Easter Six | \u00a0John 14:15-21 | May 14, 2023 | Rev. Dr. Judson F Merrell, STS |<\/p>\n
15<\/sup> „If you love me, you will keep my commandments.<\/p>\n \u00a016<\/sup> And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever,<\/p>\n \u00a017<\/sup> even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.<\/p>\n \u00a018<\/sup> „I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.<\/p>\n \u00a019<\/sup> Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.<\/p>\n \u00a020<\/sup> In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.<\/p>\n \u00a021<\/sup> Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.“ (John 14:15-21 ESV)<\/p>\n Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n It has been just over a month since we celebrated Easter.\u00a0 But it seems as though it has been much longer than that.\u00a0Doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0 We have just had so much going on, Easter just seems like a distant memory now.\u00a0 But the reality is that Easter is not over yet.\u00a0 Pentecost Sunday is still 2 weeks away.\u00a0 And we continue to move through the \u201cweek of weeks\u201d that separates the Passover from Pentecost.\u00a0 Jews celebrate 7 weeks of 7 days that are to be a continual celebration of the Passover, alongside the first harvest of the year, and also a remembrance of God giving the 10 commandments on top of Mt Sinai.\u00a0 Christians though seem to get lost in this week of weeks.\u00a0 For the first few weeks after Easter we heard about the post-resurrection stories, and then a shift happens where we start preparing for Pentecost.\u00a0 But it almost seems as though there is a disconnect.\u00a0 So this morning I want you to think like a disciple.\u00a0 Jesus has been crucified.\u00a0 He showed himself to you in that first week, along with other appearances.\u00a0 However, you have been locking yourself in at home, fearful that you too might be crucified.\u00a0 Your brain is trying to make sense of all that has happened, and in the midst of it all there is just this big disconnect.\u00a0 None of the Gospels record the disciples trying to rationalize the events of that Easter weekend.\u00a0 No text records them as really even believing all the things Jesus had told them, until Jesus himself comes and appears to them.\u00a0 Maybe that is what is causing our disconnect as well.<\/p>\n Our Gospel this morning clearly says that Jesus is coming, that he will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit ahead of himself, and that he will reveal himself to those that love him and keep his commandments.\u00a0 But do we believe it?\u00a0 Do we see Jesus in the world?\u00a0 Or perhaps I should ask:\u00a0 Do we actively search for Jesus in the world?\u00a0 There are times I have to say no.\u00a0 Even as I was writing this sermon this past week I found my thoughts drifting to other things going on.\u00a0 I thought about meetings, visits, and all the \u201cbusiness\u201d side of things with the church.\u00a0 I thought about family obligations, work schedules, and school schedules.\u00a0 In other words, life gets in the way.\u00a0 Life causes us to forget about Jesus.\u00a0 It causes us to have a disconnect.\u00a0 But it shouldn\u2019t.\u00a0 Jesus didn\u2019t leave us with some long list of unobtainable items to check off.\u00a0 He said to keep his commandments and to love him.\u00a0 In terms of his commandments, Jesus told his disciples a lot, but it really can be broken down into a few items, such as repent, believe, and love one another.\u00a0 When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus even replied that we should \u201cLove the Lord your God, and a second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.\u201d\u00a0 So we are to keep his commandments, which is to love, and then just to make sure we get it, he says we should love him.\u00a0 Life should not get in the way of love.\u00a0 The truth is life doesn\u2019t, but we do.\u00a0 We cause our own disconnect because we refuse to love.\u00a0 We look for things to get upset about.\u00a0 We refuse to be reconciled because how dare we admit we are wrong.\u00a0 We get in the way of love, and when that happens, we have a disconnect.<\/p>\n \u201cKeep my commandments and love me.\u201d\u00a0 Jesus goes on to say that those who love him are loved by the Father, and that he will love them and reveal himself to them.\u201d\u00a0 So we come full circle.\u00a0 We are challenged to love, not only Jesus, but everyone, and in doing so, Jesus reveals himself.\u00a0 If we are loving, we don\u2019t have to actively search for Jesus, because Jesus makes himself known.\u00a0 We see him in family, friends, neighbors, strangers.\u00a0 We look through the lens of love, not hate, not life, not busyness\u2026and we see Jesus.\u00a0 It is then that we also don\u2019t see a disconnect.\u00a0 Instead, we see the power of the resurrection all around us.\u00a0 This week of week doesn\u2019t seem to just drone on, but becomes a stepping stone for what is coming next.\u00a0 As we prepare for the Pentecost celebration, we see the Spirit abiding in those around us, and we see the world on fire through the love of God.\u00a0 This is what carries us from day to day.\u00a0 This is what sustains us as Christians.\u00a0 It is the basis for our very life, or should I say our baptized life, because that is where we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 And that is the point that we also see a dramatic positive shift in our life\u2026.the dullness, the disconnect\u2026those are gone.\u00a0 And in its place we find grace and peace, given by the God who loved the world so much that he sent his Son to the cross.\u00a0 A selfless act, so that love could abound, in you, in me, in the world.\u00a0 In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Easter Six | \u00a0John 14:15-21 | May 14, 2023 | Rev. Dr. Judson F Merrell, STS | 15 „If you love me, you will keep my commandments. \u00a016 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, \u00a017 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2236,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,157,108,110,235,345,3,109],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-18146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-johannes","category-beitragende","category-current","category-engl","category-judson-f-merrell","category-kapitel-14-chapter-14-johannes","category-nt","category-predigten"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18147,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18146\/revisions\/18147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18146"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=18146"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=18146"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=18146"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=18146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}