Preparing for our Neighborhood in the Kingdom of God...Jesus Will Ascend and Give Us the Holy Spirit, and Mom...

To You Who Are Beloved of our Lord Jesus Christ,                       

This Sunday, our passage is John 14: 15-21, where Jesus speaks of the foundation of God that is laid down for the church:

 ¹⁵ “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, 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.

¹⁸ “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. ¹⁹ In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹ They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

So, let us connect a few things. 

1.    At the beginning of John 14, Jesus says (and I am translating here), “In my Father’s community there are many neighborhoods…I go to prepare a place for you…I will come back to you.”

2.    The image of this new community is described in the book of Revelations as the New Jerusalem, come down out of heaven.

3.    We are called to be imitators of God in Ephesians 5, and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.

Ergo (a cooler word than ‘therefore'), a Neighborhood is prepared for us in the Kingdom of God, so we prepare that Neighborhood in the here and now. 

This Sunday is also Mother’s Day.  That suddenly caused these verses to pop in a whole new way.  Let me explain.  In my experience, mom was the manager of the household.  Dad worked and helped and did a lot, but day to day, it was mom who made the hundreds of decisions to keep the house running, the kids fed and out of trouble, the family as a unit.

Now, read these verses in the context of Jesus preparing to ascend and leaving plans in place for the founding of the church, for the creation of Neighborhoods here in God’s Kingdom.  My first reading of all this was in the context of ‘Trinity’, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, they are all brought together in these few verses.

But they are brought together for a purpose.  In God and as God, Jesus is laying down the foundation of how, in the divine, this new thing-this church-is going to function.  The household of faith is built on more than the promises of God, also the active participation and intervention of God.

This is especially touching where Jesus speaks of His ascension.  The world will no longer see Him, but we will.  This is the presence and the work of the Holy Spirit.  The church is not left with an attitude on the part of Jesus that goes something like, “Okay, here you go, a Spirit, go play and I’ll see you at the second coming.”

No, Jesus is here, the literal “Emmanuel”, which means “God With Us”.  Mom was always there, always managing things, always preparing, and (darn it) always right.  It's kind of a tribute to mom that it takes God in Three Persons to replace her in the household of faith…

 

And the connector through this all is love.  I didn’t always understand (or choose to understand, let me be real) what mom asked of me, but it was always from love.  For me personally, mom is not here anymore.  But, like my Lord Jesus, neither is she really gone.

 

Jesus builds our Neighborhood in God’s Kingdom on love as surely as mom build our home on love. 

 

Pastor Pete