The Love Command in Action
Easter 6A | John 14:15-21
We get philosophical Jesus this morning, don’t we? Here he is, describing the Advocate and the Trinitarian nature of God. It is all very heady, in that way. And for a lot of people, this is incredibly instructive because they want to dig into the metaphysics to answer the existential nature of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. This answers questions definitively so we can be assured of our governing orthodoxy.
It all seems so certain.
And yet, this is the continuation of the story we dug into last week, when Jesus spoke of The Way and Thomas asked how we’re supposed to know and Philip asked for proof. They were looking for certainty and Jesus was telling them how they would know — that the certainty they want is in something else. And that exchange is moments after Jesus has washed their feet, spoken of how one of them is about to betray them, and that their new commandment, the thing that is most important above all things, is this: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”
Certainty and the obsession with getting this thing perfect isn’t the path many make it out to be. It’s a distraction.
Tangible
We should also note just how abstract and theoretical all of this is. And I think that is what a fixation on certainty does. It seems to desire a promise that stands in for the physical, like writing out a check by hand is physical and tangible. You write the date, take a second to remember which line you write the person’s name and which line spells out the two hundred and zero over one hundred, draw the line to the end of the row, sign it at the bottom. Very physical. Active. And you hand it to the person and they are like yes, you have paid for services rendered, right?
And yet it is all theoretical. A promissory note from one bank to another to transform this promise of money into ten twenty dollar bills (because who breaks hundreds anymore). The only thing tangible about the check is the check itself.
The challenge of church doctrine is how much of it is like that check. The only thing tangible is the paper. And what we make out of it. That is part of what Jesus is revealing to his disciples.
Where Certainty Is
What Thomas and Philip were asking for at the beginning of this chapter is certainty of conviction. It’s giving John the Baptist: tell me I’m backing the right horse. Certainty isn’t tangible. But the anxiety that leads us to find it is. The butterflies going off in the chest. The head swimming with scary outcomes. That stuff really happens in the body.
So the promise of certainty is treated like a check. Give me something to hold onto, that I can deposit on the way home.
And Jesus reorients their vision from a philosophical certainty to a more pragmatic and embodied certainty. Like, No, don’t fixate on something that proves we’re doing the right thing. Scan your environment for signs of life and do the things I’ve said to do. That’s where certainty is.
Still Missing the Point
The appeal then, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” hits like a teacher who has given you, not the answers, but the means of knowing the answers. Go, do what I’ve commanded and you will be good. That is the promise, right?
Now remember the command he just gave them moments earlier is to love one another. So we might, through transitive properties say
If you love me, you will love one another.
That is the work.
And because we’re bound to overthink it and also seek out the most physical and literal response we can, we will try to game out what counts as love, how we might quantify it so that we can evaluate whether we have sufficiently loved and we will do this because we can’t help ourselves and miss the fact that this is exactly what Thomas and Philip were doing just moments before.
It’s About Relationships
As heady as this all is, remember it is Jesus who is trying to reorient the disciples’ relationship to God and to one another. Reminding them that it is both metaphysical and physical. And they are struggling with both parts particularly and the relationship between them.
So Jesus dives into the metaphysical to correct that part before swinging back into the physical to connect it all together.
Love for Jesus leads us to love each other. Knowing Jesus is knowing God. Notice that this isn’t primarily about establishing doctrine about the nature of God and their substance, but about their interconnected relationship with one another.
Note as well that the words Jesus uses for belief aren’t metaphysical, like a list of concepts that he adheres to. In Jesus’s teaching, belief is synonymous with knowing and trusting. It is to speak not only of confidence in a true concept but trust in a true relationship. Knowing Jesus and trusting Jesus is relational. In Jesus, the promise that this is the way to know God is just as relational.
Friends, this isn’t just a promise, it’s sacramental.
Sacramental
The sacraments, remember, “are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.” This means that sacraments are physical and tangible ways to engage with something we can’t see or measure or evaluate. What we have is trust and relationship.
This is what we do when we gather, when we share in communion, when we pray and sing. We are engaging in something that is working at all of the levels. Not just the physical. And not just the metaphysical. It isn’t either/or. Or one over the other. It isn’t about the doctrine and our adherence in an objective calculation. Which means it also isn’t the justification for hatred or abuse or rejection of people for who they associate with or what they do with their lives or where they are from.
Ours is to love. To relate to one another. As in God.
These are commands which help us engage at every level. We engage with the divine project. We engage with our neighbors in the world. And the best part is that these two spaces relate to each other. Because, as we pray the prayer Jesus taught his disciples, we desire to have here what God has made of heaven. That we be, in and with one another, heaven on earth.
Our Work
A few months ago, we took a college visit as a family to Xavier University in Cincinnati. The drive over was easier than we expected, the city more beautiful than we remembered. And as we pulled into the welcoming center parking lot where we would gather to take the tour of campus and ask questions, we noticed the pride flag in the window and inside, we were greeted so warmly. We were seeing signs of something like a homecoming.
We toured the academic buildings with the guide pointing out places people gather and study, how they move about the campus. Our guide took us inside the freshman dorm and we heard about where the sophomores and juniors tend to live, then toured the cafeteria with exceptional vegetarian options. And I was imagining Sophia living here with a kind of surreal honesty. Where they will go for study help and the inevitable trip to the counseling center and where they will snag the late night pizza because they are cramming for finals and forgot to eat.
I could see what was real. What was here and also not yet. And as much as we were just looking at buildings and furniture and the materials of gathering in a place and time, we were seeing community, people hoping and dreaming and discovering life together.
All of this is real, whether we can account for it or not. Which is why the evaluating isn’t our job, because only God can see it all. But we can know that all of this is real, all of it is true because of that relationship. Our relationship. And our work is relationship. That, my friends, is our everything. And it is beautiful.