Easter 6C

The gospel reading for this morning prepares us for Ascension Day (this coming Thursday), and moves us further away from the bewildering events of Easter morning at the empty tomb to the equally bewildering events of Pentecost (which occurs in two weeks). At the same time, our focus shifts from the second person of the Trinity, Jesus the Son, to the third person, the Holy Spirit… another not so-subtle way of making us begin to think about the Holy Trinity, which we will remember on Sunday 3 June. So as you hear these readings, remember that we are being pointed in some specific directions.

We also have to remember another layer: we tend to hear the Farewell Discourse from the Gospel of John (reintroduced last week) with its promise of the coming of the Counsellor or Paraclete, as discourses given by the risen-and-not-yet-ascended-Christ, as promises given as though it were during the forty days in preparation for the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost. But that it not what is going on here: for John, these words of Jesus are said while Jesus still lived and walked among the disciples and they were said during the last supper, a moment of extreme anguish, a moment standing in between life before the crucifixion and resurrection and life after these world-changing events. In John’s mind, these words look through and beyond the death of Jesus to his glorification that releases the gift of the Holy Spirit. In the early church, even, the fifty days of Easter included the celebration of the gift of the Spirit, not just on the day of Pentecost.

Recall that in the chapter preceding this one, Jesus gives the disciples the following commandment: ‘That you love one another. As I have loved you, you also should love one another.’ This commandment is an important guidepost that Jesus gives the disciples. For, in loving one another, they will love Christ. Jesus continues to say that he abides in God and God in him. By extension, if one loves one’s neighbour, one will meet Christ in that neighbour, and since Christ dwells in our neighbour, we are then joined with Christ. Christ will dwell in us and we in Christ.

So now, Jesus answers a difficult question from Judas (not Iscariot) in which he asks: ‘What has happened that you are going to manifest yourself to us and not to the world?’ This question is what sets off this morning’s gospel passage. Jesus answers beginning with words very familiar to us: If you love me, you will keep my word, my commandments.

What Jesus is really saying here is: If you love me, you will preserve and treasure not only me, but also my essence, my divine being, my connection with God the Father. If you love me, you will be open to the presence of God in and with you. If you love me, the Spirit whom I send will teach you everything you need, and remind you of all I have taught you. If you love me, you will receive my peace.

Remember the gospel from a few weeks ago? Remember that back and forth questioning between Jesus and Peter in which Jesus asks Peter, Do you love me? And Peter answers, Lord, you know I do. Jesus asks Peter a second and a third time, Do you love me? By the third time, Peter is frustrated, even miffed: Of course I do. Why do you keep asking me? Jesus’ response to him: Feed my sheep. Jesus is asking and then entrusting a crucial task to the very one who denied him three times.

We think we are not like Peter. Jesus is our beloved. Why else would we be here? We love Jesus because we know Jesus loves us. Our response is automatic when asked, ‘Do you love Jesus?’: Of course we love Jesus. Ah… but how come, then, Jesus needs to send us a Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who will remind us what to do and how to act? Who or what is this ‘paraclete’ person? And what does it mean to love one another and live within the Spirit of God?

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First, who is this Comforter? Two examples, totally unrelated, image for me this Spirit of God.

The first is that of a comforting blanket. Now, the world is divided between those who like a lot of blankets on top of themselves at night and those who don’t. I am one of those who love on those minus 20 or 30 degree nights to have three blankets (and three cats) on top of me. It feels comforting, safe, protective, sort of like having that weird heavy lead covering to protect your innards that technicians put on you before your having x-rays.

Years ago, a person said to me after I anointed him pre-surgery, that the sacrament of anointing felt to him like a protective blanket of God’s Spirit enfolding him and that before he went under, it was the last thing of which he thought. I have often remembered that image of the Spirit, the Comforter, that one who makes us feel safe.

The other image of this Spirit is that sixth sense that sometimes pops into our hearts and we write, phone or visit someone or do some other activity without exactly knowing why, but we just do because we feel we must.

Many times I have gotten the sense that I need to go visit someone, phone someone, not tomorrow but today, now. And as happens in these circumstances, the timing was critical — either arriving as the person takes his or her last breath, or calling to find out that she or he needed to hear words of solace and share a prayer. These moments of intersection have happened enough times now that I truly believe that the Spirit, the great prodder and agitator, is at work.

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The harder piece of the question is how do we live in this Spirit? Frankly, the rest of the year in our lectionary helps us to answer this question so to try to answer it today in one short sermon cannot do justice to the question.

Again, Jesus gives the disciples the following commandment: ‘That you love one another. As I have loved you, you also should love one another.’ It’s not erotic love he’s talking about. It’s not even the love of friendship, really. It’s a greater love: charity, mercy, kindness, a love that does not depend on liking. It’s a harder sort of love to master.

Love — in the sense that Jesus calls us to — is to be present to one another, vulnerable, open, reconciling, faithful and steadfast. Couples in long-term relationships, married or otherwise, know of the ups and downs their love has taken. They know of the struggles when they have come off the mountaintop and are facing daily reality. They know what it is to be present in the worst and best of times. Communities are like that, too.

What does it mean for us to love as Christ has called us to do? If, as the gospel of John suggests, by loving Jesus we keep and treasure Jesus’ essence, Jesus’ connection with God the Creator, then it follows that we also seek Jesus in one another.

Maggie Ross, an Anglican solitary, writes in The Fire of Your Life:

‘I know a Franciscan friar who was fond of saying that after the Eucharist we should genuflect to each other because we are all walking tabernacles. His half-joking perception is true, and not only in the half-hour or so following the Liturgy, for by our baptism we are bearers of the living Word, having passed with Christ through death to life.’1

Martin Luther put it more simply: ‘O God, grant us grace to receive Jesus Christ in every person and to be Jesus Christ to every person.’2

Whether on a daily basis you spiritually genuflect to one another or receive Christ in one another, and to Christ to every person, know that it is the Holy Spirit, God’s comforter, God’s holy agitator, the paraclete, that lives and moves in you, giving you the grace to do far more than you would think possible and to love one another as Christ has loved us.

END NOTES
1 Maggie Ross, The Fire of Your Life (New York, NY: Seabury Books, 2007 [1983, 1992], 40.
2 John Carden, A Procession of Prayers (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1998), 305.