IF You Love Me

Sunday, May 1, 2005
Easter 6
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 14:15-21

15 ’If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. 18 ’I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21They 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.’

The setting is in the hospital room where Debra Winger’s character, Emma, will soon be dying. The father, Flap, played by Jeff Daniels, brings the three children in for one last goodbye time with their mommy. The daughter, Melanie, is barely a toddler, so there’s no real understanding of what is about to happen to her. The younger son, Teddy, is probably 6 or 7, maybe a little older, and all he can do is cry. The oldest son, Tommy, is supposed to be maybe 10 or 11 years old. He is old enough to understand, old enough to hurt, and old enough to be angry.

What makes movies so compelling, I’ve come to understand, is the luxury of time and thought. Events are scripted, scenes are thought out and measured, each word weighed and pondered. The result is a portrayal of a life we WISH we could live. I don’t mean that we wish we experienced or had everything we see on the big screen or watch when we pop in a video tape or a DVD, but it is in the fullness of the thoughts expressed in supposed times of tragedy, stress, or calamity that we wish we could live. It’s the sense of “I wish I had thought to say something like that in … such-and-such a situation” … or … “why didn’t THAT come out of my mouth instead of the blank stare they SAW?” Emma, after saying goodbye to Melanie and Teddy, asks Tommy to stay behind. The younger children have both had their cry, Melanie cried mainly because Teddy was crying, but Tommy stood back, sullen, silent and withdrawn. When they are alone Emma starts to talk to her son, and it is one of those speeches that you rarely get to hear in real life, unless you happen to be very lucky, or very blessed. She speaks to him in a straightforward, reasonable tone of voice, and quickly lets him know that she realizes exactly what he is feeling and why he is feeling like that, and tells him that it’s okay to feel that way, that even though he is probably going to hate her for dying for a long time, he needs to know that it doesn’t change the fact that, HOWEVER he feels toward her, she will always, always love him. To be honest, I don’t remember if he breaks down and cries and falls on her bed hugging her or if I just remember that in my head, and he actually just stands there and looks at her in that somewhat coolly dispassionate way young boys have sometimes.

What stands out in my memory is that Emma was making the most of the time she had left with her family.

Jesus seems to be doing something similar throughout the 14th chapter of John.

He’s trying to pry the disciples’ heads open and pour as much of himself into them as he can. Last week we heard his words of reassurance telling the disciples that, even though HE wouldn’t be staying with them, he was going to prepare a place for them, where they, and by grace we, will one day join him.

In this second group of verses, he continues in the same vein, telling them again of what – and more importantly who is to come: the Holy Spirit.

As you may note from the title of today’s message, what struck me was that first two letter word in verse fifteen: IF. The great conditional conjunction.

Did you know that “if” can also be written with two f’s? IFF. It’s an abbreviation used in mathematical language, including Logic. I took a class in logic in college the same semester I started working as a night clerk. It was an Eight O’clock class. It’s a wonder I remember ANYTHING from it.

But IFF (spell out IFF) is the abbreviation of the phrase “IF and ONLY IF”. It signals a biconditional statement. In other words, the ONLY WAY that either of the two statements can be true is if the other is true.

So here’s a question: was Jesus using “IF” in a biconditional way?

If you love me, (then) you will keep my commandments.

In reading it, how much weight do you give that little word? Does it stop you, or do you read on to the rest of the verses, dwelling on the coming of the ‘Advocate’, the ‘Spirit of Truth’, the one whom you know because he abides in you? Do you hear him saying “the ONLY way you’ll keep my commandments is if you love me?”

What kind of a burden does that place on us? As believers, as followers, as imitators of his, as disciples, as ‘little Christs’ … do we take on the weight of that expectation unthinkingly, haphazardly, with little thought to the consequences of dropping that ball, or do we take it on knowing ahead of time that we are bound to fail at one point or another? That we are, after all, human, frail creatures of dust?

I think Jesus was presenting us with the goal, and at the same time letting us know that HE knew we wouldn’t always be there for HIM. After all, as we read last week in the last verses of chapter 13, he’d just told Peter that he would betray him three times before the rooster crowed that very night.

This is in the same conversation.

And that conversation continues today. Every time we read scripture, and open ourselves to the Holy Spirit’s guidance in our reading, we pick up that thread. Every time we enter into prayer we pick up that thread. Every time we extend a helping hand, share a kind word, of hope, of encouragement, of love, we are weaving that thread into the tapestry that is the glory of God, the body of Christ, on earth.

Jesus tells us that he will reveal himself to us and that in that revealing we will know that God is in him, and that He, Jesus, is in us, through the Holy Spirit. In some sense, that means we are witness, we are participants, in the trinity, not as equals, but as servants and disciples. We have a high calling. To speak grace and live love to a world that in truth, knows neither.

When we join together in prayer, we are communing not only with each other, but with the Holy Lord God. There is nothing more important for us to do but to spend time with the one who made us and loves us.

This Thursday, we have an opportunity to join with other people of faith across the nation and lift up prayers for the people, for the world, and for our future. Though there will be a meeting at Beulah Baptist Church that evening, it is not necessary that you attend. I’d encourage you to list your name on the sign up sheet for a half-hour session of prayer. You can do that from wherever you happen to be at that hour of the day. You don’t have to be here to do it. As we know, prayer can happen in any context.

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means we get to consciously, intentionally, purposely connect with fellow Christians in a concentrated effort to make a difference … perhaps in our world at large, but on a local level, and more specifically, on a personal level. We’ve heard or read the saying “Prayer changes things”. I think prayer mostly changes the one praying.

Let’s pray.