When Jesus repeats himself, we should probably pay
attention. He repeats himself quite a
bit in his Farewell Discourse in John’s Gospel, which takes up more than four
chapters. We hear a lot about keeping
his commandments, loving him and one another, abiding or dwelling with him, and
this business about the Advocate who is coming.
Jesus is working hard to find different ways to communicate his message.
We hear echoes of other biblical passages as well when we
listen to the repetitive cadences of the Farewell Discourse. In particular, notice the echoes of Exodus chapter
twenty when Jesus 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. Whoever does not love me does not keep my
words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent
me.”[1]
“Words” and “commandments” are synonymous in biblical
usage. The pronouncement of the Ten
Commandments in Exodus 20 is prefaced with “Then God spoke all these words,”[2]
and God describes Himself as “showing steadfast love to the thousandth
generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.”[3]
Jesus’ word is consistent with God’s word in the Torah,
where the keeping of commandments is an expression of love: “You shall love the Lord your God with all
your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”[4] “You
shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you
shall love your neighbor as yourself: I
am the Lord.”[5] And lest you think you are off the hook when
it comes to the stranger who is not of your people: “The alien who resides with
you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as
yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”[6] (As an aside, here
we find the biblical starting point for immigration reform.)
Jesus famously quoted these words from Deuteronomy and Leviticus
when asked to identify the most important commandment, adding, “There is no
other commandment greater than these.”[7] Jesus’ words are God’s words, his works are
God’s works; if we see Jesus, we see God; if we love Jesus, we love God. If we love Jesus, we will keep his word and
do his works.
Forgive me for belaboring this point, but, well, Jesus does. He is reminding us of the ethical basis of
religion. If there is a tendency among
conservatives to reduce religion to keeping the commandments as if we could
thereby earn God’s love, there is also a tendency among liberals to forget that
keeping the commandments is one of the ways that we respond to God’s love
freely given. It is the form that love
takes in the well-ordered soul and the well-ordered society, as we grow more
fully into the image of God, in which we are created.
The commandments are not an external law imposed upon us as
a condition of God’s love. They are our intrinsic
response to God’s love, the necessary precondition for the realization of our identity
as children of God. Recall the word God
spoke in Exodus as summarized in the Book of Common Prayer:[8]
· I
am the Lord your God who brought you out of bondage. You shall have no other
gods but me.
· You
shall not make for yourself any idol.
·
You shall not invoke with malice the Name of the
Lord your God.
·
Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.
·
Honor your father and your mother.
·
You shall not commit murder.
·
You shall not commit adultery.
· You
shall not steal.
·
You shall not be a false witness.
·
You shall not covet anything that belongs to
your neighbor.
What we have here is the ethical base common to all the
world religions, without which no spiritual progress can be made. Love does not exempt us from the keeping of
the law, but rather is the lure that entices us to become so much more than we are
for love’s sake. “Those who love me will
keep my word,” says Jesus.
Think of it this way.
When the lover looks into the eyes of the beloved what is reflected
there is the ideal image of the lover.
How often has the lover said to the beloved, “You make me want to be a
better man.” “You make me want to
realize the full potential that you see in me.”
That is what it is like when see ourselves reflected in the eyes of
Jesus. We want to keep his word, not out
of fear, but to satiate our desire to become the person Jesus sees in us; to
become like him.
Observing the commandments is not an end in itself. It is simply a preparatory stage for
something much more: God making His home
in us. It is the means whereby we clear
out the baggage of our ego so that we can make room for God to abide in
us. Keeping the commandments prepares us to
pray.
If we are preoccupied with the
drama resulting from decisions rooted in envy, resentment, greed, and
entitlement, there will be little time or energy remaining for intentional
communion with God. We will not even be
aware of our desire for God, or else will subordinate that desire to our
attempts to bend reality to our self-centered ends. God will be, at best, one more object for us
to possess and manipulate.
God, however, is not an object among other objects “out
there.” God is not another rival “out there”
that we have to avoid or manipulate to fulfill our desires. As we acquire the
serenity of a life of integrity, we discover that the desires we have
internalized in imitation of the world around us begin to pale in comparison to
our desire to imitate God. We experience
ourselves as objects of His desire for us, which is absolutely benevolent,
gracious, and joyful. As we are drawn to
imitate this desire, we realize that God has made His home in us all along.
Moreover, God is entirely for us. He gives us His Spirit in Jesus’ name to be
our Advocate, teaching us everything and reminding us of Jesus’ words. The Spirit advocates for us within our own
hearts, defending us against the voices that we have internalized and that lead
us astray. You know those voices, “You
will never be good enough.” “You need more of X to fill the hole in your
sole.” “You don’t deserve him, or her,
or this, or that.” “You are entitled to
whatever you want.” “It is all their
fault.”
This is the voice of the Evil One, from whom we pray to be
delivered. The Advocate, the Spirit of
Jesus, reminds us that we are God’s beloved and that only our desire for God
can satisfy our deepest longing. The Advocate
also gives us the wisdom and the courage to become advocates for others, advocates
of God’s project of healing of the world.
This is the peace that Jesus leaves with us. It is the peace that comes from living in the
Truth, rooted and grounded in God’s love.
It is the peace that comes from knowing that our choices and our actions
are an expression of that love, even when our choices entail risk and our
actions require us to suffer for the sake of Truth.
Jesus does not give us the kind of peace that the world
gives. The peace on offer from the world is a false peace. As Robert Hamerton-Kelly notes,[9]
this false peace is usually based on domination: violent force exercised in the name of
security. Even in Jesus’ day, the motto
found on coins in the Roman Empire read, “Pax
et Securitas.” Conflict is resolved temporarily
by the expulsion of the “enemy” to restore unity.
This false peace is simultaneously rooted in denial. We simply choose not to see what we do not
wish to see, as when the U.S. government banned the filming of the coffins of
military personnel returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. “War?
What war? Just keep shopping and
you won’t even notice.” While the need
for security and denial is an understandable emotional accommodation to evil, it comes at the price of Truth. It comes at the price of peace.
Peace is not the absence of conflict. It comes from entrusting ourselves to the
Advocate, the Spirit of God abiding in us.
Peace is the result of engaging conflict creatively and nonviolently so
that the “enemy” is converted into a friend.
Peace comes from taking up our cross and following Jesus. That is the peace that Jesus gives us. It is the peace that comes when we live no
longer for ourselves alone, but have become entirely an expression of God’s
self-giving love in the world.
What I have outlined here are the traditional stages of
spiritual development in the Christian tradition: purgation, illumination, and union with
God. The stage of purgation is about
getting our moral house in order and cleansing the lens of perception so that
we can realize that God dwells in us.
This moves us into the stage of illumination, as the Advocate begins to
do Her work and teaches us everything we need to deepen our communion with
God. Finally, in the stage of union our
lives become transparent to God’s word and work in the world. The Truth abides in us and we do the
Truth. We become a symptom of God’s
desire, God’s love for all that She has made.
“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 . . . Do not
let your hearts me troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”[10] Amen.
[1]
John 14:23-24
[2]
Exodus 20:1
[3]
Exodus 20:6
[4]
Deuteronomy 6:5
[5]
Leviticus 19:18
[6]
Leviticus 19:34
[7]
Mark 12:28-34 (cf. Matthew 22:34-40; Luke 10:25-28)
[8]
The Decalogue: Contemporary, Book of Common Prayer, p. 350.
[9]
Robert Hamerton-Kelly, “. . . Not as the World . . .” at http://hamerton-kelly.com/sermons04/05160416.htm.
[10]
John 14:23, 27c
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