May 25, 2021

 

*Gospel: John 15:9-7  

On Wednesday mornings, I lead chapel at Little Doves, so that means I leave my house pretty early and am gone the whole day.  Tuesday evening, when I tuck my son in bed, I say to him, “When you wake up in the morning, I will probably already be on my way to work.  Don’t forget to feed the cat and give him fresh water.  I want you to listen to your dad and be his best helper.  Focus on your school work.  After school, please do your chores.  And don’t forget to practice your times tables.  I’ll see you tomorrow about 4:30.  I love you.  Get some sleep.”  Since we will be apart, I give him some instruction.

Think of Jesus, who knows he is about to die and be away from his disciples.  Here he is giving his disciples his farewell discourse that actually takes up a large chunk of the Gospel of John.  He’s giving them instructions because he is leaving them alone.  He’s trying to think of everything they are going to need to know once he’s gone.  He’s trying to reassure them because they will be afraid and sad and confused and completely knocked for a loop by his death.  They will be at a loss.  But maybe they will remember some of this encouragement and instruction that he leaves with them.  And maybe it will be good for us to remember since we can’t see Jesus among us leading us and teaching us.  And it might be good for us if we ever feel knocked for a loop, confused, sad, or afraid.

Jesus is laying out his dream for the Disciples, once he’s gone.  His dream is that they will be close friends and share intimacy, that their will will be aligned with God’s, that they will love one another.  Jesus tells them to remain in loving relationship with God.  Jesus tells them to remain in loving relationship with each other. 

Jesus tells them to remain in loving relationships with God—to abide in God’s love.  To remain and abide is to stay steady, not to flee.  They are going to feel like fleeing.  They are going to feel like a jumbled mess.  They are going to feel like sinking down into their own grief and pain.  But Jesus says to abide and remain in God’s love.  God is the source of all life and love.  God has walked with the people through many hardships and challenges.  This will be one of the most difficult they have ever faced, yet, along with the fear of their own capture, betrayal, and martyrdom.  Still God will be with them and when they keep steady in their faith in God, they will find they are not alone.  They will have the stories of everyone who has ever been knocked for a loop and how faithful God remained to them.  And they will have the body of Christ, the fellowship of all believers as their friends.  They will be anything but alone.

Jesus tells the Disciples to remain in loving relationship with one another.  Jesus calls them friends.  A couple of chapters ago, Jesus urged them to be servants of one another washing one another’s feet.  This is an intimate act or unity and servanthood.  One of touching another person the way people don’t often do.  A way of caring for one another, both spiritually and physically.  Here Jesus is graduating his Disciples from servants to friends.  They are to share in mutuality with one another.  There is no more close image of relationship than being one body.  In marriage we say two people become one flesh.  In Christianity, it is very similar.  We are one in the body of Christ.  When one body part hurts, the whole body hurts.  When one part of the body feels joy, our joy may be complete.  We have shied away from such intimate talk, because we have been afraid of being perverted or sinful, but this kind of intimacy that Jesus has with the father and that Jesus is asking of his Disciples toward each other is a beautiful relationship of love, of touching one another, serving one another, of sharing joys and tears, of eating together, of sharing their fears and failings.  They are really going to need intimacy, love, and close relationship with one another going forward, without Jesus there to do everything for them.

Jesus lays out a vision in which the Disciples will matches God’s will.  Jesus’ will matches God’s will.  The first time this comes up is when Martha mentions that God will give Jesus anything he asks when her brother Lazarus has been in the grave 3 days.  Sure enough, Jesus prays to God that Lazarus will be raised, to give God glory, to give some foreshadowing of the resurrection, and to send the priests and Levites into a panic so they feel so threatened that they make a final plot to do away with the Son of God.  Several more times in John’s Gospel, Jesus mentions that his will and God’s is the same.  Now   today we hear that anything we ask for, God will grant.  And yet that isn’t the case. 

As God has loved Jesus, so Jesus loves us.  And yet we don’t find God rescuing Jesus.  We don’t get to have the unpleasant things in our lives removed—we don’t get to lived charmed lives as a result of being Jesus’ disciples.  Jesus didn’t live a sheltered life of God’s constant rescue.  He lived in joy and pain in the ordinary and extraordinary moments.  It isn’t in this Gospel that Jesus asks that the cup be removed from him in the Garden of Gethsemane when he’s about to be arrested and executed.  Yet even there he says, “Not my will, but thy will be done.”  There is an alignment of the wills of the Father and the Son.  Jesus’ vision is that we would also be in alignment of will, so that whatever we ask will be granted.  We don’t have to feel afraid to take all our requests to God, thinking that we have to sift through them and remove whatever is not in God’s will.  God can do the sorting, if we are willing to be honest about what we want and what we need and also knowing that we don’t know the half of it, the millionth of it, the world in all it’s complexity, the bigger picture the way God sees it, with all the needs of our neighbors.

                Jesus is tucking in the Disciples this night and aren’t we all Jesus’ Disciples.  Jesus sits next to us, stroking our hair.  He says, “Tomorrow you will not see me the way you are expecting.  There are some things I need you to do for me because of the love we share.  Show love to our Father.  Keep steady—abide, remain.  I know you will do your chores.  And be loving to your siblings.  I love you very much.  You will never be alone.  You got this!”