Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

John 14:15-21

Please pray with me: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

 

When my daughter was born, one of the questions that my husband I frequently received as new parents was “what kind of sleeper is she?” The parenting books we read before her arrival had prepared us to pay attention to sleep. So, as type-A eldest child sorts, my husband and I had read all the baby literature and felt prepared to handle whatever came at us, sleep-wise, coming up with elaborate sleep shift charts, buying a bassinet that supported safe sleep practices, creating quiet, warm, and dark spaces in our condo that could best support a newborn’s sleeping needs, basically trying to head off any challenge that may come our way.

 

I’m humbled to say we were both thrown for a loop when we discovered, day one, that my daughter would not sleep unless she was being held by someone. She would fall asleep in our arms and then as we gently eased her into her bassinet, she would immediately wake with a roar and could only be soothed by being held and rocked. 

 

The first couple days of this were sweet, because who doesn’t love to hold a newborn baby? But as the sleep deprivation took hold, true confession, it became a struggle to approach another sleepless night of baby holding with excitement. 

 

It takes a village to raise a child, as the African proverb goes, and our village came around our little family to provide support, taking turns holding my daughter so my husband or I could sleep for a few blissful hours at a time. 

 

Out of the haze of that time, I remember a conversation with a friend who had come by to hold my daughter so I could sleep, a friend whose child also had similar sleep needs as a newborn. I asked what helped her get through her experience. Coffee, she said. But looking back on that time, with a solid year of good sleep behind her, she had developed a new sense of empathy for her newborn. Why wouldn’t a baby want to be held all the time? It is a beautiful thing to be held.

 

Now with several years of solid sleep behind me, I can recognize this as well. And I don’t think that sense ever leaves us. It is a beautiful thing to be held. Whether as an infant or child, or as even adults, being held in the embrace of a loved one, feeling held within a gently swaying hammock, the physical sensation of being held can be comforting, soothing. Beyond the physical experience of being held, we may feel held in other ways. Held in prayer. Held in the love and support of a community as we face something challenging. Held together by bonds of family or friendship. Being held, whether physically or metaphorically, can provide a sense of security, that no matter what, something has us in its arms. 

 

Our gospel passage from John describes the foundational way in which we are held. We join Jesus and the disciples in the Upper Room on the night before he is betrayed and handed over. He offered them final words of instruction and assurance before leaving them in a way that the disciples had yet to understand. And this lack of understanding caused the disciples to be distressed. Jesus said he would be leaving them – would they be abandoned? What will happen to them and to the relationship they have with their teacher and friend?

 

Jesus assures them that they will not be abandoned: the relationship will endure beyond Jesus’ departure. Woven throughout his instructions are a description of the type of relationship that Jesus will have with his disciples when he is no longer physically present with them. It’s a relationship that is mediated through the Holy Spirit, the Advocate who will come alongside the disciples and will live within them – and indeed lives with us.

 

And it’s a relationship that is marked by a love that will hold his disciples in an ever-present, unending embrace. This love radiates from God, enveloping Jesus, embracing us, in turn holding Jesus at the center. I imagine a series of nesting dolls: God as the outside, holding Jesus within, opening up to us, finally revealing Jesus as the most internal doll. Love held in love held in love held in love.

 

Someone once described Maundy Thursday, the day in the church year when we gather together to worship and remember this time that Jesus had with his disciples, as feeling cozy. Not the bathrobe and slippers kind of cozy, but a coziness that comes from feeling warm and loved. And it’s easy to stay there, held in the warm, loving embrace of the Upper Room and of this moment. Again, it’s a beautiful thing to be held.

 

But we of course know that the story doesn’t end there. It continues. We today find ourselves on the other side of that evening, having passed through the distress of Good Friday, the grief of Holy Saturday, and the improbable joy of Easter Sunday. And still the love remains, having revealed new facets of tenacity, endurance, broadening into something that is beyond the kind of love that the disciples could have imagined on the Maundy Thursday side of the resurrection. 

 

It’s love that has seen, experienced, and wrestled with the very worst that life can throw at us – abandonment by loved ones. Betrayal by friends. Disappointment. Despair and the loss of hope. Death. 

 

And it doesn’t run away. It doesn’t hide. It doesn’t leave us orphaned and vulnerable. God’s love is made known and made real as the Holy Spirit comes alongside us, carrying us into that nesting doll fellowship where we are held in God’s love forever.

 

We again find ourselves resting cozily in God’s love, caught up in the movement of reciprocal love between God and Christ, Christ and us, us and Christ – a beautiful place to be! And again, that’s not where it ends. Rather, it’s where it all begins.

 

Our Gospel passage begins with Jesus saying to the disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” At first read, this comes off as conditional. If you do this, then you will receive this. If you love me, you will keep my commandments, then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. A love that plays by the rules of the world, tit-for-tat, you give me this then I will give you that. Perhaps a shadow version of love that many of us have experienced in our own lives.

 

Many biblical scholars point to the dialogue that comes before our reading for today, when Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment: to love one another as Jesus has loved them. Then, following this, this outflowing of love, then the Holy Spirit will come alongside them to help them, and indeed us, to love. Because, we kinda need the Spirit’s help to love, am I right? Or at least someone who can come alongside and offer perspective, empathy, resources that we may not currently have on our own due to sleep deprivation (I’m projecting here). Point being, we don’t need to do anything to earn the love we receive from Jesus. We just get to share it. With joy. Because we know what it’s like to be held in an enduring, tenacious, gracious love.

 

Love one another as I have loved you, Jesus says. Love is given direction. When united with the gift of the Holy Spirit, it moves beyond the closed nesting doll system to expand beyond itself. It recognizes that others are also held within the same loving relationship that we find ourselves held so securely within. Love grows feet: it moves. It desires to make sure others know that they too are held in the divine arms of love. Love becomes public.

 

Justice is what love looks like in public, to quote scholar and activist Cornell West. 

 

Many of us here are no strangers to the fights for social justice, racial justice, climate justice, immigrant justice, housing justice, and more. We all come to this work with different motivators – dreaming of a city where everyone has a safe and affordable place to live. Hoping for a world that is beautiful and sustains the lives of our children, grandchildren, and generations beyond. Envisioning a country that welcomes immigrants and refugees and celebrates the gifts they have to offer our communities. Believing that the walls that racism has built can be broken down. 

 

And, we also come to this work knowing that we are held in a web of love that includes all of creation. For this justice-love finds its source in God, is modeled by Jesus, and sustained by the presence of the Holy Spirit who comes alongside us as we work hand-in-hand with others to make it real.

 

As we’ve witnessed and perhaps experienced, the world needs this kind of love. To be loved in this kind of way. Through service, advocacy, activism, showing up for and supporting the people and communities around us, we are invited to come alongside our beautiful, broken, and beloved world, knowing that we are supported and accompanied by the Holy Spirit who brings all into God’s loving embrace.

 

It is a beautiful thing – for ourselves and for the world – to be held in God’s love. Amen.