ll do that as an almost automatic, involuntary response to the relationship of love with God into which Christ brings you.

After my mother died, I thanked my dad for all the many years he spent caring for her. He said, matter-of-factly, “Well, what else was I going to do?”

What else was I going to do? That’s the question of love.

When, in the words of a great song by B.B. King and U2, “love comes to town,” when it comes to save you and when it comes to take residence in your life, what else are you going to do? Love becomes not a command, but a way of life.

Jesus shows this in His great parable about the last judgment when He says He will say to His sheep: "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me..." And the sheep will ask Jesus, "When did we do any of that? We don't remember doing any of that!" Jesus says that His sheep are the ones who respond to His love with love for God and love for neighbor, simply living without a thought of getting credit or keeping score! (Matthew 25:31-46)

But how will we love? After all, “love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

These verses from the Bible's "love chapter," of course, are often read at weddings. When I read them at weddings, I will often look up at the couples standing before me as they smile smugly, their expressions saying, "Yes, that's our love. That's how we love each other." Really?

How is it possible for us to perfectly keep Christ’s law by loving in the style of the love chapter?

Jesus tells us. Verse 16: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.”

To baptized believers in Jesus, Jesus comes to live. Through His Holy Spirit, Jesus comes to us. He speaks Jesus’ word of truth to us, in us, for us.

• He does this at the Baptismal font, where we are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then “marked by the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit forever.” 
• He does it in His Word, where we read and hear God’s life-giving truth. 
• He does it in the bread and wine, where He says, “Take and eat; this is My body...Take and drink; this is My blood,” offered to bring us forgiveness and effecting the miracle of re-membering us to Christ--breaking down the walls of separation, the walls of sin and death. By this, I mean that when Jesus gives us His body and blood at Holy Communion and says, "Do this in remembrance of Me," He is not saying, "Bring memories of Me to mind." He isn't saying, "Recollect Me." He's saying, "Be remembered to Me. Be reconnected to Me. Be the branches to My vine and take My life into your very body, soul, spirit, and will."

To the unbelieving world, the notion that by the power of the Holy Spirit, God comes to us in the Word and sacraments is crazy.

When you’ve never dared to open yourself to Christ and His love, talk of the Holy Spirit seems like foolishness.

But we know better.

When Jesus knocks on the doors of our hearts and we let Him in (Revelation 3:20), we know what it is to have life-giving communion with the God revealed in Jesus.

The Holy Spirit lives in believers in Jesus.

• When we sin, He calls us to repent. 
• When we love, He tells us, “good and faithful servant.” 
• When we don’t know what to pray, He forms our longing into groaning prayers too deep for words. 

Despite a bad news world filled with sin and death and selfishness, even within ourselves, the Holy Spirit empowers us to trust that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life and that because Jesus, crucified and risen, lives, we too will live.

The Holy Spirit brings Jesus’ love into the centers of our souls and we know that we’re not orphans and, fortified by His love, He makes it possible for us to love when we can’t.

I’ve told you that one prayer I’ve offered through the years is, “Lord, I find myself incapable of loving so-and-so. Please love them through me.” I find that God not only loves those people through me, over time, He creates within me genuine love for them.

I’m sure that others have offered similar prayers regarding Mark Daniels.

A woman heard me share this years ago and told me months later that she had tried this on her husband. “I’d gotten to where I couldn’t stand him,” she told me, “but after awhile, I began to see him differently and his behavior seemed to change as I loved Him.”

When Christ’s love and the Holy Spirit come to town, when we let Christ and the Spirit lodge within us and we surrender, we will love.

We will keep Christ’s commands without thinking of it. That’s how grace works.

Jesus continues: “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

Here’s an incredible thought: The Creator of the universe ushers with faith in Jesus into the same relationship of intimacy, trust, and love He has enjoyed within the Trinity--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--for all eternity. He wants you beside Him now and in eternity.

When we surrender to the grace that accepts us as we are and works to make us all that we can be, our relationship with God is totally transformed. We are transformed.

“You shall have no other gods before me,” for example, is changed from a command to a promise.

Through Jesus, we know we have no need of other gods.

We don’t look for love, affirmation, success, peace, or hope anywhere else.

We have it all in Jesus!

No other gods will bother us, entice us, or drag us down.

We’ll have the God we meet in Jesus and, through Him, we have life.

The message of Jesus then is that you don’t have to love, you get to love, just like the Lord Who made you, Who died and rose for you, Who speaks His truth to you again this morning.

Through Jesus, you get to be a free, redeemed child of God, now and forever. Hallelujah!

Now live in His love!


[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for today's Sunday worship services.]

Mega Promises!

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio on Sunday, May 25.]

John 14:15-21
In the first parish I served as pastor, a member was badly hurt in an accident. For some time, his life hung in the balance, meaning many hours waiting in the hospital for his family and friends. His wife had just given birth to their third child and was breastfeeding him. Because she needed to be at the hospital with her husband, this meant that she often retreated to a janitor's closet there, usually with her sister-in-law, to use a pump to get the milk to be sent back home to her son. While she did this, her sister-in-law read to her from the Bible, Christ in Our Home, and Guideposts magazine. Between readings, they would pray together. The women came to see the janitor's closet as a cherished spot, a place where they were sure they met God. They even gave the small closet a name. They called it The Pump and Pray Room.

Some people may hear that story and dismiss the women’s sense of God’s presence as an instance of two Christians talking themselves into a feeling. The women in their Pump and Pray Room, skeptics are likely to say, simply enjoyed one another’s company and the soothing words of Scripture. But, these skeptics would go on, they didn’t really meet God.

The follower of Jesus Christ would say otherwise.

And our saying so is more than wishful thinking.

Today’s Gospel lesson from John continues the words Jesus spoke to His disciples before His arrest. His ‘Farewell Discourse’ contained last minute instructions Jesus had for His followers as He looked ahead not just to His crucifixion and resurrection, but also to the days and years that would come after He ascended into heaven. Jesus wanted those first disciples—and you and me—to know that He would not leave His followers alone.

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you,” He promises believers like you and me. When we face the uncertainties of life, when we make decisions, when we wonder whether God can love us when we sin, this is an awesome promise to hold onto. God will never leave us as orphans!

But how can it be true?

How is it that the risen and ascended Jesus can actually be with us now?

In our lesson for today, Jesus gives two mega-promises to believers, promises that should tell us that when Christians sense that they’re being helped, guided, or accompanied by God, they’re not suffering from religious delusions. They’re experiencing God’s presence meeting them at the points of their deepest need.

I’ll talk about those two promises in a moment. But before I do, I need to point out something important about this passage. You may have noticed it already. It begins and ends with a condition for the promises Jesus makes. At the beginning, Jesus says, “If you love me, keep my commands.” At the end, He says the same thing in reverse order: “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me.”

Now, folks, I don’t want to go too deeply into the woods of Biblical scholarship. But it’s worth pointing out that whenever you have two similar verses bracketing a section of Scripture like this, it forms what the scholars call an inclusion, or an inclusio. Everything sandwiched between the two verses is related to them or amplifies or explains them. Jesus used this inclusio when He spoke to the disciples in order to make an important point. Jesus wants us to know that He will be with those who keep His commands.

Now, be careful here. Jesus is not rescinding what the Bible calls grace. There isn’t a single one of Jesus’ promises that we either deserve or earn. Every one of Jesus’ promises and blessings are free gifts we cannot earn. So, instead of concluding that Jesus is throwing grace overboard here, we need to pay close attention to the verb Jesus uses in both of those bracket verses. He talks about those who keep His commands as being the ones who truly love Him. The word translated as keep is, in the original Greek, tereo. Among the meanings of that word are: watch over, pay attention to, hold dear.

None of us can perfectly fulfill the commands Jesus or the Scriptures give. But every time...

• you and I confess our sins together or in private, or
• strive to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, or
• forgive others as God forgives us, or
• serve others as Jesus serves us...

we are paying attention to, holding dear, Jesus’ command.

We are living out our love and gratitude to the Savior Who died on a cross for our sins and rose from the dead to give us life.

We are, simply, giving first place in our lives to the Savior Who puts us first.

We are doing the hard work of loving Jesus, as Jesus has loved us, each day.

All of this--holding Jesus' commands dear, striving to live our lives like Jesus--is the precondition for the two mega-promises Jesus gives in today’s lesson.

So, what are those promises?

First, Jesus says, to those who love Him and keep His commands, He will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. In the original Greek of the New Testament, the word translated as Advocate is paraclete. It means call alongside. The Holy Spirit comes alongside believers in Jesus and makes the presence and love and power of God unmistakably clear to them. Believers in Jesus can experience the presence of the Holy Spirit with alongside of them every single day.

Pastor Craig Barnes became ill soon after being called to serve as senior pastor of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.. “I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer,” he told a magazine interviewer. “The elders and I were tempted to keep it a secret. But we told everybody, and soon many people were holding me before God in prayer. It was great to be spiritually ‘held’ by a congregation — it cast out fear. My illness has been a tremendous life-changing experience: I try to live in the gift of the day, and not count on tomorrow.”

You see what happened? Barnes owned his need and soon, a whole church was calling the Holy Spirit to come alongside him and his family. The Spirit, in turn, came alongside Craig Barnes and called out God's love and power into his life. The Spirit transformed his response to his illness...and his life!

The Holy Spirit can do similar work in our lives each day, assuring us of the presence and compassion of God whatever the conditions of our lives.

There’s a second promise in today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus says, “I will come to you.” He goes on to say, “Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me…”

At one level, Jesus was telling His first followers that because they had believed in Him, because they had sought to love Him and keep His commands, they would see Him when He rose from the dead. Those who had rejected Him wouldn’t see Him.

But at another level, He was saying that in succeeding history, the people who dared to believe in Him, people like you and me, would also see Him. Not physically. But in their lives, they would recognize His presence. As Jesus told Thomas one week after Jesus had risen from the dead: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

For decades now, many western European and North American Biblical scholars, skeptical about the Bible, have engaged in what has been called “the quest for the historical Jesus.” Some of these scholars claim to be able to decide what portions of the Bible are true and which ones are not.

A few years ago, several of these scholars lamented the fact that, “African-American scholars really have taken no interest in the ongoing discussion of the historical Jesus. A black pastor [at the meeting where this lamentation was issued] got up and said, ‘I have been listening to you worrying about why our people aren’t really talking much about the historical Jesus. You know, it is not a big issue in the black church. Because, you see, we ALWAYS knew who Jesus was!’”

“We always knew,” he was saying, “that the risen Jesus is real and that He will not leave His people orphaned!”

No matter how many well-to-do white scholars with too much time on their hands and too much hubris in their souls to accept God’s ability to bring about resurrections and to give new life, Jesus’ promise stands for all who love Him and hold His commands dear. He will come to us. He will be with us!

Those who follow Jesus see Him working in their lives today because they know Who He is: God and Savior and the lover of their souls. They’ve been comforted by the presence of His Holy Spirit. When they call out to Him, they’ve experienced Jesus coming to them.

Jesus’ message for us today is, I think, simple: Put Jesus first in your life. He will send His Spirit to you and He will come to you. Even on the days when nothing makes sense, He will stand by you, filling you with life and peace. With Jesus, you will never be alone. Amen

"Never Alone"

That's the title of a sermon based on tomorrow's Gospel lesson, John 14:15-21, which I wrote three years ago, here. I hope you find it helpful.

Tomorrow, I'll be preaching on Acts 17:22-31, a favorite passage of mine.

Never Alone!

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio this morning.]

John 14:15-21
Two stories, both true.

In the first parish I served as pastor, a member was badly hurt in an accident. For some time, his life hung in the balance, meaning many hours waiting in the hospital for his family and friends. His wife had just given birth to their third child and was breastfeeding him. Because she needed to be at the hospital with her husband, this meant that she often retreated to a janitor's closet there, usually with her sister-in-law, to use a pump to get the milk to be sent back home to her son. While she did this, her sister-in-law read to her from the Bible, Christ in Our Home, and Guideposts magazine. Between readings, they would pray together. The women came to see the janitor's closet as a cherished spot, a place where they were sure they met God. They even gave the small closet a name. They called it The Pump and Pray Room.

As I’ve told some of you, the first time I came to Saint Matthew to speak with the Call Committee, I did so almost on a lark. I felt little inclination to actually come here. I loved my former parish and though I sensed that it might be time for me to leave there, I was far from clear about where God wanted me to go. But after that first interview, I wondered whether what might be a lark for me was actually a call from God. I phoned Ann on the way home and summarized my impressions in two words: “Maybe. Maybe.” As the weeks passed, the sense grew stronger that this was where God wanted me to be. But I wanted to be sure. “God,” I prayed, “if I’m supposed to be at Saint Matthew, grant that Ann will tell me so.” Four weeks after my initial interview, Ann and I came here for a second conversation, her first meeting with the Call Committee. About halfway here from Cincinnati, Ann turned to me and said, “I think that if this whole thing can be made to work, you should take this call.” I was sure that God spoke to me in that moment. (Ann tells me that, if I will only listen, I can often hear what God is telling me when she speaks!)

Some people will hear those stories and dismiss them as mere coincidences. The women in their Pump and Pray Room, skeptics are likely to say, simply enjoyed one another’s company and the soothing words of Scripture. But, these skeptics would tell me, they didn’t really meet God. Similarly, the skeptics might say that Ann’s words to me weren’t guidance from God, just her opinion. The follower of Jesus Christ would say otherwise. And our saying so is more than wishful thinking.

Today’s Gospel lesson from John continues the words Jesus spoke to His disciples before His arrest. His ‘Farewell Discourse’ contained last minute instructions Jesus had for His followers as He looked ahead not just to His crucifixion and resurrection, but also to the days and years that would come after He ascended into heaven. Jesus wanted those first disciples—and you and me—to know that He would not leave His followers alone.

“I will not leave you orphaned,” He promises us. When we face the uncertainties of life, when we make decisions, when we wonder whether God can love us when we sin, this is an awesome promise to hold onto. God will never leave us orphaned! But how can it be true? How is it that the risen and ascended Jesus can actually be with us now?

In our lesson for today, Jesus gives two mega-promises to believers, promises that should tell us that when Christians sense that they’re being helped, guided, or accompanied by God, they’re not just reacting to coincidences. They’re experiencing God-incidences, juxtapositions of God’s presence and our needs that are very real.

I’ll talk about those two promises in a moment. But before I do, I need to point out something important about this passage. You may have noticed it already. It begins and ends with a condition for the promises Jesus makes. At the beginning, Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” At the end, He says the same thing in reverse order: “They who love my commandments and keep them are those who love me.”

Now, folks, I don’t want to go too deep into the woods of Biblical scholarship. But it’s worth pointing out that whenever you have two similar verses bracketing a section of Scripture like this, it forms what the scholars call an inclusion, or an inclusio. Everything sandwiched between the two verses is related to them or amplify or explain them.

I once heard a preacher say that all the promises God makes in the Bible are like blank checks waiting for believers in Jesus to cash. The promises of forgiveness of sin and everlasting life for all who entrust their lives in Jesus Christ, for example, are promises that anyone who repents and follows Christ can cash. So too are the promises Jesus gives today. But in order to cash in on them, we must love Jesus by keeping His commandments.

Now, be careful here. Jesus is not rescinding what the Bible calls grace. There isn’t a single one of Jesus’ promises that we either deserve or earn. Every one of Jesus’ promises and blessings are free gifts we cannot earn.

Instead of concluding that Jesus is throwing grace overboard here, we need to pay close attention to the verb Jesus uses in both of those bracket verses. He talks about those who keep His commands as being the ones who truly love Him. Among the meanings of that word, keep, in the original Greek of the New Testament are: watch over, pay attention to, hold dear.

None of us can perfectly fulfill the commands Jesus or the Scriptures give. But every time...

you and I confess our sins together or in private, or
strive to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, or
forgive others as God forgives us, or
serve others as Jesus serves us...

we are paying attention to, holding dear, Jesus’ command.

We are living out our love and gratitude to the Savior Who died on a cross for our sins and rose from the dead to give us life.

We are, simply, giving first place in our lives to the Savior Who puts us first.

We are doing the hard work of loving Jesus each day.

All of this--holding Jesus' commands dear, striving to live our lives like Jesus--is the precondition for the two mega-promises Jesus gives in today’s lesson.

So, what are those promises?

First, Jesus says, to those who love Him and keep His commands, He will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. In the original Greek of the New Testament, the word translated as Advocate is Paraclete. That’s not to be confused with a little bird. The word paraclete means called alongside. The Holy Spirit comes alongside believers in Jesus and makes the presence and love and power of God unmistakably clear to them. Believers in Jesus can experience the presence of the Holy Spirit with alongside of them every single day.

One of my favorite preachers, Pastor Craig Barnes became ill soon after being called to serve as senior pastor of National Presbyterian Church. “I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer,” he told a magazine interviewer. “The elders and I were tempted to keep it a secret. But we told everybody, and soon many people were holding me before God in prayer. It was great to be spiritually ‘held’ by a congregation — it cast out fear. My illness has been a tremendous life-changing experience: I try to live in the gift of the day, and not count on tomorrow.”*

You see what happened? Barnes owned his need and soon, a whole church was calling the Holy Spirit to come alongside him and his family. The Spirit transformed his response to his illness...and his life!

This past winter, the senior pastor of a large Pentecostal congregation in Chillicothe took a turn for the worst in his long battle with a killing disease. Throughout his long illness, I’m told that this pastor preached brave, faithful sermons in which he pointed out that no matter if he lived or died, Jesus was still his loving Lord. It was announced to the congregation that this pastor’s condition had worsened and that he probably wouldn’t live for long. The announcement was made right at the same time one of this past winter’s big storms hit. Worship had to be canceled. But the people of this congregation wouldn’t allow some snow to prevent them from doing what they sensed God called them to do. And so, on the night of a blizzard, snow accumulating all around, hundreds of them went to the pastor’s house. One of them knocked on the door and told the pastor’s wife that they had come to pray for him, for her, and for their family. “But I can’t possibly welcome all of you into the house,” the pastor’s wife said apologetically. “We don’t want to come in,” the church member said, “We just sensed God wanted us to pray for you. That’s what we’re here to do.” They then circled the house and did just that.**

Can you imagine the comfort that pastor and his wife felt at that incredible moment? The Holy Spirit, the One Who comes alongside God’s people sent the members of that Church, to come alongside and give His comfort to two people who loved the Lord Jesus and kept His commands. That fulfilled the first promise Jesus makes in today’s lesson.

There’s a second promise in today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus says, “I am coming to you.” He goes on to say, “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me…” At one level, Jesus was telling His first followers that because they had believed in Him, because they had sought to love Him and keep His commands, they would see Him when He rose from the dead. Those who had rejected Him wouldn’t see Him. But at another level, He was saying that in succeeding history, the people who dared to believe in Him, people like you and me, would also see Him. Not physically. But in their lives, they would recognize His presence.

For decades now, many western European and North American Biblical scholars, skeptical about the Bible, have engaged in what has been called “the quest for the historical Jesus.” Some of these scholars claim to be able to decide what portions of the Bible are true and which ones are not. A few years ago, several of these scholars lamented “the fact that African-American scholars really have taken no interest in the on going discussion of the historical Jesus. A black pastor got up and said, ‘I have been listening to you worrying about why our people aren’t really talking much about the historical Jesus. You know, it is not a big issue in the black church. Because, you see, we ALWAYS knew who Jesus was!’” “We always knew,” he was saying, “that the risen Jesus is real and that He will not leave His people orphaned!” No matter how many well-to-do white scholars with too much time on their hands and too much hubris in their souls to accept God’s ability to bring about resurrections and to give new life, Jesus’ promise stands for all who love Him and hold His commands dear. He will come to us. He will be with us!***

Rosie was a member of Ann’s and my home church in Columbus. She was a sweet, hard-working person who rarely said anything in the adult Sunday School class. But one day, when a seminary student was teaching a lesson on the calendar of greater and lesser church festivals, she answered his question. “What special day might you like to add on to the Church Year that isn’t on the calendar now?” he asked us. Everyone was silent until quiet Rosie raised her hand. “I’ve always thought,” she said, “that we ought to have a day every year where we thanked God that we’re alive today. I’ve wondered whether I would have believed in Jesus back when He was walking on the earth.” We might all be able to identify with Rosie’s sentiments. But what really strikes me as I reflect on her suggestion three decades later is that what she said constituted the confession of faith of someone who loved Jesus and held His commands dear. In all the ups and downs of life, she’d found it to be true that in these times, two thousand years after Jesus died and rose and ascended into heaven, His promises are true.

Those who follow Jesus see Him working in their lives today. They’ve been comforted by the presence of His Holy Spirit. When they call out to Him, they’ve experienced Jesus coming to them.

Jesus’ message for us today is, I think, simple. But if we let it, can change our lives for all eternity. It’s this: Put Jesus first in your life. He will send His Spirit to you and He will come to you. With Him, you will never be alone. Amen

*I read about the interview with Craig Barnes at Homileticsonline.com.
**My Lutheran colleague, Pastor Rick Hinger, shared this true story with us several days after the incident happened.
***I found the account of this incident at Homileticsonline.com as well.

A Look at This Sunday's Bible Lessons (April 27, 2008)

[Each week, I take at least one "pass" at the appointed Bible lessons for the following Sunday. I do this to help my own preparation for preaching and worship. But I also do it to help the folks of the congregation I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, to get ready for Sunday morning. Because I almost always use the lessons of the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) associated with the Church Year, used by most Christians each week, I hope that others will find these passes helpful too.]

The Bible Lessons:
Acts 17:22-31
Psalm 66:8-20
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21

The Prayer of the Day:
Almighty and ever-living God, you hold together all things in heaven and on earth. In your great mercy receive the prayers of all your children, and give to all the world the Spirit of your truth and peace, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Comments:
1. This Sunday will be the Sixth Sunday of Easter, the next to last Sunday of the Easter season. Ascension Day, which remembers the return of thr risen Jesus to heaven, is this coming Thursday. May 11 will bring the Festival of Pentecost, when the promised Holy Spirit came to believers, just as Jesus promised. This Sunday's Gospel lesson records one of the times when Jesus made this promise.

2. I used to wonder why passages from Jesus' Farewell Discourse (see here and here) were appointed for the Easter season. After all, Jesus spoke the words in last week's, this week's, and next week's Gospel lessons just before He was arrested and crucified. Why would we look at these lessons on three of the Sundays in a season especially devoted to recalling Jesus' resurrection?

The answer is simple, I think: Jesus, as He spoke these words, was physically leaving His first followers. His death would bring about their separation from Him. His words, especially those in this Sunday's Gospel lesson, were meant to assure the disciples that He would not leave them "orphaned." He would send His Spirit to those who trust in Him.

Today, as we live without the physical presence of the risen Jesus, we could feel "orphaned." But the words in Sunday's Gospel lesson assure us that we are not alone.

3. The lesson from Acts is one of my favorite passages of Scripture. It recounts what happened when the apostle Paul arrived in Athens to share the message of new life for all who believe in Jesus Christ. As a pious Jew who believed in one true God of the universe, the God he believed to be definitively revealed in Jesus, Paul would have been revolted by the way in which the Greeks worshiped many gods.

Instead, he accepted the Athenians where they were spiritually and, commenting on a statue devoted to an "unknown God," told them about this unknown deity.

It's a great example of sensitive Christian witnessing. Without condescension, but with a firm commitment to Jesus Christ, Paul met the Athenians at the intersection of his story, the Athenians' story, and God's story.

4. The psalm is a bold declaration that God refines our faith by taking us through adversity.

Today, we're called to trust an invisible God by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In a reflection on Genesis 28:5, when Isaac sent his son Jacob away, Martin Luther discussed the patience this cultivated in the younger man:

Jacob waited many years for the promised blessing...

This is a wonderful example that shows us how God works. He requires us to trust his word and his promises even when the opposite of those promises is happening to us. Jacob had the promised blessing, but he had to hold onto it by faith and not doubt what he couldn't see...[This] example teaches us to live by faith. We should believe God when he promises to love and protect us, take care of us, and listen to us, even though we might not see it happening...

We must learn to depend on the visible Word of our invisible and incredible God...This is difficult for us because we are used to things we can touch, see, or feel. We have to learn to let go of what we can experience only with our senses and live according to what is invisible.

Fortunately, as we take the leap of faith into God's arms, we have the promises of a Savior Who, promises of life forever with God and of God's presence with us always. Jesus seals those promises with His death and resurrection.

5. The passage from First Peter, written to churches in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey), is a reminder that following Jesus is no guarantee that our lives will go smoothly. People may reject us for our faith in Christ. We may even suffer for it. But, Peter reminds us, our hope is for a life with God that not even death will be able to destroy.

I love Peter's words in verses 15b-16:

Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.

The Good News we claim in Jesus Christ is authenticated when our witness is loving, devoid of condescension like Paul's witness in Athens.

For more, go here.