This is the life Jesus talks about, the life GOD reveals, the life the Holy Spirit inspires us to live. A life of a revealed GOD and the presence of Shalom. A life of hope and opportunity to serve and be served; to love and be loved. A life of true living.
How Jesus reveals GOD’s gifts and we struggle to accept them
Easter 6C | John 14:23-29
Where we left it last week was with Jesus’s new commandment: love. Not just any old love. Not just the familial love and the love we’re taught; not the conditional love or the love we get in exchange for love; but love through generosity and sacrifice and sharing in the splendor of GOD.
The thing is, Jesus keeps going for several more chapters and it gets…a little complicated. Hold onto that love thing.
Remember also that the centerpiece of Jesus’s gospel is found in chapter 11: the literal center of the book, in which Jesus does not heal Lazarus, but raises him from the dead. And Mary doesn’t get it and Martha doesn’t get it and the crowd that gathers doesn’t get it, and even we don’t get it because we want Jesus to save people before they get hurt. We want Jesus to protect and heal. We think healing is about protecting.
We think our story is so black and white as that. The right thing to do in every situation and the wrong thing. Moral and ethical and just.
And this moment doesn’t look right. It looks askew. Jesus should protect him before the bad stuff, not raise him after.
But the curious thing is what he said at the beginning of that narrative, before all of that, he said when he heard the news about Lazarus’s illness:
‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’
It is about glory, about the revealing of GOD. It is not about the tangible, but the intangible revealed. This whole section is full of sight imagery, kicked off with the healing of a blind man. We’re told that GOD is being revealed, GOD is doing a new thing, GOD is showing up, and so we who might follow Jesus, we can see it, behold it, witness the new thing that GOD is doing.
Revealing Love and Glory
The lectionary cuts off two essential verses to today’s portion of the story in John. It is a little redundant, but without verses 21 and 22, we don’t get the setup.:
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.’ Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, ‘Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?’
This is kind of a strange question because this whole journey has been about revealing GOD. This whole walk to Jerusalem has been about revealing GOD. And all along he has been saying that not everybody will get it. Not everyone will see. They’ll miss what is being revealed in Jesus.
So this other Judas’s question is off the mark. But no further off than Mary or Martha or the crowd when it came to the kind of revealing Jesus was doing in Lazarus. No further off than our own questioning of what Jesus is up to, why we think Jesus would only be revealed to us. Why we think we’re the right ones.
Or maybe why we don’t see GOD revealed in the world around us. Why we don’t see the Christly hallmarks of love in our friends and neighbors. Why we long to see GOD and yet feel so far from GOD.
So of course we retreat, don’t we? Often going to those places in which we know we’ll see GOD. The campsite or the lake. Getting up for the sunrise or staying up for the sunset. Or as was the case for me this week, opening the windows and listening to the singing birds and knowing that GOD is here.
Still, the question nags at us. For the command wasn’t to retreat. And it wasn’t to find GOD exactly. It was to love. To love one another. As Jesus has loved us, we share that love.
Which always makes me wonder why we insist on such strict understandings of love. When the love I have received from GOD has been so merciful and forgiving. It has overlooked my faults and given to me so generously. It has been offered at times of great pain without my having to pay for it.
So I wonder how we can withhold that kind of love. Maybe we haven’t all experienced that love. And maybe we don’t all love Jesus. That’s possible.
Still nagging – that strange love – the one thing left for us by Jesus. And what we do? We fight and divide over what love means. How to practice the love Jesus has shared with us. How to be people who love like Jesus.
I’ll tell you, we can’t love like Jesus when we put a price on love.
Peace as Shalom and Sabbath
This command is a departure commandment. This is Jesus leaving and saying this is it, guys! Take with you this one thing.
So, let’s think about it this way. The centerpiece of this gospel we call John is that GOD is revealed to the world in Jesus. And who that GOD is revealed to be is a GOD of love and generosity; a GOD of new life and transformations; a GOD whose message is for everyone but will not be heard by everyone.
Love, not as an emotion, but an action, as in acting out to one another the love that GOD has given us, is central. And as an expression of that love, Jesus gives them something else: peace.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
Don’t forget, though, that he adds:
I do not give to you as the world gives.
Peace, as we know it comes in forms. Peace of mind. Peace of Truce. The Peace before communion.
The word Peace, with its Latin roots, is often defined in negative terms: as in the absence of something. Which may be fitting as Jesus is going away. The absence of war or conflict. The absence of noise or stress. The absence of hatred or abuse.
Very much like that getting away. Away from the bitterness of work or relationships or even church. Getting away and going…putting distance between us and our problems. Going to where problems aren’t present.
This is a natural temptation and a rational decision. For our health, we make the problems go away. Absent. Find peace.
Of course, Peace is not the word Jesus would have used. It isn’t the understanding of peace a good Palestinian Jew would have. Peace to him is not “Peace,” a Latin word, but Shalom. And unlike how we know peace, Shalom is not absence but presence. Presence of holy order. Presence of justice. Presence of commitment. Presence of love and reconciliation. Presence of honor and dignity.
Shalom is not a getaway, a cabin in the woods but a reconciliation in the city. It is not a ceasefire, but a destruction of weapons and an offer of friendship. It is not laws which discriminate but systems which protect our weakest and most vulnerable.
Shalom is not the search for a missing GOD but the opening of our eyes to a GOD who is already present.
This is why Sabbath law is so important, because it isn’t just vacation, time away for rest and relaxation, a time for recharging; but also a time of connection, presence and taking the time to really be here. So that we might see GOD revealed in our community, in our love, in the Shalom we share.
May we aspire to Shalom, not Peace
This command to love, this offering of Shalom, this opportunity to find GOD in our midst, not solely in our solitude are invitations for us to see the GOD already revealed. To participate in a reordering and transformation of the world that is already begun. To not escape pain, but to find joy through vibrant living.
We aren’t better on the mountain, hoping to build tents for Jesus and his Old Testament friends. We aren’t better in our personal initiatives and the blessing of a life well lived. We are living. And with the love of Christ in our hearts, we may live way better than well or right or shrewdly; we might live vibrant lives of joy and true understanding.
Lives that are not only for ourselves or for our pleasure; lives of kindness and the absence of conflict; lives of stasis and indeterminate growth. Vibrant lives – true eternal life in the world GOD has created; in the world to which GOD has entrusted us; in the world GOD continues to reconcile and redeem.
This is the life Jesus talks about, the life GOD reveals, the life the Holy Spirit inspires us to live. A life of a revealed GOD and the presence of Shalom. A life of hope and opportunity to serve and be served; to love and be loved. A life of true living.
This life in the world is the life Jesus reveals. A life with GOD and one another. A life of love from GOD and to one another. A life of justice and friendship and hope. A life of sharing in and revealing to one another the greatest gifts from GOD: Love, Life, Shalom.
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