Life is all about transitions.
Life is full of beginnings and endings.
Life is full of moments of conception and moments of dying.
When things come together and when they unravel.
We walk around like normal, not seeing the changes going on in the lives around us.
Everything looks the same, but someone is dying inside, things look the same, someone is just finding life again.
We say hello. We say goodbye.
In darkness, we wait for the dawn.
Faith is full of transitions. We often try to recreate previous experiences or to cling to them, but faith changes, deeper, more stubborn, more mysteries, more painful, more impossible.
The great fifty days of Easter are quickly coming to an end.
The fearful and wonderful mystery of resurrection is drawing us onward to the next step in God’s reclaiming and restoring of creation.
Jesus leaves.
In the Gospel today we hear Jesus getting his disciples ready for the departure, the Ascension and the gift of the Spirit of Truth, the Companion, the advocate, the friend, the comforter wherein Jesus lives on in the lives of those who love him and is seen in the lives of those who love him.
Leaving again, to return again, as a deeper more powerful presence in those who believe, the power of the resurrection and God’s restoring judgment lives on and spreads in the world through those who love him.
They are getting ready to be sent out, prepared to spread the Spirit of truth like a contagion, but rather than a God stricken sickness it is God stricken wellness, restoring, reclaiming, enlivening.
The transition that is conversion. The change that is salvation.
The Easter mystery moves on to the even greater mystery of life in the Spirit.
We try to make it complicated; this life in the Spirit but John’s Gospel keeps us on task, keeps it simple.
Love, life in the Spirit, it’s all about love. In love we find God, we find the presence of Jesus with and for the Father, and in love we find the Spirit of truth that saves us and that spreads through us.
We think life is about so many things, we prepare ourselves and our children for making it in the world, achieving something, successfully navigating all the transitions and we so often miss the point.
Love one another as I have loved you.
That is Jesus’ one command according to John’s Gospel.
Without that there is no life, just withering death, a half-life existence, blind to God, blind to the glory shimmering just beneath the surface of things.
Do all things with great love.
That is where God is found, that is where Jesus is seen and made present.
What does great love look like? Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. That is the picture.
Life in the Spirit, it is the next step in God’s plan.
Do the hard work of love in difficult times and places.
Find God in love, it is the great transition.
Prepare yourselves and your children to live in this way.
Do all things with great love.
Keep it simple. Don’t make it complicated.
Live in love. Make the transition.