Abiding, Obeying, Loving

John 14:15–21 NRSV

15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. 18 “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19 In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 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.”

Where do you call home? You probably woke up there this morning. Think, for a moment, of your home. Your apartment, your condo, your house. Think of your housemates, perhaps family, perhaps a roommate or two. Maybe a dog (shout out to Feather) or cat, or multiples of all of the above.

Think of the current state of the home. If you’re like me, you’re thinking of the yard work you’ve done and that remains to be done. You might think of toys strewn all over the floor, markers of fun and growing and life and also a little bit of frustration and reality of what it means to be a parent.

Think of your address. The numbers on your house. Your phone number, this identifier that helps others know how to get in touch and provides you a place to reach out to the world.

In this season of life, I’m thinking about all the projects that need to be done around the house. New paint, new boards on the deck, replacing and replanting for the new season of growth. I also think of letting go — pairing down, simplifying, focusing on what truly matters.

What do you think about when you think about home?

Jesus opens his teaching in this passage with an identifying statement: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” He goes on to describe how the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, will be given to those who follow him, love him, obey him and abide in the Father’s, the Mother’s, the Creator’s love.

The Spirit will abide in us as we follow the way of Jesus.

Abiding

The idea of our home, our place of refuge and rest, is wrapped up in this text as we think of what it means to live out our days in the presence of the Spirit of God. We hear that we will know the Spirit when the Spirit comes to us, we will know the Spirit like we know the God’s love. The Spirit will Abide in us, that is, the Advocate, the Spirit will take up home in us. The text reminds us that the Spirit will be in us. Among us. Near and dwelling with us.

When I think about home I also think about my mother. Today is Mother’s Day. And while this annual holiday is certainly fraught with layers of meaning, some good and some quite difficult to bear, we can idealize God as the Mother who will never leave us, who will always make a welcome space in Her home for us, who will invite us in to abide and find our rest in Her loving arms.

Today, Jesus is reminding you and me that we are invited to abide in the loving presence of God and, not on our own but by God’s immense grace, we are given an Advocate, the Spirit, to come abide in and with us. We will not be left alone. We have not been orphaned. We have been called beloved and a part of the family of God, each and every one of us.

Before we go on, can you hear that good news? That good news that you have a family in the love of God. That others here, gathered around, are also members of that family, blessed with the real presence of God’s Spirit in their lives? That this is a marker that says you each belong and are a part of a community of love and mercy and grace together?

Can we celebrate that? Do we dare? We are not orphaned. We are not left behind or pushed away. In Christ, who gives us the Spirit, we are welcomed and called children, family, friends of God.

I know many times we feel orphaned. Many times we feel cast out, pushed aside. I know from experience that so many times, it’s easy to feel like an outsider or like I or we don’t matter. But that is not the way of Jesus. We have a promise in this person, Jesus the Christ, that we are now members of a family where God’s love pours out to us and between us abundantly.

You belong. You are no longer orphaned. You are family.

Obeying

Thinking about our homes and thinking about your families and how we find a home and family in God’s Spirit…this is powerful. But it’s also thick with layers of resistance and skepticism.

What is the next thing Jesus says, after he reminds us we are not orphaned? It’s that he is going away. How are we supposed to participate in this family when our friend has left, when our Mother God feels so far off?

Think back to your home. What house rules do you have? Take your shoes off at the door? No dessert before dinner? Pick up after yourself?

As a teenager, I could list of all the house rules we had and then, with a huge sigh and “ugh”, roll my eyes at WHY oh WHY we needed them and why I had to obey them.

Do we have house rules here? If this is a home for sinners and a family for the broken and orphaned, do we have rules that order our lives? Sure, of course we do.

But let’s not conflate house rules with obeying this Way that Jesus is inviting us to join, with this life that is infused and saturated with the Presence of the Spirit.

Back to the top, vs. 15, Jesus says that “if you love me, you will keep my commandments.” He goes on to say that “they who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me.”

This obedience is different than house rules or strict laws about etiquette and decorum. This is about ordering life in a new way, a way ordered by love and love alone.

Hear it again: If you love me, you will keep my commandments. They how have my commandments and keep them are those who love me.

This obeying is about understanding and co-participating. It’s that the people who know and receive the Spirit of God are now co-laborers, co-responsible for upholding the way of love. If we know Christ and know the love of being a part of this family of God, then you and I will work together to obey and follow in the way of love Christ has set out for us. We will do this with the help of the Spirit. We will adopt these ways in our lives, let them wash over us and become our ways of being. Jesus acknowledges, to live this loving way out is foreign to the world.

The house of the world says the rules must be followed to maintain order and structure. The house of Christ echoes out obedient love because it is the way we extend the welcome and grace of God that has first been extended to us. Not out of obligation, not out of guilt or compulsion. But out of a deep knowing that as we share love and give to one another, we draw closer to the heart of what we are made for, we align with our identities as God has made us to be.

So what does keeping the commandments of God look like? What does obedience look like?

Loving

Quite simply and with profound depth and variation: Obedience in the house of God looks like love.

Sadly, I’m continually struck by how estranged and resistant we are to one another. How our world is pulled apart by competition and disdain. How getting ahead trumps giving away what we have. How distrust is so much more commonly practiced than radical hospitality.

What are we to do? How are we to see the goodness of God in this, the land of the living, if we are surrounded by back-biting and me-first ethics?

Truly, what we are doing here as people who are given the Holy Spirit, people who are trying to abide in the house of God, is to set up an alternative, subversive, generous and lavish community of love without limits. If we love Christ, we keep the commandments he gives us, with the help of the Spirit.

What then, are the commandments? What then, are the ways of the house of God?

Bless and pray for those who persecute you.

Turn the other cheek when you are wronged.

Give away what you have and share with the poor.

Welcome the stranger, the immigrant, the outcast.

Practice radical hospitality and welcome.

Heal the sick.

Restore the captives and prisoners to community.

Go the second mile.

Seek first this kingdom, this house of God, above all things.

And.

Love.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength AND love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Love without limits, love your people and love your enemies.

Friends, we are blessed with the gift of God’s presence, the Holy Spirit.

Not orphaned, not estranged, not left out.

The Spirit draws us in, welcomes us, calls us family and beloved.

Receive this good news today. Amen.