May 14, 2023 St. Andrew Church Rev. Anne McAnelly
First Lesson: Acts 17:22-31
22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28 For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’
29 Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
Second Lesson: John 14:15-21
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.”
Today is Mother’s Day, a day when we honor our Moms. We learn many things from our Moms. My mother taught me religion. She used to say things like, “You better pray that comes out of the carpet.”
My mother taught me medicine: “If you don’t stop crossing your eyes, they’re going to freeze that way.”
My mother taught me to appreciate a job well done: “If you’re going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning!”
My mother taught me about genetics: “You are just like your father!”
My mother taught me logic: “Because I said so, that’s why.” –
I don’t know if any of you had mothers like that. Maybe we all had a mother like that. (Sermons.com) I say that tongue and cheek. But truly my mother taught me love. Love for family, love for her many deep friendships, love for God and love for life. My mother threw a party celebrating all the people she knew in the 50 years she had lived in Orange County. She moved there in junior high, and invited people who had touched her life over those 50 years. Well over 150 people attended, so big it was held at a county park, with a three-legged race, a talent show, and lots of good food and friends. Not just her peers but also children who had grown up as family friends. My mother valued relationships, loved people, and fostered deep connections.
Jesus was all about love as well. Our passage starts and ends with love. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” In John’s gospel Jesus only gives one commandment- to love. One commentator writes, “Unlike Matthew, nowhere in John does Jesus command us to go the second mile, turn the other cheek, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Famously, Jesus gives only a single commandment in John and it occurs in the chapter just before ours: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (13:34). Love is the hallmark of Jesus’ ministry and life. Of course, the most quoted passage in scripture also comes from John, “For God so loved the world, that he gave is only son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life (3:16).
On this Mother’s Day I was interested to learn the connection between love and parents. In the Ten Commandments, the first four are about our love for God and right worship. No other God, no idols, not taking the Lord’s name in vain, and keeping Sabbath. Four ways we show our love for God. The last five are about love for neighbors and how we can get along with each other. Thou shall not murder, steal, or covet. But the one in between is “Honor your father and mother.” It feels like parental love is the closest to God’s love, just from the order within the Ten Commandments. One commentator writes, A “parent’s love is in between love for God and love for a neig..libor … So I t.½i… that closest to God’s love in this world is parent’s love. Parent’s love is not reciprocal love, their love is not in response to the love they receive from their children” (https ://timothypc .com/podcast/ sermons/ gods-love-parents-loveD.
First God teaches us how to love God, then how to honor our parents, how to love those who brought us into the world. On Mother’s Day we also honor those who have been like mothers to us as well, those who showed us how to love with every fiber of their beings. The women who protect, help and support us.
Jesus promises to send us a helper too. He asks his Father to give us another Advocate. The word here is Paraclete, we often refer to this as Spirit. Remember, Jesus has just told the disciples he is leaving and so he is offering them Spirit to companion them when he is gone. Did you notice Jesus said, “another Advocate?” Jesus was the first and while he walked the earth the spirit of God is present, the power of God is with Jesus. But soon, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, the help.er, the support, will be with them and us; not just in one place, but in many places at once. One commentator writes, “Jesus was the first; for the Spirit to be active among them while Jesus was there would have been redundant since they each serve the same revelatory function. What appeared to be bad news to the disciples, namely Jesus’ departure from them, turned out to be the best of news for both them and us. While Jesus walked the earth, his ministry was limited to one locale and one person, himself. Upon his departure, his disciples are given the Spirit and moved from apprentices to full, mature revealers of God’s love” (Working Preacher, Jamie Clark Soles).
Jesus embodied love, taught us love and asked us to love. Jesus also provided for us an Advocate, the Holy Spirit, so that we would not have to face this world alone. Pentecost is in two weeks, when we celebrate the arrival of the Holy Spirit. Let us remember that Jesus sent the Spirit to care for us and abide with us as we seek to be his faithful disciples.
Finally, Jesus promised to not leave us orphaned. An orphan, as you know, is one who has lost their parents, lost their support, their family. Such a powerful word choice as Jesus is about to leave his disciples. One commentator writes, “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” (14:18-19). The Easter message is that life rather than death has the fmal word, and this is crucial for 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 present. Otherwise faith is reduced to the memory of a Jesus who died long ago” (Working Preacher, Craig Koester).
That’s where the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, comes in. Our faith is based on a relationship we have with Jesus through the Spirit who is ever present.
“This specific assurance of not being abandoned, without a parent, calls to mind the strong parental theme across the entirety of this Gospel, between Jesus and the Father, but also between the Father and those who believe. The Prologue asserted that “all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (1:12). (Here) we fmd the fulfillment of that promise” (Working Preacher, Karoline Lewis). We are God’s children because we believe in his name, because we know God through Jesus Christ. Knowing in the Bible has very strong meaning. Often we say “Biblical knowing” to mean intimate relationship. Yet here Jesus speaks of knowing as the thing that sets us apart from those who do not believe in God. Referring to the Advocate, the Spirit, Jesus says, “You know him, because he abides with you and will be in you (17). Knowing means a deep relationship.
We started today talking about love. Jesus’ love for us and his call to love one another. I want you to think about a different kind of love, falling in love. When we fall in love, we fonn a deep relationship from being in the presence of one special person. The Spirit helps us to love God through Christ in a similar way. One commentator writes, “Coming to faith is analogous to falling in love. One cannot fall in love in the abstract. Love comes through an encounter with another 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 presence known” (Working Preacher, Craig Koester).
Our mothers taught us to love and we honor them today.
Jesus commanded us to love and we do so thankful for the love we know through the Spirit who makes our relationship with God living and real. Amen.
