Of a long-distance relationship.
Most of us are living in some kind of long-distance relationship. All our friends and family don’t just happen to live conveniently down the road in our community. Today's gospel has to do with living in a sort of long-distance relationship.
In order to put the reading into a helpful contextI want to go back to the Last Supper where Jesus has been telling the disciples about his coming departure. This raises for them the disturbing prospect of separation from the Master who they have grown to love so much. In years to come the head of the table knows that the disciples will feel like “orphans.” Sure, Easter will be a joyous reunion, but the resurrection appearances will not continue indefinitely. As the years pass, people will be called to believe in a Messiah they have never seen or heard. Jesus’ words and actions will be conveyed to them through the tradition of the church in a world that may seem indifferent at best and hostile at worst.
In today's passage, Jesus anticipates the Easter moment when he says, “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you” and “Because I live, you also will live” Our Easter message is that life rather than death has the final word, and this is crucial for our faith. In John’s gospel, faith is a relationship with a living being. For there to be authentic faith in Jesus, people must be able to relate to the living Jesus–a Jesus who is not absent but really present. Otherwise, faith is reduced to the memory of Jesus who died long ago.
But here is the conundrum: Why would anyone work so hard at a long-distance relationship with a Jesus who they cannot see? The honest answer is that no one would believe it–apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. For it is the Spirit who makes the presence of the living Jesus and his Father known.
Coming to faith and forming a relationship (long distance or otherwise) is like falling in love. You can’t fall deeply in love with an abstract idea. Love comes through an encounter with another living person. The same is true of faith. If faith is a relationship with the living Christ and the living God who sent him, then faith can only come through an encounter with them. And the Spirit is the one who makes this meeting possible.
So the Holy Spirit who Jesus promises to send is part of the answer to keeping the long-distance relationship aflame. But, can I put it to you, that in the day-to-day business of living a long-distance relationship, there is something else that is helpful? And what I am about to say may sound a little weird but bear with me on this.
We learn to live this long-distance relationship not just by the lovely intimate moments when The Master seems close to us, where everything is perfectly balanced, where everything is stable and reliable, but we also learn to love in the times when we are off balance, the times when we make blunders and are honest about our need for correction. If the twelve disciples are an example of anything, it is the universal art of making mistakes while journeying alongside God.
And it is in those times when we are called back when we realise that we are looking the wrong way at the wrong thing and actually we have been doing so for a long time; it is in those times when we have our errors pointed out to us that we come especially closest to him. It is in those moments when we say “Oops” or similar other words, that the long-distance relationship is not thinned and fractured as we might think, but it is actually strengthened because it is precisely in those moments that we know the joy of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Something else that is helpful with our long-distance relationship. That politically incorrect theme ‘obedience’ occurs at the start of today's gospel reading…
“If you love me, keep my commands.”
And it will occur at the end of the gospel reading.
“Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me.”
If you like, today's gospel is a sandwich between two pieces of ‘obedience bread’ with a tasty morsel of reassurance in the middle.
Obedience and keeping the commandments are ‘the how and why’ others take notice of us. When they see that we are obedient when they hear us not only saying ‘Yes…welcome’, but also when they hear us saying ‘No, I choose not to do this, not to say this’. When they see us choosing to speak out for the marginalised, the disenfranchised and this is the confronting bit… when they see where we put our hard-earned cash, then they really take notice. Then, we give them something to think about, especially when they understand that we are doing so because we are enjoying a long-distance relationship with an unseen God.
Long-distance relationships are often lonely so as we walk confidently forward, I leave you with some of the Master's words of assurance and comfort.
‘I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me.’