Sixth Sunday of Easter /
John 14:15-21 / Rev. Gayle
M. Highness
It’s
About Love
A lot of people have REALLY been
busy lately, and it’s not going to get much better until summer gets here, and maybe not even then.
Let’s see . . . We had Lent and
Easter, which was really busy for ME of course. And we have spring work and
planting, which is REALLY busy for farmers. And then we had tax season, which
is quite busy for people who do taxes for a living, and for people who PAY
taxes and put off their filing until the last minute.
And, then of course there is track
season and baseball season, right on the heels of basketball season, which is
busy for parents and athletes. Not to mention band and chorus concerts and
trips and plays and fundraising dinners and prom and after prom and finals and
graduation. And in between there is yard work and house work and gardening.
Whew! Life just gets so, so busy. Push, push, push. There was a musical that came out in the
‘60s called “Stop the World I Want to Get Off!”
Catchy title.
I think a lot of people can relate to that.
I can remember a time in my life
when I was working and the kids were in school and I was doing all this stuff
at my church and I used to think that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to
get in a car accident – not a bad one, but just bad enough so I could end up in
the hospital for a few days to get away from all the pressure.
This world in which we live can be a
stressful, busy place full of expectations that threaten to bury us alive. And
yet, if you aren’t tied up with all those expectations and activities, the
world can be a vacant, lonely place, full of silence – which might sound good
to some of us, until you actually have to live there.
On the other hand, if we were to
spend some time in, say, Iraq or a hundred other places in this world full of a
whole different kind of stress – like constant fear and violence and oppression
– our busyness or loneliness or general frustration might not seem so bad.
Whatever our lot in life, though –
whatever our issues, whatever the demands – like it or not, this is our
world. This is the world that God
created.
In the beginning, God created it
good. We read in the first chapter of
Genesis, “In the beginning when God
created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness
covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the
waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw
that the light was good.”
And so it went until at last God
created US and God created us GOOD but with a will of
our own – a free will with which we could choose to love God or to turn away
from God and toward ourselves. And right
from the start, humankind chose to turn away from God and so sin entered the world
and separated us from our creator, and the peaceful, perfect world God created
became the crazy, mixed up world we live in today.
This is the world of John’s gospel,
the world that God so loved, He sent His only Son to us in the flesh to win us
back – to restore the relationship between us and our creator that sin had
broken.
All through John’s gospel, we have
these images of seeing and not seeing.
Jesus – God in the flesh – “was in
the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not
know him. But,” John writes, “to all who received him, who believed in his
name, he gave power to become children of God.”
In our gospel reading today, Jesus
was with his disciples – those who believed in his name and so had come to know
him. It was the night before he died. He knew he was going to be leaving this
crazy mixed up world. And he was trying to prepare his disciples for life in the
world without his physical presence.
He told them that, even though they
wouldn’t see him in the flesh anymore, he would still be with them. Because God
would send them another helper – the Holy Spirit – who would be with them
forever!
“I will not leave you orphaned,” he
told them. “I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see
me, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you
will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I
in you.”
More of this seeing and not seeing –
this knowing and not knowing.
It’s as if there are two realities
that co-exist here on this earth – the world of the flesh and the world of the
Spirit. There is a separation between
these two places and yet they are so intertwined and overlapped, we have our
being in both at the same time.
We live in this busy, hectic,
stressful world where flesh and spirit co-exist and we’re pulled between the
two. Sometimes we see Jesus and
sometimes we don’t. Sometimes our hearts are turned toward God and sometimes
they’re turned away. And sometimes it’s
hard to tell the difference. But listen to Jesus’ words to his disciples, and
you will hear the key to abiding in God.
“They who have my commandments and
keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my
Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them." And again, later in the passage, he says, “"Those
who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come
to them and make our home with them.”
It’s like the song says, “Love,
love, love – that’s what it’s all about.”
Jesus taught that the greatest commandments
are to love God with all your heart and your mind and your will and your
strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. And he said that those who love, know God and those who know God, love.
This is not a conditional if-then
saying, like, “If you try real hard and learn to swim, then I will let you jump
in my swimming pool. It’s more like a results kind of if-then statement, like
“If you jump in my swimming pool, you’ll get wet.”
In other words, Jesus isn’t saying
that if you love God and love each other first, then God will love you.” It’s
saying that, God does love you already and when you receive that love – when
you abide in God’s love – you can’t help but love others.”
The Holy Spirit is the life and the
love of God that flows through us. Sometimes
God’s love flows in and through us in spite of ourselves.
Other times, our obedience to God’s command to love, even when we don’t feel
like it, opens the door to God’s love flowing through us.
So whether you’re crazy busy or
starkly bored and lonely, or suffering or enjoying a good season of life,
remember that God loves you and God wants you to share his love with someone
else. When we love, we will see Jesus. Amen.