His Own in the World

Jesus said to his disciples: If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him. But you know him, because he remains with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” (John 14.15-21)

As a rule, online shoppers dread to find the words “assembly required” included on any purchase. Those two words imply that the shopper has a part to play if he or she wants the particular item to look and to function like the advertisement says it should. The words forewarn that the product arrives in pieces and the purchaser has to have the skills to put them together. Of course, anyone who has shopped at an Ikea Store knows that “assembly required” goes to an entirely new level of competence and patience, the directions for assembling sometimes as challenging as reading an Egyptian hieroglyphic.  

Regardless, the only way to get the job done is to do the work, painstaking as it may be, unless a person is willing to pay an added and hefty fee to have a professional do the manual labor. However, the person who sticks with the task and follows the assembly instructions meticulously usually ends up with a sense of accomplishment as well as a fully functioning item. 

In some ways, the passage from scripture that we are given on this Sixth Sunday of Easter states much the same thing, Jesus telling his followers that assembly is required if they are to be his disciples. We find him providing an assembly guide for Christian believers in this section of John’s gospel that we know as the Farewell Discourse. The name comes from the fact that Jesus is offering these guidelines to his followers on the evening before his death on the cross. 

Truth be told, readers of the discourse often find it confusing, the criticism warranted because John, more so than the other evangelists, often has Jesus sound like he is speaking in circles. As a result, his listeners are often confused, such as Nicodemus or the woman at the well, but so are we. That surely is the case again today when Jesus states that “I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.” 

However, rather than get lost in the weeds or in the labyrinth that John has created in his text, we need to step back, in this way allowing us to see the bigger picture. That certainly benefits us when we attempt to decipher the core message that is contained in the Farewell Discourse, the last instructions that Jesus provides to the eleven in the Upper Room.

Even at a glance, three things seem to stand out in the passage put before us. The first and the most obvious is the clear fear of the disciples that Jesus is abandoning them. As we heard last Sunday, this section begins with Jesus telling them that he “is going away.” Confused and concerned, the eleven express their fear of facing a future without his presence alongside them. It is a common enough experience when faced with the leave-taking of someone important in our lives.

So Jesus addresses the discombobulation of his disciples about his absence by assuring them that his presence among them continues, telling them, “I will not leave you orphans.” However, he will continue to live among them not physically as he has done, but in a new way, found in what he calls “another Advocate.” He promises them, “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always.”

This advocate will provide the ongoing presence of Jesus to his followers, doing as Jesus has done while he was with them, moving the disciples on the right path that will lead them to unity with God, described here as having a place in the Father’s house. In other words, the Spirit will allow believers to experience the living Jesus, although in a wholly different form. The physical absence is replaced by a never-ending presence of this Spirit that will lead and guide the disciples.

However, this Spirit will be gifted only to those who believe in Jesus and in his revelation of the Father. That dichotomy that John presented at the start of the gospel continues to the end, a split between those who believe and those who do not believe. So, we hear Jesus say that “the world cannot accept this Spirit of truth because it neither sees nor knows him,” the same rejection that Jesus received at the hands of the world, a place wholly at odds with the Father and his ways.

How, then, can the followers of Jesus be assured of this permanent presence of the Spirit denied to the world at large? The Spirit is theirs for the taking so long as they keep the commandments that Jesus has given them. We find three commandments in this gospel that Jesus has given to his disciples. First, If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” 

Second, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another just like I have loved you.” And the third was “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.” In short, the commandments direct his disciples to serve others, to love all others, and to believe in him as the way to the Father. 

Therefore, when he tells them, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” he is speaking of these three commands. Their lives as his followers will be built upon these three principles: service, love, and faith. Their love for their teacher and master will be found in living out these commandments, in contrast to a world that is built on serving oneself, not others; on hatred of others, not on love of others; and on believing in false gods, not on believing in the Father.

Here, we do not  want to overlook that small word “if” that is found in Jesus’ words, “If you love me.” The word is conditional and presupposes the possibility of not loving him, evidenced by those who choose to walk in the darkness rather than walking in the light that Jesus has brought into the world. Jesus has known rejection all the way and he knows it will continue to exist long after he has returned to his Father.

However–and this moves us to the third point that he is making in this passage–should a person choose to keep his commandments, in this way showing their love for him, then that person is promised a return of love by both Jesus and by his Father. So, we hear him say, “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” 

In short, when a person keeps these commandments, proving his or her love, they will find a unity with Jesus and a unity with his Father, the bond between themselves built on a love that is built on mutual love. This unity with the Father has been spoken of by Jesus on multiple occasions and he returns to the same topic here at the end as he says his goodbyes to the eleven, inviting them to also share in that same unity that he has enjoyed with his Father, a unity that comes to them when they fully commit themselves to the path of truth.

Looked at in this way, having stripping away some of the circuitous and repetitious language of John, we better see the fundamentals of this Farewell Discourse, a final address in which Jesus promises a sustained presence alongside his followers so long as they stay true to his way, one built on service, love, and belief, a path that will prove their love of him, a love that will unite his followers not only with him, but also with his Father.

I hope, then, that this simplification of John’s text allows a greater appreciation of it without compromising its profound theological underpinnings. I fear that sometimes John’s high theological intentions block us from seeing the beauty of the simplicity of Jesus’ message to his followers as he departs their company, having walked with them for years in a world that “did not know him,” as John stated the case in his prologue. 

Here, at the end, he hopes that his few followers have come to know him and will therefore continue to make the way of truth and life known to subsequent generations of believers who also yearn for the light in the darkness. His promise is that he will be with them through the ages, unseen but not unknown, because he will be found in the Spirit that will be with them always, the Spirit of truth that the world cannot accept.

I would suggest, then, that we allow ourselves to focus on the three commandments that Jesus left behind, the command to serve others, to love others, and to stay strong in our belief in him. In the end, it all boils down to these three things–service, love, and belief. If our lives exemplify an honest appropriation of these virtues, then we can be assured of being on the right path, guided there by the Spirit that is gifted to those who have come to know Jesus.

If we are weak in any of these virtues, then we may want to repair them because any break in them results in our fracturing a close relationship between ourselves and Jesus and, at the same time, with his Father. A failure to follow the command to serve, to love, and to believe sadly ends with our finding ourselves walking in the darkness, not in the light. 

And, as we all know, people who walk in the dark stumble and fall, go the wrong way and end up nowhere, while those who walk in the light have a clear path before them, a way that leads somewhere and to somebody, meaning to the God of love whose light shone upon the world for a brief while in the life of his beloved son, Jesus, and whose light continues to shine in this dark world in the lives of his followers who continue to serve as he served, to love as he loved, and to believe as he believed.

They have followed the instructions that Jesus gave them, understanding that these commandments put us on the right path. The commands are the assembly required notation on the package of discipleship that, when put together, results in a disciple who through service, love, and faith are not only part of the world of Jesus, but are also those he called his “own in the world,” the phrase with which the evangelist began the Farewell Discourse, telling us at that point that Jesus “loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.”

That, then, should be our hope–that we also will be claimed in time by Jesus as “his own in the world.”

–Jeremy Myers