Get to work and be still.
Get to work and be still.
Get to work and be still.
It’s Trinitarian to say something three times. Or it’s like the army, everything they want you to know they tell you multiple times. There is really, so much to unpack in this Gospel. We have “love” and “laying down one’s life”, “abiding”, and “commandments” or work—all just to get at what this Gospel means. And I’m going to opine that it all can go back to “Get to work and be still.” Let’s linger over these two aspects of the baptismal life.
Get to work/ Commandments… which commandments does Jesus mean? Remember the young man who asked Jesus what he must do to gain salvation and Jesus said keep the commandments, and he said I do that, and Jesus said, give away everything. Maybe Jesus means a commandment that is particular to you, to what holds you back, like the rich young man. Maybe Jesus means the ten commandments, or the two great commandments. I would put forth from this interchange that doing, this keeping of the commandments is the call to place God first before all, (the first commandment), that is all that we need. When I say work, this isn’t busy work, this isn’t a list on a sheet to tick off done and undone as our confession says. What this is then is living a life, doing things, being in tune, in line, in accordance with the love of God.
Get to work
So why did I put in the word WORK? Well, of course, keeping commandments involves work, not sanctimonious, overly pious work, but there is work that we must expend to keep us from our baser selves. Frederick Buechner once said that your vocation to follow the commands of God is best understood this way: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” And so, if we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, and as we look what actions might constitute that love, remember that there is something to which God calls you, the doing of which will give you gladness and at the same time meet the world’s hunger. I have no doubt it exists; and that it will require work. This is the work to which we are ‘appointed, to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.’
Get to work.
LOVE/ Laying down one’s life: The Gospel of John most of the time (as here) uses the word αγαπη for love, that sacrificial type of love. It is interesting that αγαπη is used even in this context when Jesus is talking about his disciples whom he calls friends. (The Greek word φιλια, or brotherly love, might seem more appropriate.) Jesus talks about loving friends, which might just be everyone, in a sacrificial sense. Just because Jesus died in the ultimate sort of sacrifice and many martyrs did so as well, particular of the early church, does not mean that we are enjoined to die for others. Although it could happen, that seems less to be the point. If you lay down your life, maybe you lay down a life that is not purposeful, or one that does not move towards the Kingdom of Heaven, that does not move towards God, and instead pick up a life that is more purposeful. This is the WORK of the baptized.
Get to work.
The Gospel of John this week talks a lot about abiding. Abiding has everything in the world to do with remaining, being still, being present, dwelling. I had a friend once explain abiding as the being part of “human beings.” I mean, we could just be “humans,” or we could be “human doings.” What we do, what jobs we have or had, often define who we are to ourselves and to others… but isn’t it funny that most of the time we refer to people as “human beings”? I mean we don’t talk about dog beings or cat beings. I think there is something to this; it drives home the abiding named in these scriptures and puts it in language we more readily understand. If we are to abide in God’s love, we have to be still enough to hear. God seems often to speak in the silences and in the spaces, in other words, God speaks in prayer. God is admittedly difficult to hear at times. But all of this abiding in love is then knowing you are loved, knowing yourself as beloved, simply because you are a child of God. Not because of anything you have done.
Be Still
I noticed this week that the order in this passage makes a difference. It’s something we tend to gloss over. “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” It’s not the other way around as we often think it is. So, we keep the commandments, we treat God as first and foremost, which means we then care for others—love God and love neighbor, AND if we do those things, THEN we abide in God’s love. Abiding in love does not cause the commandments to be kept or even lead us to keep them. The very action, the doing, the work, of living truly what we consider to be a Christian life, this is what forms us into who we are. We discover our own belovedness, in which we abide, by loving others, doing that work to which we are called. Perhaps you remember words I often say at the invitation to the Eucharist, based on a quote from Augustine, “Be who you, become what you see, the body and blood of Christ.” To truly be who you are, is to be the best you. It is to be the freest you, the “you” who is able to give freely to others, it is to approach what God is calling you to be in the world and grab on to it. We are called to be sacrificial lovers, giving to the world, keeping commandments, which then allows us to be still and know God. We can’t be in true relationship with God until we truly, actively, sacrificially love others. And when we do so, we discover ourselves as one of God’s beloved too.
So…
Get to work and be still.
Get to work and be still.
Get to work and be still.