Text:  John 14:23-29                                                                                         W Rogate (6^th Sunday of Easter)

The Final Word

            In the name of him through whom we have peace with God, dear brothers and sisters in Christ:  It has been said by many people that “youth is wasted on the young”.  The people who say this, of course, only say it when they’re older, because it would not have occurred to them to say it when they were young themselves.  But the basic notion behind the saying makes a lot of sense.  The idea is that when you’re young and energetic, overflowing with vim, vigor and the time to apply them, you also lack the wisdom and experience to know what to do with them.  On the other hand, once you’ve gained the perspective and understanding that comes with age, you no longer have the health, strength, ability, or time to properly enjoy them.

            It is for this reason that today, and in the next several days and weeks, at countless high school and college commencement ceremonies throughout our country, highly honored people who in their lifetimes have accrued a vast wealth of knowledge and experience will address the new graduates. These distinguished individuals have been chosen to speak on account of the dedication and achievement that they have demonstrated in their respective fields by which they have earned the acclamation of their peers and the respect of society.  And the purpose of all their addresses is to give a final word of wisdom to the graduates – it’s the school’s last attempt to impart a bit of learning and inspiration to the young men and women who have completed their studies and are now heading out to change the world for the better with what they’ve learned.  As such, these speeches will be filled with helpful words of direction designed to steer the graduates away from foolish mistakes people often make, and also words of encouragement to guide them in the pursuit of noble goals.

            Yes, these commencement speeches will be very inspirational and moving … but for the most part, their thrilling words will be wasted on the young who, sitting uncomfortably in their mortarboards and academic robes, are only chomping at the bit to get their diplomas and be gone. They’re done learning:  the little pieces of parchment they are about to receive say so.  So they have no more patience or appreciation for “final words of wisdom” from some old person however well she or he may have done in life.  “Good for them.  Now it’s my turn.  Just quit talking and let me go.”  It’s doubtful that the graduates will ever remember much less apply these final words given to them; but possibly, just possibly, a few of them, through hard toil, struggle, and tears, will discover the wisdom of the words for themselves. And that’s the way it is with the sort of final words given by any human institution of learning.  They spend years filling minds with information and with methods for applying it; but on that day that the graduates head for the door, all they can really do is provide some sound general advice and their best wishes for the graduates’ future lives.

            How very different are some of the final words of Jesus in today’s Gospel reading to his soon-to-be-graduating disciples.  The passage is part of the discourse in the upper room that takes place after Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, but before the group left to go out to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus would later be arrested.  It’s not exactly a commencement speech; but Jesus is imparting some final words of wisdom to prepare his disciples for the future they will face when he is gone and they are sent out into the world.

            These eleven men are just now completing an intensive three-year course of study in theology taught by the One who quite literally “wrote the Bible on the subject”.  They knew the basics of Scripture before they began to learn under Jesus; what they’ve been doing for the past three years is having their eyes opened and their minds cleared of falsehood so that they could begin to understand what it all means.  At this point they think they’ve got most of it mastered – like most of the graduates at a commencement ceremony, they think they’ve learned all there is to learn. The truth is that they still have a long way to go.  Even some of their most fundamental assumptions are still entirely wrong. Despite what Jesus has told them to expect this evening concerning his arrest, trial, and their ultimate outcome, they still are thinking in terms of a Messianic grab for earthly power and the restoration of Israel’s former glory.  So, you might say that the biggest lessons are yet to come.

            So Jesus gives them these final words in advance to get them ready before he goes.  And to better understand what he’s saying, it will be helpful to know that in the verses immediately before the text we heard read, Jesus told his disciples that he is going away and that he is coming back to them.  And this is one of those things that Jesus says that has more than one level of meaning.  On the surface, he’s referring to the fact that he’s about to be arrested and crucified. His departure is his death, and where he’s going is to a place that he will experience the wrath of God for the sins of all mankind.  There we cannot go – and we can be glad of it.  But he will come back to them when he rises from the grave.  That’s one sense of what he means when he says he’s leaving and coming back; but in a broader and more distant sense, he’s referring to his upcoming departure to heaven and his final return on the last day. So there’s an immediate and a long-term fulfillment to his words.

            But there is yet a third sense in which Jesus is leaving and coming back to his disciples; and it’s this third sense that is the major thrust of the passage – and the one that has the most significance to us in our present circumstances:  so that’s the one I want to focus on.  Now, like I said, Jesus has told his disciples that he is leaving them, but then he told them not to worry:  “Even though I am going away from your sight, I will come to you and you will see me.  The world will not see me; only you will.”  It’s at this point that one of the disciples speaks up and asks, “Lord, how is it that you’re going to show yourself to us, but not to the rest of the world?”  It’s this question to which Jesus is replying in the reading we heard.

            And what he says is this:  “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.  My Father will love him, and we will come and make our home with him.”  Now unfortunately, the translation you have on the back of your bulletin (and that I read) has Jesus saying, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my word”, and certainly there is a similarity in meaning between keeping and obeying – but that similarity may lead us to a major confusion of Law and Gospel, so we want to be very careful here.  The most basic meaning of the word Jesus uses there is “to hold fast”, “to keep secure”, or “to maintain firmly in the grasp”; it only means “to obey” by extending that sense.  And please understand that if the Father will only love us if we obey the commands of Jesus, then we’re all sunk.  We might as well give up and go home now, because there’s nothing the church can do for you.  Not one of us obeys the word of God.  But that’s why he gave us a Savior – a Savior who obeyed God’s commands for us and who died in our place.  We are counted as righteous by believing in what he did for us, by “holding fast” in faith to the message of the Gospel.  That’s the Word of Jesus we are to keep – and by keeping it, the Father loves us because he no longer sees us as sinners.   When we stand in Christ’s holiness before him by believing the Gospel, he loves us and makes his dwelling with us.

            How does he live with us?  Well, oddly enough it’s by the same Word of God that makes us holy before him.  Bear with me because this is important, even if it is a little difficult to comprehend. At Christmas time we talk about how the Word of God became flesh and made his dwelling with us – and by that we understand that the Word of God is the Son of God who became the man Jesus Christ. So Jesus is God’s Word in human form. And the Word of God is God because the Son of God is God.  Got all that?

            Okay then, so follow it through now.  When we speak about God’s Word, we’re not talking about an “it” or a thing, we’re talking about a “who” – it’s a person: the person of God the Son.  Take it a step further:  when you hear the Word of God or read it, you’re not just receiving information that tells you about God; no, you’re actually receiving God the Son.  He is the Word you hear.  And to the extent that you keep the Word in your heart, the Word (that is, God the Son himself) is dwelling in you.  And God doesn’t come in parts.  He is one spirit, one divine essence.  So if you have the Son, you must necessarily also have the Father.  This is what Jesus means when he says that if you keep the Word he speaks, his Father will love you and both he and his Father will live with you.  He goes on to elaborate,” These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.” 

            Wow.  That really is an amazing idea:  that God the Father and the Son live in you when you keep the Word.  And so the question should come up, “Since I want God to dwell within me, how can I continue to keep his Word?”  Jesus gives us the answer.  He tells his disciples, “The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”  Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the “Counselor”.  The same word is sometimes translated “Comforter”, or maybe you have seen it transliterated as the word “Paraclete”.  What the word actually means is someone who stands with or beside you and calls to you with words of encouragement or assistance.  To keep the Word, we need someone who can do just that. You see, our hearts are sinful by nature, and would reject the Word of God, or misunderstand it, or tend to forget it. By ourselves, we couldn’t keep the Word. If it were up to us we would lose it or never let it in to begin with.  But this is where the Holy Spirit comes in.  It’s his part to call to us from the inside.  He convicts us of our sins by the Law of God and he breathes life in us by the Gospel of forgiveness in Christ.  He then holds the Word of God for us and continues to speak, explain, clarify, and illumine our hearts with it.  So it is the Spirit who creates and retains the faith by which we keep the Word – and by it, that we keep God in our hearts.

            So, the Father speaks the Word, which is the Son, who is received and retained in us by the Holy Spirit.  Like I said before, God doesn’t come in parts – when you get one person of the Trinity, you get all three.  And it should be evident by now that you need all three:  the Father to speak the Word that creates and saves, the Son to be that creating and saving Word, and the Holy Spirit to get and keep that Word in the heart.

            So what I want you to see this morning is that the final Word of Jesus to his disciples toward the conclusion of their three years of training is quite a bit different than what you would get at a normal school’s graduation ceremony.  There the final word is usually a bit of wisdom and experience that, it is vainly hoped, will help to direct the path of the students as they head out to apply the knowledge they have gathered.  But in his final Word to the disciples, Jesus explains that it isn’t the knowledge of important facts they have been gathering in their time with him.  No, what they have been gathering in their hearts is the Triune God himself.  They haven’t just been learning to know about him, they’ve been learning to know him – and that they will continue to do so.  As the Sprit works to further remind them of the Words Jesus spoke, and as he continues to shed his divine light on the Words, they will learn to know the heart and mind of God better.  And in knowing their God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they will also become like him.

            What’s more, as Jesus said, he will come to them and they will see him even while the world does not.  What does that mean?  Well, it’s important to remember that Jesus spoke these Words shortly after having instituted the Lord’s Supper.  With that in mind, it’s quite clear that the reference to seeing Jesus after his departure is meant in a sacramental sense.  Those who have the Word in their hearts – those who keep the Word by faith and love the Lord, also see him by faith when the elements he ordained are combined with the Words he spoke.  That is, we see Christ in the water with the Word of Baptism.  He becomes visible to us.  Likewise, we see him in the bread and wine that is combined with his Word of the Lord’s Supper.  Trusting in what he said by the power of the Spirit, we see his body and blood under the sacramental forms – but the rest of the world, those who don’t believe or love the Lord don’t see – exactly as he said.

            But by these gracious appearances, he confirms and reinforces the faith of we who do believe his Word – and by them, he gives his peace.  This is the final part of the final Word of Jesus to us.  He says, “Peace I leave you; my peace I give you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.”  No, the final word of a worldly education might wish you peace and happiness and success and everything else – but when all is said and done, it can only wish it to you.  It cannot make it happen.  But the final Word of Jesus is peace with God.  It is the very real peace established by the God who created, saved, and sanctified you with his own holy presence in his Word – by which Word he always stays with you and in which he has promised never to let you go. Therefore, as the psalmist wrote, “We need not fear though the earth give way.”  When all things are in turmoil and confusion, when there is death and destruction on every side, the person who keeps the Words of Jesus is bold to say, “So what?  Nothing in Creation can harm me.  I am at peace with God who dwells in me.  I know because Jesus has given me his Word of peace – and that is his final Word that stands forever.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!