Galatians 5:22 God’s Spirit makes us loving, happy, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, 23 gentle, and self-controlled. There is no law against behaving in any of these ways. 24 And because we belong to Christ Jesus, we have killed our selfish feelings and desires. 25 God’s Spirit has given us life, and so we should follow the Spirit. 26 But don’t be conceited or make others jealous by claiming to be better than they are. CEV
John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate,[h] to be with you forever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you. NRSVUE
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Lorelei, this message is for you. You are here today not because your parents forced you to come, but because you have decided that you are a Christian and you want everyone to know. Or maybe you are here because your parents forced you. I like to think the former is true.
We have sat together with members of this congregation through lessons and discussion about the nature of God, about the truthfulness of Scripture and about why we believe what we do.Your participation was often limited to eye-rolling, but because you were surrounded by people who love you and because you have been nurtured in this space, we are recognizing that you are mature enough and wise enough and knowledgeable enough to make some promises today.
At this point in your life, you are ready to fast forward four or five years so that you can get on with your real life. You have great plans. You want to help people. That is why I chose John 14:15 for your Confirmation verse: If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” To keep a commandment, to keep a rule, is to obey it, right? Keep. Is that asking too much? Jesus condensed the Ten Commandments of Exodus to two: Love God. Love your neighbor. Those are so general that we can ignore them in the minutiae of every day life.
It’s tempting to frame our actions around what we think is best for ourselves. We can throw in a token good deed or a token prayer now and then and have the commandments covered.
But that’s too easy and being a Christian, a follower of Jesus is not easy. To keep the commandments means the opposite of breaking them and we have all learned from our Sunday rituals that we do break commandments right and left. So to keep the Commandments looks great on paper, sounds great during worship, but in real life?
Yet keeping the Commandments in real life is what makes real kind, just, beautiful, bearable.
What a lovely idea—-and yet, each of us will leave here today and return to a world that is filled with people who are not kind, who are not just, who are not beautiful—who are downright mean and selfish.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
If you love God, Lorelei, or at least respect God, you will keep God’s commandments. What a difficult life lies ahead of you.
One of the challenges of Christianity is that the words of Scripture were not originally written in English. The Gospel according to John was written in Greek. No two languages can be translated word for word. We won’t go into examples here, but I ran across a commentary on this verse that I find helpful.
Diana Butler Bass wrote in her blog on May 14, 2023 about this verse.
According to her reading, the word for “keep” in John 14:15 doesn’t mean “obey.” It means to continue in, to watch over, attend to, guard, or observe. Listen again:
“If you love me, you will attend to my commandments.”
“If you love me, you will guard my commandments.”
“If you love me, you will watch over my commandments.”
“If you love me, you will preserve my commandments.”
“If you love me, you will care for my commandments.”
Attend, guard, watch, preserve, care. Lovingly attend to. Lovingly guard. Lovingly watch. Lovingly preserve. Lovingly care.
“Obey” is easily dismissed because it is impossible. What’s the use?
Obey, under the thumb of punishment.
Obey, anticipating failure.
Obey, without situational ethics.
On the other hand:
Attend, guard, watch, preserve, care. Lovingly attend to. Lovingly guard. Lovingly watch. Lovingly preserve. Lovingly care for the commandments. Love God. Love people. Love God above other idols. Love people by attending to them, guarding them, watching them preserving them, caring for them. That is how we love God. Not by signing a piece of paper, not by reciting a creed, but by loving what God created.
There is so much more to know about our faith. We spend a lot of time talking about sin and forgiveness. The term for that is “atonement theory.” I took two semesters of Systematic Theology, trying to understand why God sent Jesus to earth, why Jesus had to die, what his death and resurrection mean for us, a couple millennia later. Lorelei, you don’t need to worry about how or why Jesus died. You just have to accept it. Because of that, you can spend less time regretting the ways you hurt people, hurt yourself. That was taken care of by Jesus. We Christians also talk a lot about eternal life; sometimes we treat eternal life as a reward for following Jesus. We have no control and little proof over that concept.
We do have control over keeping the Commandments.
Attend, guard, watch, preserve, care. Lovingly attend to. Lovingly guard. Lovingly watch. Lovingly preserve. Lovingly care. Cherish the commandments because they will be the best guides you can get for making decisions, for building relationships, for achieving goals. You can’t avoid people, so relationships will define most of your life, mos of you joy, most of your struggles, most of your success.
Attend, guard, watch, preserve, care. Lovingly attend to people. Lovingly guard people. Lovingly watch over people Lovingly protect people. Lovingly care for people. I know that will often be a challenge for you, but we also believe that God, in ways we don’t understand, gives us the wisdom and the courage and the comfort to persevere. Galatians 5 says it this way: God’s Spirit makes us loving, happy, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled.
You’ve got this, Lorelei. You have the best preparation we can give you, not because the members of this congregation have all the answers, but because we have shared with you what is most important to us: our faith. Amen.