Sermon Easter 6, year A, 2026

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Have you ever thought about how odd a statement this is?  If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

We spoke last week about how Jesus is often depicted as ‘the Good Shepherd’ and we love the image of a babe in cradle.  However, we also recalled that a Good Shepherd would fight off the Jackels.  At the end of the Christian year we celebrate Christ the King, glorious in divinity.  We are still in the midst of Easter when we witness Jesus resurrection and next week we recall the Ascension of Christ to the right hand of God.  In bible study we are reading revelation, which drawing from the prophets Daniel and Isaiah envision Jesus with eyes of blazing fire and a two edge sword.  Never forget, Jesus is God, all powerful. I recall the response God gave to Job when Job challenged the acts of God.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
    Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
    Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk,
    or who laid its cornerstone
7 when the morning stars sang together
    and all the heavenly beings[a] shouted for joy?

God is all this and more.  We are created beings and dependant upon God for everything really, and what is it that the Lord requires in return….Love God and Love your neighbour. 

 

There have been many commandments and many recall the famous 10 commandments, but they all boil down to the greatest commandment.  Love God and love what God has created.

Love.  It all boils down to love.  Even that is tempered further because love cannot be mandated.  Cannot be forced. So Christ tells us…if…if you love me….you will keep my commandments.  It isn’t if you fear me you will follow….not if you wish to be rich you will follow…nor because I said so you will follow.  The Lord God, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth decrees…IF you LOVE me, then love me and love your neighbour.

What a strange God we follow, that gives us the option…to chose to love, and choose to obey.  Or not.   We have been given a choice…as Paul told the Athenians

“…so that (we) would search for God and perhaps fumble about for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each one of us.  For 'In him we live and move and have our being';”

How strange is that…that God desires us to love him…not needs us as though he was  “… served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.”  But because despite everything that humanity has done…God loves us.  Indeed, 1st John tells us that “We love because God first loved us”  it is through God’s loving example that we learn how to love…and through that love grow closer to God.

And it is clear in our gospel reading today that God does love us, dearly.   In the gospel Christ is trying to prepare the disciples for his crucifixion, that great sacrificial act of love, and it is equally clear that Christ knows how difficult this is going to be for his disciples. Last week we saw how confused they were when Christ tried to explain that he would be leaving. Today he tries again to leave the disciples with words of comfort and encouragement to hold onto on the grief filled days before his resurrection.

“In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.” 

Words spoken to in love, to a group of people who will face some terrible days ahead and the challenge of having to choose to have faith to still love God when everything around them is falling apart.

I will not leave you orphaned Christ tells them I am in my father and you in me and I in you.  We are one, we are together, regardless of how it feels in any given moment. 

These are words spoken not only to the disciples but to us as well.  We are given the option to love God or leave God.  To obey His commands of love, or to succumb to any number of overwhelming feelings that plague the human existence.  And Christ knows, having felt betrayal, cried in despair, wept with loss and succumbed to anger how powerful feelings and circumstances can be, and so Christ prepares his disciples for that.

Not only will I be with you, says Jesus, but I will also send to you the Advocate, to be with you forever.  To speak up for you, provide council to you, advise and protect you and help you in the midst of the best and the worst of times.  This is the Holy Spirit and the Spirit will abide with you. Always.

I can only imagine how comforting the disciple found these words to be, because I know that I find these to be such words of comfort myself. 

There have been many times when, despite my amazing family, supportive church community, my expensive and lengthy education and diverse life experiences…I simply don’t know what to do.  When I feel bereft.  Alone.  Adrift in a world that overwhelms and threatens to drown me.  This is an experience shared by many of us.   Life is hard.

There are days when we look around and feel abandoned.  As if there is no one there to support or uphold us, to guide and protect us.  And sometimes this can have little to do with who is actually there or how many friends we have.  After all, one can FEEL alone, experience abandonment, even in a crowded room, surrounded by family.  

At times like that, I remember that Christ is here and even more the advocate is here.  I am not left orphaned.  Without identity, without protection, without love.  The Spirit abides with us. The one who laid the foundations of the earth  abides with us.  Loving us so deeply that Christ became human, devesting hisself of power and dying as one of us to ensure we can live like unto him. 

“those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them “

These words feel like an embrace to me.  They bring comfort, reassurance and a reminder of the blessings that I always have and too often forget Christ goes out of his way over and over again, to be with us and to abide with us, and we are told in so many ways that in our deepest, darkest Saturdays there will always be resurrection. Life. Love. 

That God is I AM. That Jesus knows us intimately and personally.  That the Holy Spirit is with us as advocate and guide. We are never alone.  Never orphaned. Quite the opposite, we are in fact, children of God, joint heirs with Christ and God abides in us, and we in God.

One body, one family, in Christ, always.  AMEN.