True peace, the Spirit, and actually living
Easter 6C  |  John 14:23-29

The lectionary gave us an odd cut here because it doesn’t want the first part of the passage just yet — it is a little too Pentecosty. Jesus and his disciples are in the midst of the Last Supper, they’ve done the footwashing and the eating and Judas Iscariot has left. That’s all in chapter 13. Then in chapter 14, Jesus is preparing them for his departure.

It starts with the “don’t let your hearts be troubled” passage with the place and the going and the many rooms — that favorite passage we often hear at funerals. He’s talking about going away, about their knowing the way to follow, even without him. How he isn’t leaving them with nothing. Then Jesus starts talking about the Advocate — the Spirit. And with that, he says:

“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 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?”

— John 14:18-22

This is the prompt for today’s gospel reading. 

The Promise

Jesus offers the disciples comfort after delivering the bad news in chapter 13 — of betrayal — and the good news — of love. He is talking once again about leaving, of going away. And that they can’t join him. A hard pill to swallow for people who have been following him for so long. 

And when we say follow, we mean that in quite literal terms. Disciples literally follow their rabbi, walking where they walk, speaking what they speak, observing every action in hopes of gleaning from it, embodying it themselves, becoming something quite like them.

Following is a practice of active learning, of participating in a process of becoming. Jesus has spent this time preparing them to live without him. To lead others who will one day follow them.

He delivers that word to them now, that the time is growing short. They will have this opportunity very soon. 

But he gives them a promise no other rabbi can offer. Not just the path and the teaching, but the promise of divine presence with them. Not in himself, but in something else — a holy spirit he calls The Advocate. Something else. Something immaterial. As a continuance of the mission. To follow and to guide them, to teach them. A spirit, present. Like a ghost.

There is also a lot going on here.

• A promise of God and Jesus both present.
• An Advocate’s coming to them to teach them.
• A reminder to keep commandments.
• Jesus bringing peace and leaving peace with them.
• He doesn’t give as the world gives.
• Jesus’s departure and believing.

What are we supposed to focus on? And what should we glean from this? I suspect we draw conclusions that fit into our existing Trinitarian frameworks and the sense of Jesus going away, reminding us of the Ascension, which we’ll celebrate this week, and of Pentecost, ten days later.

The promise Jesus makes to them, of comfort, love, and presence is in contrast to the world. This is why he can say “I do not give to you as the world gives.” 

Because we all know what the world gives, don’t we? Promises of frustration and pain. Of going it alone and being dissatisfied. 

Our world has, for thousands of years, tried to order around power and control. It has used violence and war, oppression and exploitation, slavery and wages to promise security and deliver suffering. It is not a natural character of humanity so much as the product of fear and hubris. When given the chance, people work together and protect each other. It takes fear and zealotry to send people into our most fervent and disastrous behaviors. Which is why tyrants are so keen to use those methods to control us.

Jesus is different.

He reminds us that God is love. So all things ordered under God are ordered by love. Not power or control. Not wealth or personal comfort. Love, compassion, generosity, justice, peace.

“I do not give to you as the world gives.” 

Because Jesus gives mercy when the world gives revenge.
Hope when the world gives nihilism.
Compassion when the world gives indifference.

Justice when the world keeps giving more and more to the wealthy and finding nothing for the poor, keeps terrorizing the weak and protecting the strong, keeps protecting the genocidal and blaming the murdered.

Jesus gives generosity and abundance  when the world steals and cries of scarcity.

Peace when the world keeps pretending more war and violence will bring us what we most want.

Jesus loves. We aren’t getting that from a world so committed to embodying its opposite.

“I do not give to you as the world gives.” 

Good! The world keeps giving us the wrong stuff! Impatience and greed, punishment and hatred, fear and anxiety. It keeps promising us stuff that will never ever make us happy. Or safe. Or feel truly alive. The world doesn’t love us. And it hates when we learn to love each other.

Jesus’s Promise is Natural.

People are naturally drawn to compassion. We are designed to love and to work together. The lie the world keeps offering is that we shouldn’t trust each other. Or work together. Or even love one another.

But for Christians, that is a fundamental rejection of Jesus’s command to his followers: to love one another. To love the stranger in our midst. And the person next to us. The poor and the hungry, the sick and the infirmed, the hopeless and the despondent, the prisoner and the immigrant. We are to welcome the refugee as neighbor, as one of us.

This promise, to be with us, to support us and teach us, to guide us and love us in every age, in every moment, is a gift most generous and improbable. It is a gift of devotion and of relationship, of intimacy and grace. It is for us in our belief and in Jesus’s belief in us.

This promise is peace. Peace for us and through us and with us and within us. It is a way and a practice. It is security and it is love. The promise is all of these things that make our lives more vibrant and real, more full of grace and hope. More vital and like the thing we hope for. 

This is cutting a rug on the dance floor, skinny-dipping in a stream, or playing a recital in front of the people who love us most. A time, a place, a people, full of love, tearing up or laughing or singing along or putting their hands into the air and saying Thank you!