Kingdom Math, Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year C: John 14.23-29

Kingdom Math
Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year C
John 14.23-29

Danny Meyer runs a string of successful restaurants. On the side, he teaches people to be nice; not just any people, but New Yorkers. Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group imparts the management magic of smiles and hugs in a culture of grimaces and stiff-arms. (More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/nyregion/25meyer-ready.html.)

One tenet of his glad-handing gospel, as articulated by managing director Susan Salgado, runs this way: “You do not have to be the very best in your business to be people’s favorite. It’s all about how you make people feel.” Not that competence makes no difference. In fact, Meyer runs a spread-sheet on the balance: a “fifty-one percenter” is someone whose emotional savvy wins over the customer, but who can supply the remaining forty-nine percent that consists of practical skills. Or, as Yogi Berra once said, “Ninety percent of this game is mental, and the other half is physical.”

This insight might help understand what first seems a troubling statement by Jesus: “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him.” Sounds sort of conditional: love to be loved, obey to be blessed. But don’t forget that Jesus speaks in response to a question: Lord, why just us? Why not a general roll-out for the larger public? Jesus replies that lived love opens doors where knowledge can only follow. If you love you will live what you love, and in that living you will experience the love of God that was there all along. And indeed, we don’t learn to obey by learning; we learn to obey by loving.

Not that knowledge makes no difference. The helper/ comforer/ exhorter/ counselor (Jesus uses a shape-shifting Greek word that runs the gamut from personal trainer to drill sergeant) will teach and remind. Jesus isn’t just anyone we’d like him to be, plastic theological Play Doh for our flexible personal whims. The Spirit indwells to fill out the forty-nine percent of faith that demands accurate understanding. But the heart that fails to love finds no use for this knowledge.

Jesus does not offer a works salvation, manipulative preconditions about buttering up the Almighty by being on our best behavior. He says, to paraphrase Danny Meyer, “You do not have to be the best to be my favorite. Start with love and see where it leads.”

Lovingly,
Doug

Collect
Heavenly Father, on the eve his crucifixion your Son taught us to love him not with words but with deeds. Grant us now the inner teaching of your Spirit that we may obey our way into genuine understanding, and live our way into true learning, so that the world may see in us the knowledge of you, the One God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Benediction
May the Son lead you to love Him,
So that you might know the Father.
May the Spirit show you the Son,
So that you might experience his peace.
May Father, Son, and Holy Spirit draw you in
And give you the peace that the world can neither know nor destroy.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

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