Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter – May 22, 2022

John 14:23-29

Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

There’s an important bit of context missing from our gospel reading for today. Our reading from John this morning consists of Jesus’ response to a question from Judas (not Iscariot) – but the question itself is left out! So, let’s back up a bit and provide this important context. Jesus had told the disciples that he would be leaving them, but that he would come to them again in a different way. He told them that the world would not see him, but that they, his disciples, would see him. He would reveal himself to them. And then Judas (not Iscariot) asked him, “Lord, how will you reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” Our reading for today is Jesus’ response to this question. Jesus is explaining how he will reveal himself to his disciples – and to us – after he has ascended to the Father.

In response to Judas (not Iscariot’s) question, Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

Jesus reveals himself to those keep his word. This is about more than just doing what he says, though that is part of it. To keep Jesus’ word is to treasure it. It is to hold on to it. It is to hold it dear. Those who keep Jesus’ word, Jesus says, do so because they love him!

I had a pastor who was important to me. He sent me lots of wise and encouraging emails when I was on internship. He died of pancreatic cancer just weeks before I was ordained. You can bet that I kept those emails. I printed them all off, and all these years later I still treasure them. I still pull them out and read them from time to time. I do the same with other particularly special notes or cards that people give me. I got a birthday card from my son last week with words in it that got me all choked up. You can bet that I’m keeping that one! There is no sense of obligation or begrudging obedience in any of this. These words are kept out of love.

This is what it means to keep Jesus’ word. We keep Jesus’ word not by begrudgingly being obedient to it, but by treasuring what he has said to us, by holding fast to what he has promised us. We keep it because we love him. We keep it because this is how he reveals himself to us. This is how he and the Father come to us and make a home with us.

This word is preserved for us in the Bible. This word is spoken to us in worship. This word is poured over us in Holy Baptism and fed to us in Holy Communion. Those who love Jesus treasure this word because this is how our Lord comes to us. This is how he reveals himself to us.

Unfortunately, we are foolish and forgetful creatures. Unfortunately, there are times when our love for Jesus grows cold and we neglect this word. We do not treat it as the treasure it is for us. Unfortunately, the world, the devil, and our sinful selves are very effective at distracting us from this word, and so we do not hold on to it. Sometimes the storms of life are so powerful and intense that we lose sight of it.

Thankfully, our Lord Jesus knows this about us, and so he sends us the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s job, Jesus says, is “to teach you everything and to remind you of all that I have said to you.” The Spirit moves in mysterious ways, to be sure, but there is nothing mysterious about what the Spirit has been sent to do. People come up with all kinds of sometimes strange and unbiblical ideas about the Spirit, but the mission and purpose of the Spirit is really quite simple and down to earth. Jesus explains that the Father sends the Spirit in his name to remind us of what Jesus has said. The Spirit’s job is simply to lead our hearts back to the word of Christ.

This is important because when our hearts lose sight of the word, they end up troubled. When we neglect or drift away from the word or become distracted from it, or when we can’t hear it over the roar of the storms of life, we do not have the peace our Lord Jesus came to give us.

In last month’s newsletter I wrote about how I have been in counseling for grief and anxiety. It has been very helpful and I’m doing much better.  I wouldn’t say I neglected the word or even that I was distracted from it. However, I would say that the trauma that was loose in me created so much emotional noise that I couldn’t hear it. There was so much swirling around in my head and my heart that the word couldn’t land where it needed to land. A big part of what my therapist has done for me is to quiet that noise. In so doing I have been able to hear the word in a way that it is finally able to reach those troubled spots, bringing me peace. Once she got that emotional noise under control, I have been surprised at how much she, who is a Christian herself, has simply been reminding me of things I already knew, things I have been preaching to others almost every Sunday for more than two decades.

Sometimes we might need help from outside the church in dealing with troubled hearts. Sometimes the Spirit, the Advocate, which Jesus also described as a Counselor, works through “small c” counselors or other mental health professionals to create the conditions in which we can better hear the word that gives us peace. If you need that kind of help, I hope you will seek it out.

But most of the time what we need is simply to be reminded of what Jesus has said to us. Most of what the Spirit does in our lives is to bring us back again and again to the word of Christ, reminding us that we are loved, reminding us that we are forgiven, reminding us that we are his. Sometimes we forget. Sometimes we hear something, but it gets drowned out by other noise. Sometimes we know something, but that knowledge doesn’t reach down to where it needs to be. And so the Spirit keeps bringing us back to the word. That’s the Spirit’s job!

We are here today because the Spirit has called and gathered us so that we would hear the word of Christ in words like, “Your sin is forgiven,” words like, ““Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you, I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid,” words like, “This is my body, given for you, my blood, shed for you.” The Spirit knows that we need to be reminded of all that Jesus has said to us. It is through the word we hear today that Jesus comes to us, revealing himself to us, making his home with us.

Treasure these words. Hang on to them. Keep them close, today and always. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church