“The Value of Just Showing Up”, (John 14:15-21)

A Sermon Preached By

Rev. Peter W. Shidemantle

6^th Sunday of Easter, May 1, 2005

PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt, NY  13214  Phone:  446-0960

phillchu@twcny.rr.com

          If I asked you the question, “How many of you didn’t feel like coming to church this morning?” - and asked for a show of hands (I won’t), my guess is that at least some of you didn’t really feel like coming this morning, but you did.  Maybe your spouse pressured you, or your parents, maybe your kids - or maybe you came out of a sense of obligation because you had a job to do here today.  I know, it’s the day of our annual meeting, and you never want to miss an annual meeting!  But on a nice lazy Sunday morning like this, wouldn’t it be nice to sleep in a little longer, kick back with the Sunday papers, maybe do “bagel church” at Wegman’s?

          I’ll confess that there are some Sundays I don’t feel like going to church, either, but by the time I get over here on such days I’ve usually managed to get myself into a kind of “auto-pilot” mode and I’m more or less ready to be up here, doing what I believe God has called me to do - even though it doesn’t always feel like it’s getting through.  But by the time we’ve worshiped together, broken bread together, shared in fellowship and learning together - there is always a reason I’m glad we have.  Somehow the Spirit of God manages to touch down in spite of our reluctance, or resentment, or our pre-occupation.  And we’re reminded of the value of just showing up.

          As Christians we are called to “show up,” not just to worship, but in lots of ways.  Another way of putting it is to say that we are called to keep Christ’s commandment to love.  And let’s face it; sometimes our heart isn’t in it.  You’ve agreed to help a friend move, or to help serve a meal at the Samaritan Center, or meet with your confirmand or your mentor.  And when the day arrives and your schedule is already too full, or you’re really tired, or there’s something else that you feel like doing more -  you’re resenting the fact that you had agreed to show up.  But sometimes, more often than not, your heart caught up to the action.  A relationship is deepened, you’ve learned something, your heart has been touched, you know that you’ve contributed to something important.

          We can’t do everything out of a sense of obligation.  That would be too exhausting, could lead to burnout.  But there is something very important about keeping the commandment to love one another even when our heart isn’t in it.  If we waited for our hearts all the time, we’d often fail to act just when our action was most needed.  “If you love me,” Jesus told his disciples, “you will keep my commandments.”  Now if anyone else said that to us, we might feel a bit manipulated.  If Karen starts a sentence with, “Honey, if you love me...” I know something else is coming.  But yet it’s true, isn’t it, that if we do love someone we’ve got to be there, to be helping, sharing, doing for each other.  Love of the kind that Jesus spoke is always in relationship.  It is never abstract; it is never reduced to feelings alone.  Sometimes the biggest part of love is just showing up.

          “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate (Helper - Holy Spirit), to be with you forever.”  Notice the order of things here: first, we keep the commandment, then the Spirit comes - not because we’ve earned the right for the Spirit of God to be with us because we have loved - but rather because we know, do we not, that it is only after we do something, however imperfect or half-hearted our performance, that we begin to get into the spirit of it, and discover the Spirit that Christ promises.

          Along about this time of year I always think of gardening in this regard - and I always find some way of sharing this reflection with you.  It’s a lot of work to plant a garden.  You have to prepare the soil, plant the seeds, weed, wait, fight the pests, water – but then, when the harvest comes, it still is a gift - because you realize that the miracle is what happens in the ground and within the plant, within the cycles of nature that brings forth the fruit.  I’ve only helped it along.  In the same way, if we want to see the harvest that only God can bring, the harvest of righteousness, the harvest of peace, the harvest of racial and religious reconciliation, the harvest of a faithful fellowship of believers - of children knowing and loving God, of growing in our faith and love, of joy and peace in believing, of strength to withstand the enticements and false promises of a materialistic world - we’ve got to be about the planting the seeds, the hoeing and the weeding.  If we want to see the harvest of God’s love then we have to be about the work of love ourselves, even when our hearts aren’t full of love, even when we don’t have the greatest confidence in our own abilities.

          It has been suggested by some scholars that the community for which John wrote his gospel perhaps had begun to neglect Christ’s commandments.  Maybe they had lost some of their earlier passion for the gospel, that the brutality of the Roman military power and the persecution of believers had taken a toll on their commitment, and so it was important they be reminded of his commandment to love.  Isn’t it ironic that the most impassioned “religious” action we see in our own world today is that of hatred and violence, and in our own nation the claim trying to be enforced by those on the far right fringe that theirs is the only authentic Christian voice?  Can you imagine if all of those who proclaim obedience to Christ were to rise up with an equal passion as a great army of love?  But at least 50% of it is just showing up.

          If those 2^nd and 3^rd generation Christians who were John’s first audience were struggling with what it means to love Jesus after he was gone, struggling with their own commitment under difficult conditions, then we are more like them than different from them.  The conditions of the struggle might be different, but the threats to commitment to Christ’s commands and to passion in faith are just as great.  The premium that is placed on “feeling,” that love is ended once feelings change or moderate, or that something is not worthwhile unless it entertains us or produces an immediate rush, or brings immediate satisfaction causes us to be impatient with the idea of committing to a journey over the long haul.  Wanting to see the benefits of faith, to immediately know its contentment and peace, seeing results, having the answers - leads to a kind of skipping over the surface of holiness, like a stone skipping over water.  You can’t know the deeper realities, the deeper truth, the deeper love without committing to the deeper things, the things that take some effort and some digging and some time.  But again, half of it is just showing up, showing up with the community called to be together in God’s name - you just don’t know what might happen.  One thing we do know is that the Holy Spirit of God is present to help us, to intercede in prayerful sighs for us if necessary, when we cannot find the words to pray.

          Our gospel reading this morning says something very important about the kind of love Jesus is calling us to keep.  It is grounded in his love, and ultimately in God’s love.  It is not just the feelings that we may or may not have as we seek to obey and keep it.  The love shared within the church, and from the church to the world, is a participation in the mystery of the love shared between the Father and the Son.  We share in this love.  It isn’t just what we can conjure up on our own, either out of a sense of obligation when we don’t feel it, or the sense of warmth or satisfaction that may come to us when we do.  It is God’s love, in us.

          And secondly it is important to see that this intimacy between the believer who seeks to obey Christ’s commands, intimacy with Christ and with God, isn’t a private thing, a private kind of mysticism, but communal.  All the second person pronouns here are plural: “If you will keep my commandments...”  “The Spirit of truth dwells in you, and will be with you...”  “Because I live you will live also.”

          Sometimes we don’t realize what we have going on here, when we’re tempted to treat the faith so casually, treat our life together in Christ as something we can opt in and out of when it suits the circumstances – waiting, perhaps, for the Spirit to move us.  Sometimes the Spirit does come first to give us the power to love.  Sometimes we are “inspired” to action.  But it’s also true that loving action becomes a way that we are opened to the Spirit – having loved when we didn’t feel like loving, or done justice when our hearts were more inclined toward our own desires, having prayed when we did not feel like praying – and our hearts are opened to the Spirit who is love, justice, presence and prayer.  If we show up, bring ourselves to the work of love, our hearts will catch up, because it is God’s love in which we live and act.

          Didn’t Jesus say that where 2 or 3 are gathered in his name that he would be with us?  Did not he make himself known as a few of his disheartened followers broke bread together and their hearts burned within them?  Christ has this tendency, you see, to show up when we do, to make himself known as we share our lives and enact his love.

          We can step back and wait for it to happen, wait for God to deliver on God’s promises, for others to meet our expectations for how church should be or believers should act.  Jesus really does, however, put it on us: “If you love me you will keep my commandments.”  But it always comes as promise: “I will be with you.”  That’s what we should expect.  That, and nothing less.

          To the glory of God.  Amen.

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