by Julie Neraas
Jesus’ farewell continues in Sunday’s gospel. The conversation takes place after the last supper (John 13) and before Jesus’ passion (John 18-19). A feeling of impending doom haunts Jesus’ words. We Christians today know how the story turns out. Yet for us as for Jesus’ disciples, facing death takes us to the edge of knowing.
We try to peer and peer and peer again into the future by means of our imaginative capacities and by leaning on our heartfelt hopes, but try as we may, we cannot see the contours of the next life. Our minds shrink back while trying to fathom it. Faith is necessary in the face of death, because the truth of another life beyond this one is so much larger than the facts.
For the disciples, Jesus’ looming death is wrenching. They cannot understand how this stupendous teacher, miracle worker, and beloved rabbi will meet a brutal end so soon. The weight of this impending loss must be why the author of John’s gospel spends so much time on Jesus’ leave taking and farewell. Jesus’ absence and new presence are two faces of a central crisis for the early church.
The disciples are scared and uncertain what they are to do after Jesus leaves. Should they to go back to their families and return to their fishing nets? How should they conduct their ministry? Who is to be in charge? Where are they to find sufficient strength?
- How would you feel in the disciples’ place?
Jesus speaks first to his disciples’ most primal fear. Call it separation, call it abandonment, call it aloneness. Jesus wants his disciples to know that while death will end his earthly life, it cannot and will not end their relationship. Jesus promises his friends a new relationship with him, an abiding comfort and help, “another Advocate to abide with you always.”
Thanks to the pervasive power of God’s love, there is nowhere his friends can go where God is not, and nowhere they can go where the Spirit it not, or where Christ is not. The hour of Jesus’ death approaches, but his friends will not be orphans.
In fact, through their relationship with him, they will participate in Jesus’ relationship with God—“I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” His Spirit will abide with them and prompt them to live as Jesus lived, to embody his words and continue his deeds.
- When have you experienced that Jesus has not left you orphaned?
Jesus assures his disciples that they have everything they need for their lives and mission after he is gone. They are to keep his commandments. In these last words in Sunday’s gospel, Jesus repeats that loving one another puts us in relationship with him, his Father, and the Spirit who abides in us. The intangible bonds of love, friendship, discipleship last. The small and large gestures that make love visible last. Tenderness lasts and gets passed down generations in parents’ care for their kids, in friends’ presence in difficult times.
Jesus entrusts his first disciples and us with his mission to invest our hearts and hands in families and friends and extend them beyond. Building community and welcoming diversity in our world are missions for us who are Jesus’ disciples today.
- To what is the Holy Spirit prompting you this Easter season?
- In whom do you hear the Holy Spirit speaking and inviting you to action?