Blessed Assurance

Evan D Garner

May 10

May 10 – The 6th Sunday of Easter, Year A
Acts 17:22-31 • 1 Peter 3:13-22 • John 14:15-21

It’s exam season. Last week, as I drove one of my children to school, I noticed that the roads and sidewalks around the university were unusually empty except for a few, spaced-out undergraduates walking with that dazed look on their face that could only mean one thing. High school seniors are done with classes, but some of them still have AP exams to take. Other high school students are just gearing up for the stressful season.

In a way, final exams still affect us all, even if it’s been decades since we sat for one. How many of you still wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming about studying for the wrong exam or showing up on the wrong day? Some of you spend as much time grading exams as your students spend studying for them. And, as the name Father Chuck gave our end-of-life planning workshop a few years back implies, all of us will someday be facing our “Final Exams,” whether we’re ready for them or not.

In today’s gospel lesson, for the second week in a row, we hear about Jesus’ disciples cramming for their final exams. This is the Last Supper. This is the moment when Jesus explains to his disciples that one of them will betray him. This is the dinner at which he tells them that he is about to depart from them and go to a place where they will not be able to follow. And the disciples’ response is a mixture of disbelief and panic.

Last week, we heard Jesus reassure his disciples that they were ready—that they already knew everything they needed to know to carry on in his absence. “You know the way to the place where I am going,” he said to them. But Thomas wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure about anything anymore. “Lord, we don’t even know where you are going. How can we know the way?” And Jesus replied, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. If you know me, you don’t need to know anything else.” Then, we heard Philip speak up and say, “Lord, if you will just show us the Father, we will be satisfied.” And Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time and still you do not know me?”

The disciples are grasping at straws. And who can blame them? They now know that the moment of truth is right around the corner. Jesus is leaving them, and it will be up to them to follow in his footsteps—to maintain his ways and observe his teachings—without his help. He won’t be around to show them how it’s done. They want nothing more than to be found faithful in his absence, but they hardly know where to start. So, like any good teacher, Jesus speaks to them with calming words of reassurance. Jesus knows that this is his last chance to teach them and form them for a lifetime of being his disciples even after he is gone, so he lays it out for them as simply as he can.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Those words are supposed to make them feel better. They are Jesus’ way of telling his disciples that, as long as they focus on what is really important, everything else will take care of itself. But somehow, over the years, like anxious disciples, we’ve forgotten what Jesus was trying to tell us and allowed his words to take on a new meaning—one that doesn’t sound at all like what Jesus was meant. And it all depends on how we hear the word “if.”

Among the many challenges that come with translating the biblical manuscripts into an English text is the challenge of not being able to hear the tone with which Jesus said these words. How do you hear him? Does the way he says these words anticipate our success or our failure? I’m not sure I can adequately give voice to the distinction I hear in my mind, but one version sounds like the equivalent of, “[As long as] you love me, you will keep my commandments,” while the other sounds more like, “If you [really] love me, you will keep my commandments.”

The first is a statement of reassurance—one which lets the disciples know that, as long as they love Jesus, they will be faithful to him. The second feels more like a thinly veiled threat—one which conveys to the disciples Jesus’ doubt that they will ever love him enough to be faithful—like an emotionally manipulative parent who tells their children that, if they really loved them, they would clean their room. To me, only the first one sounds like Jesus, but that doesn’t stop us from hearing these words as if Jesus were trying to shame us into obedience.

I bet all of us have had a teacher, coach, boss, spouse, or parent who has used that tactic to try to get the best out of us. In fourth grade, my PE teacher was like that. He went around telling students that he didn’t think they were fast enough, strong enough, or disciplined enough to impress him. And he was right. Plenty of us resented him so much that we tried our best to prove him wrong, but I know I didn’t come out of the fourth grade any better for it. His “tough love” wasn’t really love at all because the only things that it fueled with us were spite and hatred.

How often does that same approach get transferred to Jesus by pastors and preachers and Sunday school teachers who don’t know how to think about discipleship any other way? There are so many Christians out there who teach children that, if they really love Jesus, they will always do the right thing. But that never works. Because we never do the right thing. We’re human beings. We’re sinners. And, if we have been taught that people who really love Jesus always do the right thing, whenever we fail, we will believe that it’s because we don’t really love Jesus. And that fills us with shame. And shame has never motivated anyone to be better. It only shuts us down.

I once heard a pastor say to a congregation, “If I could scare the hell out of you, I would.” And he meant it. But turning Jesus into a chronically disappointed motivational speaker or frustrated life coach won’t help us one bit. We need a savior.

If all we’ve ever known in our life is “try harder or else,” it may be difficult to grasp the truth of the gospel. Jesus didn’t die on the cross to motivate us to work harder. He died to give hopeless, recalcitrant sinners the gift of God’s unbreakable love. And the only thing we need to focus on is nurturing within ourselves the love that God’s love for us inspires.

Unconditional love is the only thing that has the power to change us for good. In Jesus Christ, you are loved with a love that has the ability to shape you for holiness—to form you into the image of the one who loves you—to love you into loving others as you have been loved. “This is my commandment,” Jesus says to his disciples, “that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). We are already loved. That love is not withheld from us until we clean our room, say our prayers, or reach a prerequisite level of faithfulness. It is showered upon us freely and indiscriminately even and especially while we are lost in our own failures because God knows that unconditional love is the only thing that works. Love inspires love, and love is the root of faithfulness.

Imagine showing up for the most important final exam of your life and being told that you have already received a perfect grade. Imagine your teacher or professor or doctoral advisor letting you know from the outset that you are already home free and that the only point of the exam is to give you a chance to celebrate and explore everything you already know. Imagine diving in not at all worried about the outcome but excited for the chance to delight in having already been found worthy. Axios! Worthy! That is the affirmation Jesus proclaims to us through the cross. His death does not highlight our failures. It makes us worthy.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. That is Jesus’ promise to us. His love teaches us how to love and beckons from us the love that is our faithfulness.