Easter 6A, 14 May 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

• Acts 17:22-31. For we too are [God’s] offspring.
• 1 Peter 3:13-22. Always be ready to make… an accounting for the hope that is in you.
• John 14:15-21. If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

O God of Love, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may and cost what it will.

When I graduated from college and moved to Northern Virginia, I started looking around for a church. Just as I’d always had a toothbrush for oral hygiene, I’d always had a church for spiritual hygiene. I grew up in the church; and I went to church through college (it was a church within walking distance). My big college rebellion, when it came to practicing faith, was not to quit attending, but to become an Episcopalian! Although my dad was an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, his ecumenical and mostly non-parochial work meant that’d I’d grown up as something of a religious mutt – a mix of UCC, Lutheran, and Presbyterian for worship, Roman Catholic for school, and vacations with the Episcopalians. In my early twenties I had a car, making my reach considerably wider, so I went church shopping for an Episcopal parish.

As I did with most matters of importance, I talked about this with my dad. I told him I was looking for a community, and specifically sermons, that I could get something out of each week. That provoked a surprisingly sharp rebuke. “You don’t go to church to get something,” he said. “You go to church to give thanks to God for all that Love has done for you. If you ‘get’ something a few times a year, that’s gravy!” Stung, yet defiant, I thought (but didn’t say so out loud) that his standards were very low. But over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the multi-faceted and unfinished truth of what he said. Giving thanks to God with my whole body one day out of seven seems like the least I can do. (The irony of telling a story about my dad on Mother’s Day is not lost on me, but so much of who I am as a mother and a pastor comes from him.) 

But why go to church to give thanks to God? Can’t we give thanks from St. Mattress and the Holy Comforter, or the Church of the Sacred Couch? It’s a live question –- so much so that our diocese is gathering for a workshop on this very topic on Saturday, June 24. (The announcement is on page 23 in your bulletins if you’re curious.) What’s important to me about church is that I’m gathering with, breaking bread, and giving thanks with people I do not select, I don’t always understand, and sometimes I don’t even appreciate it as much as I ought. At church I am part of a community giving thanks to God for what Love has done while I wrest with issues of ethical, pastoral, and missional importance. I cannot sustain the conversations with just the voices inside my own head. I need a community of accountability to remind me that the goal is not to get something out of the story, but to find ways to get into the Story (capital S) of the people of God (capital L…, you know, for Love). 

I find that one of the entry places in our Gospel reading for today is when Jesus says, “Because I live, you also will live.” Set in the context of supper on the night of Jesus’ arrest in John, and written long after Jesus’ execution, it’s striking to me that the message is not, because Jesus’ disciples live and carry on Jesus’ message, that Jesus will live on. (You know, as my dad, who died 32 years ago, lives on in his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.) This is the exact opposite. This says, because Jesus lives, his disciples will live. Because Jesus lives, we will live, if (meaning whenever) we are keeping his commandments. As someone astutely observed last week in Bible study, “Anyone can have commandments; keeping them is hard!” 

Yes, and a commandment in the Bible is not a finger-shaking kind of order. It’s a behest, an urgent ask, which describes what God hopes for God’s people and what it means to be God’s people. The best clues to that are in the verbs, the action words. In the commandment “Love one another,” the verb love is in a form that indicates continuing action. [1] Grammatically, the verb is not in the form of a demand or an imperative. So too, in Hebrew commandments to love are in the imperfect tense (which indicates incomplete action). If you love me, Jesus says, you will be loving one another (it’s a description of the future). When you are loving one another, that’s what loving Jesus is, that’s what loving God is, according to John. It’s all of a piece. Another way of putting it is that keeping commandments is not a condition but a sign. It’s not an emotionally immature, “If you love me, you will prove it by doing everything I ask.” It’s more like, “If you are planting impatiens, you will be watering them and keeping them in a shady place if you want them to live.” Jesus is saying, “If you are loving me, you will be loving one another;” and because I live, you will live.

What are Jesus’ commandments in the Gospel of John? Well, one important thing to know is that what gets called “The Great Commandment,” is not mentioned at all in John. There are, however, nine things that Jesus said in the Gospel of John that could be considered commandments. Here they are in order of appearance:

1. Do not complain among yourselves. (Jn. 6:43) (I love that one.)
2. Do not judge by appearances. (Jn. 7:24) (Also good.)
3. Anyone among you who is without sin, throw the first stone (at the woman caught in the act of adultery). (Jn. 8:7) (No one threw any stones, by the way.) 
4. Walk while you have light [and] … believe in the light, so that you may become children of light. (Jn. 12:35-36)
5. Wash one another’s feet. (Jn. 13:14)
6. Love one another. (Jn. 13:34) 
7. Love one another. (Jn. 13:35) (By the way, this is new like the moon is new every 29.5 days; but the moon never goes away, and neither does the commandment to love.)
8. Do not let your hearts be troubled. (Jn. 14:1)
9. Believe in God, believe also in me…but if you don’t believe in me, believe in my works. (Jn. 14:1…11) (We heard that last week.)

Then there’s a kind of a three-fold bonus commandment at the end of the Gospel, given to Peter after Jesus’ death, which we might understand as being for the foundation of the wider church: “Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.”

Why would an extra commandment be a good thing? Well, because the word for commandment (mitzvah in Hebrew) and (entoláy in Greek) doesn’t mean in either language quite what we tend to think in terms of a demand. Rather a mitzvah or an entoláy is a charge or a commission, an indication of intentionality, an expression of divine desire or longing and a statement of divine faith in people, a statement of belief, a creed if you will, that people can do the right thing if we’re told what the right thing is. I often say that the amazing thing about both the First and Second Testaments is that they are a vast collection of stories about God’s belief in people against all odds, in spite of mountains of evidence that it’s humans who are unbelievable!

Now inevitably, the question comes up, well what if I don’t or can’t? Jesus’ answer in this passage is that God’s spirit will advocate on our behalf (as Jesus has been doing). I think that this spirit will also advocate on God’s behalf (as Jesus has also been doing, because God clearly needs an advocate as well.) This spirit is holy because she is an advocator, advisor, counselor, consoler, exhorter, encourager, appealer, helper, champion. The Spirit in this passage can be understood to be all of those things (and more), which is to say, whatever is needed to support the mission. Jesus is saying to his followers, “I will not leave you orphaned.” Here the word in Greek is orphanous, so it’s tempting to translate it narrowly, but it literally means helplessly bereft, not just technically without parents. Jesus will not leave his followers helplessly bereft and unprotected. A better way to translate Jesus saying, “I am coming to you,” is “I am entering you.” Jesus is reminding them that his Spirit of Truth is in them, even if it is hard to see or feel in a community being torn apart by conflict and by fear, which is what was probably happening to the community for which the Gospel of John was first written.

Listening deeply to the voice of the spirit of truth is expansive and liberating, showing the life-giving and love-giving ways forward when all we can see are the narrow places, the tight spots and the hard and sad endings. We can know the voice of the spirit of truth best, most clearly, within our intersecting communities of accountability (the parish is one, and I know many of you have others; the more, the better), in the rhythm of action and reflection, in the din, and in the quiet. Because Jesus lives, we live, and together we can, in the words of 1 Peter, make an accounting for the hope that is in us with gentleness and reverence, and move bravely into the future together with the promise of love at the end.

1. Present subjunctive in Greek, imperfect in Hebrew.