Tag Archives: commandments

Sermon – John 14.15-21, E6, YA, May 10, 2026

27 Wednesday May 2026

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One of the funny things about parenting is that you enter into the role with some pretty set ideas about how you will parent.  You have spent a lifetime figuring out what you think is the right and wrong way to do most things, and you imagine that part of your role as a parent is to pass along this hard-earned wisdom.  One of those tidbits of wisdom I had planned to pass along was the importance of expressing remorse in relationships, being able to offer an unqualified “I’m sorry,” whenever needed to maintain an authentically loving relationship.  But once I actually started parenting, I had no idea how challenging that tiny phrase, “I’m sorry,” would be.  I never knew how much of apologies could show so little remorse.  I have witnessed the angry, shouted, “I’m sorry!”s, there have been the resistant, mumbled, “I’m sorry”s, there have been the sarcastic, eye-rolling, “I’m sorry.”s.  And parental requests for our children to “mean it” when they say, “I’m sorry,” are almost comical.  If I’m being honest with myself, how can I or anyone expect anyone else to apologize by force, command, or as a condition for something else?

I think that is what is so strange about today’s lesson from John’s gospel.  Jesus says “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” and “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me.”  The commandments Jesus is talking about are those instructions to love God, love self, love neighbor.  In John’s gospel, they are the only commandments Jesus gives.[i]  And who would protest such commandments?  Of course we should all want to love God, love self, and love neighbor.  But there is something strange about the way Jesus presents his command to us – if you love me, you must do these things.  If you love me, you must obey my way.  As lovely as “love” sounds, there is something that harkens to those forced apologies about our text today.  I am pretty sure Jesus is not asking us to love others with a sense of bitterness, resentment, or obligation – and certainly without shouts, mumbling, and eye-rolling.

Some of you may be thinking, “What’s so hard about loving others?  Why would I resist that?”  We do not have to look too far back to see why I think loving others is actually hard work.  If you remember, right at the beginning of the pandemic six years ago, we all pulled together.  People immediately worried about our elders being able to safely procure food and supplies; we pitched in to make sure the hungry were fed with free school lunches and restocked food banks; we sewed face masks (before we had access to medical grade ones) and donated to charities to help protect the vulnerable.  Our collaboration, care, and support of one another was inspiring and invigorating.  But it did not take long for our demons to emerge.  As hard decisions arose about reopening businesses to buttress the economy, making cuts to make ends meet, or laying off employees to help businesses survive, we reverted to our divided, vitriolic ways from before the pandemic, not only disagreeing, but attacking the character, intelligence, and dignity of one another – a habit that has waned very little in the last six years. 

So, when we ask, “What’s so hard about loving others?” my response is, “This.  This is what is hard about loving others.  All of this is hard.”  As one scholar puts it, “It is NOT sufficient (or even meaningful) to profess love for Jesus while we hold ourselves apart from our fellow human beings.  To love Jesus is to love others.  All others.  The lover, the friend, the neighbor, the companion.  But also the alien, the stranger, the misfit, and the enemy.  The ones with whom we agree, and the ones with whom we emphatically disagree.  The ones we naturally like, and the ones we don’t.”[ii]  Another scholar pushes us even further, saying, “Authentic love is not passive; [authentic love] is active and demonstrative.”[iii]  Our love of Jesus is only as authentic as our active, demonstrative love of all others.

So, how can we possibly love that way?  The good news is Jesus says we will have help.  Just as Jesus has been an advocate for his disciples – “guiding, teaching, reminding, abiding, witnessing, interceding, comforting,” so they will have the Holy Spirit.  “What they have known in Jesus, and fear losing in Jesus’ impending absence, they will always know in the promise of the [Holy Spirit].”[iv]  What Jesus promises in John’s gospel today is big. 

Now, I know some of us get a little uncomfortable talking about the Holy Spirit – either the Spirit’s presence just seems too amorphous to be of any value, or the Spirit seems to do weird, dramatic things that scare us more than comfort us.  But Jesus is not simply saying the Holy Spirit will be ambiguously hanging around when Jesus is gone.  The Holy Spirit will be, and is, accompanying us.  As scholar Karoline Lewis says, “Accompaniment is not simply having someone beside you.  Accompaniment is not a mere ministry of presence.  Accompaniment means active and assertive abiding—an abiding that enters into places of fear and discomfort, uncertainty, and troubled hearts, and speaks the truth freely.”[v]

This is our good news today.  On those days when loving seems hard, when obeying Jesus’ command to love feels impossible, the Holy Spirit is and will be here to accompany us, to walk with us in fear, discomfort, uncertainty, trouble, and guide us into lives of love.  The Spirit is with us to enable us to be agents of love even when we doubt we can.  That promise today makes the invitation to love as Christ has loved us not only doable, but desirable.  That promise today helps us loosen our grip on resentment, anger, and fear, and open our hands to love and collaboration.  That promise today makes obedience to love feel like a gift.  Thanks be to God.

[i] Debie Thomas, “Love and Obedience,” May 10, 2020, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/2640-love-and-obedience, as found on May 8, 2026.

[ii] Thomas.

[iii] Yung Suk Kim, “Commentary on John 14:15-21,” May 10, 2026, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-john-1415-21-7 on May 8, 2026.

[iv] Karoline Lewis, “A Time for Accompaniment,” May 10, 2020, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5433, as found on May 8, 2026.

[v] Lewis.

Sermon – Mark 12.28-34, Deuteronomy 6.1-9, P26, YB, October 31, 2021

17 Wednesday Nov 2021

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In preparation for a mission trip to Honduras, we did a lot of study on the history, politics, and economic development of the country.  Part of that preparation included reading Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo, the story of Honduran woman Eliva Alvarado.  Her story is the story of all campesinos – the poor and oppressed in her country.  Her story is the kind of story that stirs up righteous indignation and makes you want to hop on a plane to go fight for justice.  But in the conclusion of her story, she says to the reader that her ultimate desire is for us to stay where we are.  She does not want her story to inspire us to come there and “fix” things.  Instead, she implores us to fix ourselves – explore our own country’s policies and practices that abet the oppression by the privileged in her country. 

I remember when we got to her conclusion, the team sat in silence for a long time.  You could see the wheels churning in each of our minds – surely, we know what is best, surely we can fix things if we can just get there, surely there is a way around the way this woman has made us feel impotent.  And yet, there was profound truth in her words, and an understanding that to not listen to her final request would be worse than to have not read her words at all.  And so, we sat in pained silence, letting her charge sit uncomfortably with us.

Jesus creates a similar silence at the end of our gospel lesson today.  Jesus has been poked and prodded by one group after another at this point in Mark’s gospel.  In chapter 11, the chief priests, scribes, and elders question Jesus’ authority.  Early in chapter 12, the Pharisees and some Herodians try to trap Jesus with a question.  Finally, some Sadducees question Jesus about a theological issue.  Then today, a scribe asks a “palpably disarming” question – not one to test Jesus, but as one scholar says, an “invitation to the table of theological discourse.”[i]  The conversation today is about the greatest of the commandments. 

Jesus’ response is not new.  In fact, Jesus quotes the shema, the classic text we heard just this morning from Deuteronomy, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”  This is a text the Israelites have emblazoned in the minds of their children, and repeated for generations, “Shema Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad.”  “Hear, O Israel, The Lord is our God, the Lord alone (or the Lord is one).”  Jesus tweaks the answer only slightly from the original shema, adding that we should love the Lord our God with all our mind in addition to all our heart, soul, and strength.  And he adds that we should love our neighbor as ourselves.  But that notion is true to the original commandments as well.  When the scribe agrees with Jesus, saying loving God and neighbor as self is more important than any other ritual of the faith, the crowd falls silent, and we are told “no one dared to ask him any question.”  In other words, “Jesus’ critics were silenced and the effect was momentarily deafening.”[ii] 

So why is the crowd suddenly and dramatically silenced?  What’s the big deal about loving God and neighbor as self?  We talk about these commands all the time.  I mean, Bishop Curry has preached these words more times than I can count.  So why do Jesus’ words shock the room into silence?  One scholar suggests that the silence is so deafening because those gathered understood something about the reality of love that we modern Americans sometimes neglect.  As one scholar explains, “…sometimes — especially in western Christianity — we focus so hard on the emotive and affective aspects of love that we forget its rigor, its robustness, its discomfort.  We assume that loving God and our neighbors means expressing friendly sentiments to God in Sunday worship, and exchanging warm pleasantries with the people who live near us during the week.  We forget that in the scriptures, the call to love is a call to vulnerability, sacrifice, and suffering.  It’s a call to bear a cross and lay down our lives.  Biblical love is not an emotion we feel, it’s a path we travel.  As the children of God, we are called to walk in love. Think aerobic activity, not Hallmark sentiment.”[iii]  An invitation into that kind of radical love – the love of neighbors we would rather not love, the love that is as powerful as the natural, preserving love of self[iv], the love that is a response to the overwhelming love of God for us – that kind of invitation is sobering. 

I remember having read Elvia’s disinvitation to come to Honduras and “fix” things felt like a disempowering, painful rebuffing of love.  But I think I felt that way because we do not get to dictate what love of neighbor looks like.  True love of neighbor is not self-designed but is responsive – responsive to our love of God, and respectfully responsive to the self-articulation of needs by others.  Elvia’s self-articulation was deafeningly silencing the way Jesus’ invitation is too.  As scholar Debie Thomas explains, “Silence is the appropriate first response to the radical love we’re called to.  We dare not speak of [love] glibly.  We dare not cheapen [love] with shallow sentiment or piety.  Rather, [we] ask for the grace to receive [love] as the wise scribe received [love].  In awed and grateful silence.”[v]  Only when we have sat in the uncomfortable silence that recognizes the true love of God and neighbor as self are we ready to take up every perfect gift God has given us and travel the path of love.  Amen.

[i] Cynthia A. Jarvis, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 262.

[ii] Jarvis, 364.

[iii] Debie Thomas, “Walk in Love,” October 24, 2021, as found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=2944 on October 29, 2021.

[iv] Victor McCracken, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 262.

[v] Thomas.

Homily – Ecclesiasticus 39.1-10, Bernard of Clairvaux, August 21, 2014

05 Friday Sep 2014

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Today we honor Bernard of Clairvaux.  Born in 1090, Bernard was given a secular education.  In 1113, he entered a Benedictine Abbey.  His family was not pleased with his choice of a monastic life, but Bernard convinced four of his brothers and about 26 of his friends to join him in establishing a monastery at Clairvaux, France, in 1115.  Bernard had a real power for persuasion – his preaching and letters were so persuasive that sixty new Cistercian abbeys were founded through him.  His writings have made him one of the most influential figures in Christendom.  A fiery defender of the Church, he was known for his passion and message about the abundant love of God.

We can almost hear a description of Bernard’s passion and commitment in our lesson from Ecclesiasticus.  The reading says, “He seeks out the wisdom of all the ancients … he seeks out the hidden meanings of proverbs … He sets his heart to rise early to seek the Lord who made him …”  You can almost imagine Bernard rising early, studying scripture, meditating on the Lord.  In fact, Bernard was known to forego sleep and even his health because he was so absorbed in the Church.

The truth is, I am not sure Bernard’s life pattern is exactly what our lesson or even God has in mind for us.  Though most monastics have time to absorb themselves in prayer, study and meditation, we do not expect to maintain the same pace and stamina.  Most of our reaction to Bernard or Ecclesiasticus is, “Oh, that’s lovely, but not for me,” or we dismiss both as irrelevant to our lives.

Where we find grounding is in the rest of the story.  Bernard did all that he did because he was alive with the love of God.  The love of God was so overwhelming that he just wanted more.  Though we may not be able to immerse ourselves as fully as Bernard, we can take a cue from Jesus Christ.  Jesus says in the gospel, “Abide in my love,” “Keep my commandments … abide in my love.”  Jesus says this because, as he says, he wants his joy to be in us, so that our joy might be complete.  Living into God’s love, keeping God’s commandments, seeking God in the ways that we can are not overwhelming tasks – and when we know that they are for our complete joy, the invitation feels much lighter.  So abide in God’s love – so that your joy might be complete.  Amen.