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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
On this Sixth Sunday of Easter, we might wonder whether or not there is so much reason to praise the Lord! In today’s Gospel Reading (you are always welcome and encouraged to refer back to it on the bulletin insert or in your own Bible), moments ago we heard Jesus say, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” A simple, straightforward hearing of that statement leads us to ask ourselves whether or not we really keep Jesus’s commandments and so whether or not we really love Him (Lenski, ad loc Jn 14:15, 994). We might quibble with the meaning of the Greek word that the English Standard Version translated “keep”, which other versions translate as “obey” (NIV, NEB), especially since the meaning is broader than that and also includes “retaining” and “cherishing” Jesus’s commandments, but, to be sure, we are to retain and cherish Jesus’s commandments in such a way as to then carry them out or “do” them (AAT). When we really think about our lives in light of the Ten Commandments, we must admit that we do not really keep those Commandments so as to obey them in everything we think, say, and do. And, if our keeping those Commandments is a measure of whether or not we love Jesus, then we really do not love Jesus, especially not with the highest kind of self-sacrificial love with which He loves us and with which He calls us to love our neighbors (John 13:34)—from our most‑intimate neighbors in our immediate families to our least‑intimate neighbors on the other side of the world from us.
As Jesus continues teaching on the night when He was betrayed, Jesus then says that He Himself will ask the Father, and that the Father will give us another Helper to be with us forever, namely the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. The people of Athens to whom St. Paul spoke in today’s First Reading are a good example of those who did not know God (Acts 17:16-31, so the COW Lectionary Summary). Our loving Jesus and keeping His commandments may or may not be linked in the Gospel Reading to Jesus’s asking the Father to give us the Holy Spirit by way of the Holy Spirit’s leading us to love Jesus and keep His commandments (compare Schneider, TDNT 2:673, and Lenski, ad loc Jn 14:16, 995), but the world’s inability to receive the Spirit, in so far as it is the world (Morris, ad loc Jn 14:17, 577 n.48, citing Bultmann, 616), only reminds us further that by nature without the Holy Spirit we ourselves cannot love Jesus or even begin to keep His commandments. But, Jesus goes on to say, that His disciples—and so also all of us who believe—do know the Spirit, for He dwells with us now and always will be in us. As St. Paul told the people of Athens of God’s command to repent before God’s judgment came, so the Holy Spirit, with us now and always in us, leads us to repent. When we turn in sorrow from our sin and trust God to forgive our sin, then God’s judgment does not condemn us to the hell our sinful nature and actual sins deserve, but God’s judgment acquits us in light of Jesus’s suffering the hell of separation from God for us on the cross.
Next in these verses that follow right after last week’s Gospel Reading (John 14:1-14), Jesus tells the disciples that He would not leave them as orphans but that He would come to them, after the little while that He would be separated from them by His death on the cross for them and for us. Jesus says that, because He lives, they also—and also we—will live. Jesus says that when He comes to us we will know that He is in the Father and we are in Him and He is in us. By virtue of their one Divine substance, the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—are in one another but not confused with one another. They work together as one in creating, redeeming, and sanctifying the World, although only the Son takes on human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, suffers under Pontius Pilate, is crucified, dies, and is buried for us. Through the asking of the Son, the Father sends the Holy Spirit (John 15:26; 17:7), Who, as the Spirit of truth, guides us into all truth (John 16:13). By the Holy Spirit, Jesus manifests Himself to us, and so we know that we are loved by the Father, and so we love Him and both have and keep His commandments.
Truly Jesus left His twelve disciples for a little while and, after three days, He repeatedly came to them in a number of what we call “post-resurrection appearances”, until He ascended into heaven and so changed the primary way that He continued to come and be with them and so also comes and is with us. We misunderstand, however, if we think that Jesus somehow has left us altogether and sent the Holy Spirit as some sort of second-rate substitute. The Holy Spirit truly is another Helper but not a qualitatively different Helper, and the Holy Spirit helps through God’s Word. God’s Word is, as today’s Introit reminded us (Psalm 119:89-93; antiphon Psalm 119:105), a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. If His law—that is, in Hebrew, His torah, or His “teaching” in its broadest sense of all of His Word—if His law is not our delight, we perish in our afflictions, so we do not forget His “precepts”—or “commandments” in their broadest sense of law and Gospel—for by them He gives us life. So, we “delight” in His Gospel: we hold sacred the reading of His Word, and we gladly hear His Word preached and otherwise learn it in Bible classes and studies. God’s Word combined with water in Holy Baptism saves us who believe, as today’s Epistle Reading says (1 Peter 3:13-22). Father, Son, and Holy Spirit come to us at the Baptismal Font, and, as we heard in last week’s Gospel Reading (John 14:1-14), They abide in us and we in Them as we feed on Jesus’s flesh and drink His blood under the forms of bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar (John 6:56), and so we live because of Him (John 6:57), and so, abiding in Him, we bear much fruit (John 15:4-5), such as good works according to our various callings in life.
Earlier I said that a simple, straightforward hearing of Jesus’s statement that, if we love Him, we will keep His commandments, leads us to ask ourselves whether or not we really keep Jesus’s commandments and so whether or not we really love Him. What we might miss in the English translation of the particular Greek construction is that Jesus speaks as if those things are facts: we do in fact love Him, and we do in fact keep His commandments (Wenham, 249; Lenski, ad loc Jn 14:15, 994). As the Holy Spirit is in us and so as we are in Christ, we love Him and keep His commandments. Though with our sinful natures still clinging to us in this life, we fail to love Him and keep the Ten Commandments perfectly, with repentance and faith we live every day in His forgiveness of sins, and we extend His and our own forgiveness to our neighbors. As we prayed in today’s Collect, by the Holy Spirit we think those things that are right, and, by His merciful guiding, we accomplish them. As I have been saying, “The Holy Spirit leads us to love Jesus and keep His commandments”.
Our former member Beth Nicol, who, as we say, has now transferred to the Church Triumphant, certainly was led by the Holy Spirit to love Jesus and keep His commandments. Nearly every time I visited her and Don with the Lord’s Supper, whether at their home or in the hospital, she would ask in general and, in some cases, in particular about the people of the congregation for she loved us all very much. Her family and friends remark at length about her great love for God in them. She was not left, nor has she left anyone, as orphans, but Jesus came to her and has taken her to be with Himself in the many rooms of His Father’s house (Roehrs-Franzmann, 98). She in her soul now lives before the Lord, and, when the Lord’s time is right, she and all of us who believe will live before the Lord not only as souls but also in glorified bodies forever. No matter what, we can and do praise the Lord already now, for “The Holy Spirit leads us to love Jesus and keep His commandments”
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +