Sermon preached by E. Suzanne Wille, Seminarian

St. Paul’s on the Green, Norwalk, Connecticut

The Sixth Sunday of Easter – April 27, 2008

 Today’s Gospel is so gorgeous, so promising! When I read it carefully, really study it, I feel encouraged by the promises that Jesus makes and a little daunted by what he is asking of us. The problem, though, when it’s proclaimed at church, or even when I read over it quickly, is that it’s easy to sort of glaze over, what with all the directions and repetitions.

 Jesus says, “I will ask the Father . . . He will give you another Advocate . . .You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you . . . I am coming to you . . . I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you.” I get lost in the pronouns and the directions. Who’s coming and who’s going?

 I start to think about those diagrams that football coaches make on dry-erase boards, with circles and squares and triangles, arrows drawn between and around them. Jesus is with us now, but is leaving, but will return. In the meantime, while Jesus is leaving, the Holy Spirit, here called the Paraclete, will come down to us.

 Or, alternatively, I am reminded of the first few days of Algebra class when Jesus describes how he’s in the Father, We’re in him, and he’s in us. It makes me think, if A equals B, and B equals C . . . then A equals C! So if Jesus is in the Father, and we are in Jesus, then are we in the Father? It’s no wonder that some of us get a little lost in John’s Gospel!

 It’s helpful to remember why Jesus is talking to his disciples this way. He is giving this speech, his farewell discourse, right after the Last Supper. He has washed his disciples’ feet and predicted his betrayal. Suddenly, the disciples are aware that their time with Jesus is coming to an end, and they’re protesting, trying to keep him with them. They’re incredulous and frightened. Jesus is trying to comfort them, trying to explain that he is not leaving them forever. That, in fact, they will be taken care of by God and that they can continue to love him even when he is no longer physically present with them.

 And that’s when he spins out the two gorgeous ideas. Ideas that are less like diagrams and equations and more like a dance with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, twirling about one another, joined and joyful. And we’re called to enter that dance. The first idea is that we can enter the dance in love: we can be faithful to Jesus by loving Him and we can love Him by being faithful to Him. Secondly, he makes clear that even after he leaves, we will be cared for by another, who will be sent, just as Jesus was, to act as our guide and comforter, our leader in the dance.

 Let’s start with the first idea, that loving God and following his commands are one and the same. He frames this passage by saying at the beginning: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” And then at the end reversing the statement: “They who keep my commandments are those who love me.”

 This is not the same sort of statement that we might make to our spouses, partners, or children, when we say, “If you loved me, you would . . . .” Fill in the blank however you like—spend more time with me, listen to me, take out the garbage. Jesus is not making a conditional statement. Rather, he is saying that loving him and keeping his commandments are identical. In other words, we cannot say we love God, love Jesus, we cannot enter the dance, and then ignore his commandments.

 In this case Jesus is referring to the two commandments he gave to his disciples and, thus, to us. First, the Great Commandment: Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And the second command, which he gives in the chapter before and after this one: Love one another as I have loved you. Jesus exemplifies that love in his getting down on hands and knees to wash his disciples’ feet, even Judas’s. This makes the whole equation of loving Jesus with keeping His commands both radically beautiful and very, very hard.

 If we want to enter into the dance with the Trinity, first we must dance with each other. It’s not enough to pray to God, come to church, or give money to charity, although all of those things are good and necessary. What Jesus is asking of us is that we love God with all that we have, that we love our neighbors as if they are our very selves. While those two are difficult, the last is nearly impossible: We must love one another, right here, in our families, in our workplaces, in our churches, the people who delight us, the people who annoy us, the people who betray us, the graceful dancers, and those who step on our toes.

 We are to love them, just as Christ has loved us. There is no end to, nor wiggle room in, that command! We must pour ourselves out in love to others, grab their hands and dance with them. THAT is how we love Jesus, by loving other people!

 The second part of Jesus’ gorgeous message is that we don’t have to try to figure this all out on our own. Jesus promises us that he is sending the Holy Spirit to be with us after he is gone. Here, however, Jesus uses the term “Paraclete,” which is translated in many different ways in the different translations of the Bible. Paraclete can be rendered as Advocate, Comforter, Counselor, Helper, and Friend. And a first or second century reader would have heard all of those nuances with the word “Paraclete.” However it is translated, it means we have a person of the Trinity with us, abiding in us, helping us to live into the commandments Christ has left us. It means that even though Jesus, who is the Truth, leaves, we have the Spirit of Truth, to guide us and encourage us after he is gone. The Holy Spirit helps us act out the Christian life, teaching us the dance of love.

 So, the big message, as it so often is with Jesus, is LOVE. Loving Jesus means loving others. Loving others is how we love Jesus. God loves us so much that God sent Jesus to be with us at a particular time in history. God loves us so much that God sends the Holy Spirit to comfort and guide all of us, in all lands and all times, after Jesus was crucified.

 We don’t have to wait until we die to see God, Father, son, and Holy Spirit, joined in the joyful dance of the Trinity. We can experience the dance of God right now, in community, by loving one another. That might sound corny or new age to some folks. But this is the mystery of the Trinity—the mystery that God is three-in-one, a community in unity, a God who delights in the love flowing between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the divine dance. God does not exist, one person, alone; rather, our God is the God of relationship, of love in relationship, love in action. There is no other way to be in the Godhead. As Jesus says, He is in the Father, we are in Jesus, and He in us. As St. Paul tells us in the reading today, in God we live and move and have our being.

 But we’re not lifted up, individually, to participate in the life of God. We don’t dance alone. It’s not just Jesus and me. I can’t stress this enough. We participate in the life of God by participating in one another’s lives, our messy, uncomfortable, frustrating, angst-producing lives. And unless we get in there and, stumbling, begin to dance with one another, we will not be part of the community of God. The only way we can manage to follow Christ’s commands is through the Holy Spirit. But unless we follow those commands, we won’t experience Christ in the here and now. Only through the Holy Spirit can we learn the dance. But God will only be with us if we clasp one another’s hands, link arms, and find the rhythm in which we can love one another. As St. Augustine says, “Without God, we cannot, but without us, God will not.” Only if we join the daily dance with one another, will we enter the ecstatic, eternal dance of God.