Keep My Word: Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter

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.

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[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

Us AND Them?

SERMON ON THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER 

St. James Episcopal Church San Francisco, California April 28, 2013

By Elizabeth Nelson

Lectionary: Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:13-35

“The Spirit told me to go with them, and not to make a distinction between them and us.”

Today’s readings start to direct our attention on beyond the events of Easter, to help us get ready for what’s going to happen next. The first thing that’s going to happen next is the coming of the Holy Spirit, at Pentecost – a Spirit that will transform Jesus’ disciples from a baffled, frightened group that meets only behind locked doors into a cadre of men and women infused with the same conviction of God’s love that infused Jesus ... men and women made fearless and plain-spoken and compassionate and creative in the way they remember Jesus being, but that they themselves have never been before. That’s the first thing that’s going to happen next.

The last thing that’s going to happen next – and all the New Testament writers believed it would happen soon – is God making a new heaven and a new earth ... where not just individual souls, not just some human communities, but all creation will be infused with the conviction of God’s love; where anything in our natures –anything in Nature! – that’s governed by hunger and fear and pain and decay and death will be no more, and all things will be made new. Someday soon. Any millennium now.

But today’s Gospel takes us back before the coming of the New Creation, back before the coming of the Holy Spirit, back before Easter. It takes us back to the night before the Crucifixion, and Jesus is telling his disciples – his little ones, his kids – that he’s going to be leaving them soon, telling them what they need to do after they can’t see him any longer. And what they need to do is: Love one another. Love one another the same way Jesus has loved them.

That’s the Gospel teaching that we’re given today: Love one another. And in case we’re in any doubt about what “love” looks like, or in case we’re in any doubt about who’s included in “one another,” we’re given this story from the Acts of the Apostles, about Peter and his fellow Christians.

Most of today’s reading from Acts, Chapter 11 is taken up with Peter telling a story that got told once already in Chapter 10: about the vision God sent him, about how he was summoned to the home of a Gentile who’d been told by an angel to listen to what Peter had to say, about how that Gentile and his household responded to Jesus’ message when Peter shared it with them. There’s one detail from Chapter 10 that nobody mentions in Chapter 11, possibly because it’s too heinous to say out loud: The man who summoned Peter, the Gentile whose house Peter and his companions visited, the Gentile Peter baptized and welcomed as a fellow believer, was not just any Gentile; he was a Roman Centurion. He was part of the army of occupation that was making life miserable for the people of Israel. He was a brother officer of the men who had nailed Jesus to the cross.

I’ve been trying to make real to myself what it could have been like for Peter to get that summons and answer it, what it could have been like for the community of believers in Jerusalem to find out about it after the fact. All I’ve come up with is a really bad analogy. I apologize for it in advance, and I’m going to share it with you anyway.

When I try to feel my way into this story, I find myself remembering what my own life was like in late 2003, early 2004. The war in Iraq had been going on for several months, and I could still barely breathe with how grieved I was over that war and how alienated I felt by the decisions and actions of my country’s government. I was stumbling around, with no previous experience in activism, trying to find a way to live out my convictions. I had done some reading; I had stood with others holding up some signs in some public places; I had written a couple of letters to some people in Washington (okay, maybe more than a couple of letters); I had helped to start up the prayer for peace and justice that still goes on after the 10 o’clock service here at St. James.

In the scope of the empire – not even a blip on the radar.

Just suppose that, during that time, there’d come a knock at my door one day and two men in neat dark suits had said to me, “Ms. Nelson, we work for Vice President Cheney. He’s been told that he should listen to what you have to say about the situation in Iraq. If you’ll come with us now, please, we’ll take you to him.”  That did not happen. If it had, though, I can imagine myself having a couple of reactions – at least a couple of reactions – one after the other:

First: I’m supposed to talk to him? Seriously, me? And then: I’m supposed to talk to him? Seriously, him? I can imagine also how some of my friends here in San Francisco might have reacted if they had heard about an invitation like that, after the fact: You went where? You talked to who? You told him what?

If that had happened, it would have taken the Holy Spirit – plus a truly awesome and explicit vision – to bring me, in that situation, to the understanding that Peter came to: “The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.” Because, I’m sorry, in that situation – in many situations – the distinction between Them and Us is perfectly clear to me ... and I’m guessing it’s clear to you, too. You and I may disagree about whether (for example) Mr. Cheney is one of Them or one of Us, and that’s fine. But I’ll bet all the money in my pockets that you do have a Them. I have a Them ... several sets of Them. Those early believers in Jerusalem had a Them. It’s human nature to distinguish between Us and Them.

And it’s the nature of God’s Love to pour out its healing and forgiveness and creativity and renewal on Them, the same way it pours those things out on Us. When Jesus commands us to love one another the way he loves, he is commanding us to love Them.

That’s today’s Gospel. Is it good news? Think for a minute about Them, about who you believe Them to be. No distinction between Them and Us. Seriously, is that good news?

This is where we need the Holy Spirit to infuse us with the conviction of God’s love. It’s where we need the reminder that love is defined, always, by what we do, not always by what we feel. It’s where we need each other – to share love and share stories, to challenge one another to keep widening the circle of Us. 

And maybe it’s where we need the vision of a new heaven and a new earth ... the end of division and conflict and suffering, all creation united in the life of God’s love. Someday soon. Any millennium now.

Jesus told his disciples, “The same way I have loved you, you should love one another.”

Peter told his fellow believers, “The Spirit told me to go with them, and not to make a distinction between them and us .... and who was I that I could hinder God?” God, help us. Come, Holy Spirit! Alleluia. Amen.