On the Sixth Sunday of Easter [May 14, 2023] we find Jesus continuing to unfold what his resurrection has accomplished presently on earth and eternally when God’s Kingdom is fully revealed. Jesus invokes no Armageddon-like terror, nor does he lay out the horrors of a divine culling of the goats from the sheep of his pasture. However, there is a decided urgency. His lengthy prayer to his Father we will hear on the Seventh Sunday is his plea that we will be kept safe until we at last see him face to face at the heavenly banquet. Moreover, he prays for anyone and everyone who will come to believe because of the witness of his disciples to the goodness and mercy of God. [Do you hear that Jesus is talking about you and me, too???] It is obvious in Jesus’ urgency on the eve of his Ascension that he dearly loves us and all of God’s good creation.
Since his resurrection, instead of brutish threats made to sinful no-accounts, Jesus devotes his time speaking of the capacity to love to often wayward, frequently doubting, puzzled and fearful disciples (including us!), saintly sinners whom he forgives, restores, gathers, and leads to safe pastures. The great Fifty Days of Easter we have been marking are in fact a period of clarity and focus during Jesus’ remaining time on earth “in the flesh.” This Sunday he assures his gathered band of disciples: those who love me will keep my commandments. Love and faith are reflected in hospitable and gracious action; they go hand in hand. The difficulty for us to negotiate, however, is just how do we keep those commandments which clearly express God’s eternal love for us?
We unfortunately rely on rather skewed notions about “commandments.” We interpret them as fiats, divine orders that resemble not-so-veiled threats to shape up or ship out. In times of anxiety and confusion over the vagaries of life beyond our control folks have been known to place monuments depicting the Ten Commandments in public places or erect not so gracious billboards demanding that we REPENT! (…or else). One German theologian, Otto Hermann Pesch, provides an important observation in his little book on the commandmentss. What tradition has come to accept – THOU SHALT! / THOU SHALT NOT! – is better interpreted as “It is self-evident that God’s people DO THIS or REFRAIN FROM DOING THAT… The foundation of such an understanding clearly rests on God’s capacity to transform our lives by grace, not our capacity to fulfill on our own God’s counsel or place blame on those who fail. Folks who take questionable delight in calling out sinners and threatening them with destruction and eternal agony are not likely to keep God’s “commands” any better than the victims of their pointed barbs. Jesus’ post-resurrection discussions with his disciples reveal that such vindictive, censorious bullying and aggressive behavior is not only demeaning to targeted victims, but also is self-destructive to the ones who lash out in the name of God.
The original meaning of “command” is the act of recommending, committing, and entrusting to those addressed by one who has authority. Jesus has spent his time entrusting to his followers Good News about abiding relationship, love, gracious service on behalf of others, and the holy compulsion to share such good news. This IS the post-Resurrection reality Jesus has brought into being for the broken-hearted, those without hope, the anxious and suspicious, the outcast and the dying. Jesus is commending / commanding abundant, gracious life and love. How do we, then, KEEP those commandments which are to embody God’s life of grace, love, and mercy?
The author of Ephesians offers a most helpful directive echoing Jesus’ own request: I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all [Ephesians 4:1-6]. Glancing over such gracious words we likely are brought up short, most probably like the disciples themselves were. How DO we “walk in a manner worthy of the calling?”
Happily, Jesus’ words on Sunday also include an important promise: And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This 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 [John 14:16-17]. The Spirit of truth “we know” because we have been enlivened, graced, gifted, and enlightened by that Spirit poured out in baptism. Moreover, that same Spirit guides, nudges, and leads even the most desperate, fearful, and doubting folks who cannot for whatever reason believe or confess that Jesus is Lord. Much depends upon our own ability to witness and most importantly, to demonstrate the goodness of life in the Spirit to those beyond the church’s borders with the Spirit as our guide. As we will hear in Jesus’ “high priestly prayer” on the Seventh Sunday: As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world… I ask not only on behalf of (my disciples)…, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one [John 17:18-20].
Jesus asks his disciples and us to keep his commandments by inhabiting a life of loving service and hospitality. Keeping his commandments is not a wearisome or onerous task done to avoid divine punishment. As Psalm 119 noted centuries before: Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Jesus’ “new command” is a call to a lifetime of practice – practice at curbing our ready and destructive words blurted out in anger, practice at offering a good and gracious word rather than one which stabs the heart of enduring relationships, words of welcome rather than rebuke or dismissal. It is a command to love as Jesus loves. In a very real sense, Jesus is asking us to embrace a type of holy Hippocratic Oath (ca. 275 AD): “…I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm. If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.” Those are even words to live by! If it is of help, St. Paul outlines what is involved in living up to “…the finest traditions of my calling…” in his masterful summary of the Christian life, Romans 12:1-21. It’s worth a daily review in order to remember how “to keep on keepin’ on.”