Podcast of "Plural" (MP3)
Acts 17:22-31
Psalm 66:8-20
1Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
As I have said before, all translation is interpretation. One of the shortcomings of English is that we don’t have different words for “you” as a singular person and “you” as a group of people. God bless Texas
Jesus says, “If you love me you will obey what I command.” This is relatively easy to figure out when you think of “you” in the singular. It’s not always easy to do, but it’s easy to figure out. I am called to do what Jesus commands. I am called to follow his commandments. When I do this, this is the sign that I love God. Wonderful! Glorious!
I’m responsible for my own actions. I am responsible for my walk with God. I am responsible for how I live my life. But when taken to the extreme, this means that I am not my brother’s keeper. I don’t have any responsibility beyond my own reach. What I do is my business and what you do is your business.
Jesus says, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of Truth.” On the request of my Lord and Savior, the Father will send the Spirit of Truth to be with me forever. I will forever be led and instructed and counseled by the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God’s Truth, the one and only Holy Spirit of God. I will be equipped to receive the truth.
What I receive will not be the first counselor either, it will be another. This means that I have already received the Counselor of God once. This is a blessing I have received and will receive again.
He continues, “You will know him because he lives with you and will be in you.” Not only will God be sent to me, not only will God equip me, not only will God counsel me; God will dwell in me. Jesus promises that the Spirit of Truth will take up residence in little ole me.
I will be privy to God’s plans and God’s wisdom as the Spirit of Truth counsels me. Of course this means that if any one of you disagrees with me, you disagree with God. But that’s tough toenails because I have received the Spirit of Truth. God’s right, you’re wrong, and that’s that.
The Lord Jesus promises “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me.” Now this is a little rabbinical jargon, for a Rabbi to leave a disciple as an orphan means that the Rabbi has died. The student may or may not have parents, but the spiritual and intellectual parent is gone. Jesus promises that this won’t happen. He will not leave me behind. This is promised in word and realized in the resurrection.
Taken to back to that extreme, because He lives, I will never be without my teacher. I will forever be in his presence. I guess it’s just so sad if you aren’t there too.
He promises “Because I live, you also will live.”
You see where I’m going with this by now. When we look at all of these promises in the singular, when “you” becomes “me” and “people like me” my tunnel vision becomes dangerously narrow. It’s the sort of shortsightedness that has led people to do horrible things in the name of God.
This is the kind of thinking that brought the world the Knights Templar. This is the kind of thinking that brought the world the crusades. It’s the sort of thinking that brought the Spanish Inquisition. It’s the kind of thinking that brought the Klan.
It’s this sort of narrow vision that brings the Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka and brings them out of the woodwork to share what the Rev. Fred Phelps calls “God’s message” at the most horrible of our nation’s tragedies. In fact according to their website, today they are picketing “the Beast Obama” in Joplin , Missouri Oklahoma
On this Presbyterian Heritage Sunday I honestly say that this is one of the things I like about Presbyterian Polity. The way the Church is organized, it is impossible for one single person to get the kind of traction required to lead a congregation like a single person can lead a congregationally governed church or a church run by a single Bishop or Cardinal. Decision making in the Presbyterian Church is made locally by the Session, regionally at the Presbytery, and nationally through the General Assembly. Each of these is made up of several and many individuals from the local groups so that one person cannot be vested with too much power.
I have made fun of “seeking the will of God by majority rule,” but it’s better than having one person vested with the power to let a single vision overwhelm the will of God. But this majority rule is important for another reason. That reason takes us back to our reading.
In the first six verses of our reading from John’s gospel the “you” Jesus is speaking to is not an individual. It’s not even to each of the individual listeners. What’s missing in English that’s present in the Greek is that Jesus is speaking not to “you” in the singular; he’s speaking to “all y’all” in the plural.
So this is the kicker, Jesus is telling not just you or me but you and me that as the church we show God our love by following his commands. Jesus is speaking to the community of believers. Jesus is speaking to the church.
Jesus is telling the church that if we love him we will obey what he commands. This isn’t a cause-and-effect thing. Love is not the reward for our obedience. It’s not “if we obey God he will love us,” it’s when we love him we will obey. Obedience is a sign of love not the other way around. In fact, it is impossible to love and be disobedient.
This is another sticking point. What exactly does Jesus mean when he says “what I command”?
There are a lot of commands in scripture. There’s the first command humanity received in the garden in Genesis, “don’t eat that.” We didn’t get very far with that one. There are also the “Heavy Ten,” the Ten Commandments. When Rabbi’s analyzed the first five books of scripture, what we call the Torah or the Pentateuch, they find 613 distinct laws or mitzvah.
Honestly, that’s a lot of laws to keep straight.
In the book of Mark, Jesus tells us what his most important commands are. When quizzed on this by a scribe Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
How’s that for the circle of life? Jesus says if we love him we will keep his commands and he says that the first command is to love the Lord you God and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. If we love him we will obey him, to obey him is to love him and our neighbor as ourselves. This is why the Spirit of Truth lives in the church, the Body of Christ. This is God’s call to the church.
As you know, we’re not a very free-flowing church. We follow a bulletin that lays out the order of worship. There are places in the order for the inbreaking of the Holy Spirit, but scheduling the Holy Spirit is just as silly as it sounds.
But there is one very intentional moment we make together. When we all come together and after Mr. Al does the announcements, we begin worship by welcoming the Light of Christ into the sanctuary. Brionna brings the light, after all it’s like scripture says, a little child will lead us. Then as Mr. Al says before we sing our last hymn, after we receive the charge and benediction, we follow the Light of Christ into the world. We follow the light. This is why it is customary to allow the light to leave the sanctuary first so that we can follow the light.
We do this as a congregation and we also do this as individuals. We do this as individuals because our reading this morning does not stop at verse twenty. Where the first six verses in our reading are plural, speaking to us as the Church; the “you” in the last verse of our reading is singular.
The first words to us as individuals are not so different from the words we hear as the church. “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.” This comes with all of the pitfalls I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon, but it also comes tempered with the wisdom of the ages written in scripture, it also comes with the wisdom of the church interpreting scripture. This too is a part of our Presbyterian heritage. As the church and as individuals we are called to know and obey the Christ, this is how we show our love for him.
By obeying God we show that we love God and God loves us too. Again as much as this seems like a cause-and-effect relationship, God never works that way. God creates because God loves and wants to share life, eternal life, with creation.
God loves us first, but not like a good old fashioned unrequited middle school crush. God doesn’t stop loving us. God created life out of love, and when we return that love it grows and becomes so much more than we could ever hope or imagine.
So today, when we go from this place, let Brionna lead us as a church and each of us as individuals as she bears the light. Let us be our brother’s keeper. Let us be instructed by the Holy Spirit of Truth who comes as our next counselor. We are not orphans because God lives. And because God lives we live, both as the church and as individuals. Follow the light into the world where we as the church and we as the individual people of God live into the love of Christ.
[1] http://godhatesfags.com retrieved May 28, 2011.
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