The English language claims one hundred twenty-seven two-letter words, also among the most often used words in speech.  “IF” doesn’t seem like much to worry about, but it does command a subtle range of meanings which can be troublesome for God’s people trying to understand how to live as Jesus’ disciples. My late and formidable seventh grade English teacher, Miss Georgia Marshall, would insist on knowing the grammatical aspects of the word in question [place and function within the structure of speech] as well as its sense [its specific meaning given the context].  Her brusque zeal to encourage her students’ clear and informed understanding of the words we speak, read, and write, not to mention their beauty and capacity to express a universe of thought, has never left me.  Neither of us suspected that she would remain my taskmaster in speech and faith all these years later.  Whether I “have done her proud” I cannot say, but I’m fortunate to have encountered her during my formative years.

            “IF” may only be a two-letter, piddly little word, but it wields significant power in context.  The word’s possible meanings and implications fall into two separate but related categories.  The first is an aspect of conditional mood, a simple statement that an action results in a specific consequence or two.  My sainted mother used conditional statements frequently when unfolding the mysteries of the kitchen and cooking to me: “Bob, if you want to use the stove and turn on a burner [action], it will get mighty hot [result #1] and scorch the living daylights out of your hand if you touch it [result #2].” In time I learned that she told me the truth, the whole truth, and nuthin’ but…, “Ouch!” The second meaning is an aspect of the subjunctive mood.  Such speech expresses an idea or wish imagined or contrary to fact.  It provides rich fodder for Broadway musicals and films.  The Wizard of Oz’s Cowardly Lion sings “If I Were the King of the Forest…”  Timid creature that he is, he imagines a host of powerful, mighty beings, asking what they have that he doesn’t.  “Courage!” is the unanimous answer of his friends – the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, Dorothy, and her dog Toto, too – out of honest love for their boastful but quaking friend.  The Tin Man imagines life well lived “…if I only had a heart.”  The Scarecrow, perhaps Dorothy Gale’s most perceptive friend in Oz, wonders what life would be like “…if I only had a brain.”  In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye imagines in the song “If I Were a Rich Man” a life quite different than the one he knows all too well as a poverty-stricken Jew despised by the establishment because of his faith. In Roger and Hammerstein’s Carousel, Julie and Billy sing of their probably hopeless love in “If I Loved You,” given his seedy reputation as a carnival barker who has fallen in love with the “good girl” of the town.  British musicians Clifford Grey’s and Nat D. Ayer’s 1916 hit song, “If You Were the Only Girl in the World,” is a subjunctive ballad of wishful thinking.

            Whether conditional [an action resulting in a consequence] or subjunctive [imaginative, wishful thought or something contrary to fact], statements beginning with “IF” constitute landmines when speaking of the realities of the faithful life and the nature of God’s relationship with humankind.  EASTER VI’s Gospel [John 15:9-17] tells of Jesus’ presenting to his disciples a potentially lethal “IF” statement depending upon how we interpret it. We also should seriously consider if we’ve paid attention to what he’s been saying any better than the ragtag band of followers who were his disciples: As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete [John 15:9-11].

            It was a privilege to have taught with some wise colleagues at the Lutheran Seminary in Columbia.  For a number of years Dr. Tom Ridenhour, the academic dean and preaching professor, and I team-taught the beginning preaching class.  One of Tom’s significant points he impressed upon students is that Lutheran theology tends to express the Good News of God in Christ Jesus by the Spirit’s power in terms of “Because God has done this / therefore we are now able to do that…” rather than thoughts that rely on “If / then” statements. If / then constructs run the risk of skewing God’s primal role in life. Most likely all of us have prayed fervent prayers which attempt to strike a bargain or even contract with God.  “O God, IF I promise to be a better, more faithful Christian will you THEN a) save me; b) help me land a job; b) give me the smarts to pass an exam I forgot to study for; c) heal my mama, granddaddy, or friend (you pick the person or issue).  We spend a good deal of our lives muttering about “If I’d only done that… / then this wouldn’t have happened,” or regretting things long past which paralyze us or ensnare us still in the present.  Eventually, we might even suspect that God deliberately waits around to inflict misery and suffering on us for our failures.  An old German proverb states, “Our dear God punishes small sins immediately, but saves up for the really big ones!”  Feverish efforts to strike a deal with God whom we fear to be vindictive and capricious reveal that we’ve probably misunderstood everything. We’ve inverted the construction Dr. Ridenhour frequently taught: “Because God has done this / therefore we are now able to do that…”  We distort it into an attempt to appease an angry, vengeful God: “If WE do this / then hopefully our action will cause God to be nice!!!”  We’ve placed the proverbial cart before the horse, thus making ourselves the horse’s hindquarters by our misguided efforts. 

Probably the most explicit and magisterial example of God’s way of working is St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Paul introduces the ”because” with his initial salutation to the Church in Rome: Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the gentiles for the sake of his name, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ… [Romans 1:1-6].  Paul then unfolds for the following eleven chapters all that the power of God in Christ has accomplished for, in, and through us who are called by God.  Those eleven chapters are an expansive “because God has done this.” Interestingly, the twelfth chapter opens with the word “therefore:” I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, on the basis of God’s mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship… The remaining portion of Paul’s letter is an elaboration on what God in Christ by the Spirit’s power has made possible for us to do.

            The desperately needed Good News of the Gospel we hear this coming Sunday [John 15:9-17] is announced in Jesus’ opening words:  As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love… God doesn’t get around to loving us ONLY IF we muster the energy to love God first.  Jesus has already announced the all-important BECAUSE: I [Jesus] have loved you just as the Father has loved me… Jesus, the King of Love, simply wants to be loved, too, and it is his investing his life and love in us and for us that makes all the difference.  THEREFORE, it IS possible for us to keep those commandments Jesus gives us, the greatest one being, of course: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ [Matthew 22:37-39]. No IFS, ANDS, or BUTS required.  We can love because we have first been fashioned in love, already given the gifts necessary to accomplish what Jesus “commands.”  It is helpful to remember that “command” is also closely related to “commend.”  Jesus commends to us a life of love, knowing that we are already loved beyond our imagining long before we get around to pondering why “God so loved the cosmos…”  As we will hear Sunday in I John 5, his commandments are never burdensome.  We do Christ’s bidding because we have discovered that it is how we embrace and express the life of faith.

            One of the great Lutheran hymns is ELW 769: If You But Trust in God to Guide You.  Mercy! It is indeed another IF statement, blessedly bracing in its clarity! The hymn states that God is trustworthy and has been there “…with gentle hand through all your ways.” Trust is, in fact, the result of TACIT knowing and abiding, learned in context over time.  Learning to trust is like learning to love; it needs to be modeled, experienced, and practiced daily.  Despite the great challenges, disappointments, wrongdoings, and failures we endure and perpetrate throughout life, we discover over time that God’s love is unfailing: “God, who has chosen us by grace, / knows very well the fears we face [ELW 769, st. 3].” Because that, indeed, is the case, therefore the only thing left is a prayer we already know: “Thanks be to God!”