Why?
Why do you come to church?
Why do you seek to keep the commandments: say the 10 commandments (or at least some of them!): no stealing, murder, adultery, lying or coveting? Jesus intensifies that to no hating, lusting, swearing – or perhaps more positively forgiving, exercising self discipline, speaking words of integrity.
Why do you give? Why do you try to forgive? Why do you want to try and love other people even those you don't like or who don't like you?
Why might you try to say some prayers, or the Lord's prayer, when you are on your own?
Because it is a habit, or what we have been taught we should do, or it is familiar or comfortable, or because it is useful in life?
I suggest that somewhere within us, whatever other reasons we do those things for, we do them – rather than other things - because there is a spark of love for God in us.
Jesus says, ‘If you love me you will keep my commandments’ (v15).
‘They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me’ (v21).
And later, after our reading, ‘Those who love me will keep my word’ (v23)
There is a spark of love in us for the God who has first loved us.
A spark of love for the God who has given us so much. This is Grace.
This beautiful creation (very privileged here to see that. Driving over the hill to Overy and looking out at the field, the windmill, the marshes and the sunset); life; hope; each other; families; dogs; intimacy; golf or football (who could imagine what pleasure hitting a ball with a stick or your foot can give), music and dancing, language, wind, grass, beetles, gardens, hot and cold, rain and sunshine.
But more than that. God gives us himself. He created us to live as his friends, to walk with him. And when we turned our back on him and became very lost, he came to rescue us and to bring us back.
He gives us his unique and precious Son, Jesus.
A friend who was an anaesthetist would say to patients before they went under, ‘Think of something lovely’. And this lady - she was a large West Indian lady – said, ‘I am thinking of Jesus’.
Jesus who loves us and came to us, who noticed me, saw me. Who touched a leper, forgave a woman caught in adultery and accused by everyone else, welcomed people who had done the unacceptable. Who loved us so much that he went to the cross – and chose freely to suffer and to die for me – for me who can swing between arrogance and complete self-doubt; who pretends to be so self-important or remote when so often it is a front or defence because we don’t think people can really like us as we are.
He chose to die for uninteresting, insignificant, self-centred me.
And so maybe we do those things – the God things – because there is a spark of love for God, of gratitude for all that he has given us, for what he has done for us, for what he can make of us, and for who he is.
The Christian life is not fundamentally driven by fear, guilt or obligation, but by a growing love awakened by being loved first.
“This is love”, writes John in one of his letters, “not that we loved God but that he first loved us”.
Or Paul: “God showed his love for us in this - it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us”
Or John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life”
Recite those verses. Learn them. Take them deep into you. Live with them. Allow them to shape you.
“If you love me”, says Jesus, “you will keep my commandments”.
And the promise of these words of Jesus is that if there is a spark of love for God in us, he can turn it into a raging fire.
1. He will give us the Holy Spirit
‘If you love me … and I will give you another advocate, the Holy Spirit’
The Holy Spirit is the advocate, the comforter, the helper, the one who speaks to us and for us. He speaks to our hearts and minds of God and he speaks to God for us.
And he is the Spirit of truth. He really does open our eyes, our inner eyes and sometimes our outer eyes, so that we begin to see this world as God sees it, as it really is. We begin to see creation, and other people and ourselves, as they really are. I’m not only talking surface stuff, but seeing deep within.
And the Holy Spirit is the one who comes alongside us, into us, to change us.
If we want a picture to help us understand this, we only need to think of what we are about to do in communion. We come forward – because there is a spark of love for God in us – and we hold out our empty hands, and we receive the bread and wine – and as we eat and drink, we invite Jesus to come deep within us.
2. He opens our eyes to see
a) That he is alive. That death did not destroy him. That he will be with us forever.
‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live you also will live’.
The promise of seeing was for the disciples. They saw him. And we put our trust in their words. But it is also a promise for us, that one day we will see him.
b) The promise of intimacy
‘On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you’.
I often use the illustration of the group hug as a picture of the Trinity. Three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, eternally turned toward one another in love.
But what Jesus is saying here is that it may be a close hug, but it is not a closed hug. It is open to you and me.
And if we have that spark of love for the Lord Jesus, if we come towards him, then he will reach out and draw us in to that hug. And we will know that he is in his Father, and we are in him, and he is in us.
Of course, there will be many times when we take communion and it will be just a ritual we are going through.
You will have noticed that there are times when I leave out words from the communion prayers. That is usually because my head is in a completely different place.
And of course, when we put aside time to pray or read the bible, much of the time it is a ritual, and often very dry – although the Holy Spirit is usually working more powerfully through those moments than when we have any sense of God’s presence
But sometimes, there are moments when we do encounter the love of the Lord Jesus and we realize that we have become part of something so much bigger: bigger than me, bigger than creation, bigger even than the universe – and that as we invite the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, into us, so we become part of him.
And that is the astonishing promise of Jesus.
Not simply that we should believe in him from a distance.
Not simply that we should obey him externally.
But that through the Holy Spirit, as we respond to his love with love, in receiving his word, in communion, in prayer we might live in him and he in us.
A spark becoming a flame.
And finally, one day, we will see the one we are learning to love face to face.