Sunday's contribution!

Easter 6

If you loved me? …….Please do not ask me!
Such a question might cut us to the heart.
If you loved me, then you would not have done that… suggesting that you do not love, and therefore you have failed in something.
It seems as though we are being tested to see if our love is genuine or strong enough, and the outcome might therefore be…. A sense of failure or unworthiness.
With this in mind today’s reading from John might well make us feel very uncomfortable.
For me there are huge echoes with the end of John’s Gospel when Jesus embarrassingly asks Peter if he loves him and we know he is here seen to ask the question three times even with an affirmative answer from Peter each time.
“Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” Lord you know that I love you….
How he must have felt to be asked over and over again, apparently in full view of his friends too.
I am sure todays reading and the end of the Gospel have a real connection, and today it is quite rightly you and I who are being addressed…. Do you Love me? Do you? Can you prove it?
Of course our answer like Peter’s is probably going to be something of a yes, even if we are brave enough to say yes….. but!
What is being asked of us though as proof of the answer?? “If you love me, you will keep my commandments!” so although we desperately want to say yes we do Love you Lord, we know in our heart all the times we seem to show something else.
Keeping the commandments in terms of what we hear today is the new commandment that we love one another as Jesus Loves us. That we Love God and our neighbour and can show that we do.
Oh dear isn’t love demanding?
However we see it then Love is demanding. It is tough going at times and the disciples knew this all too well, and Last week we were reminded that suffering and persecution may even rest alongside the loving.
This week we see things changing, the story so to speak moves on and Ascension day is Thursday (7.30pm Eucharist, no night prayers.) At the end of ascension day symbolically the Easter Candle is processed to the back and takes its place alongside the font. It is not that Jesus has gone from us for we know that this is not the case, just in the same way that no matter what happened on the mount the Disciples were continually filled with hope and forward movement, especially when we see the new presence of God burning through them at Pentecost and beyond.
The question about Love was not and is not going to go away, and each morning when we awake we may hear Jesus asking us again if we do love him, or each night we might hear the suggestion of doubt? Do you? Did you?
Let us be reminded though as we move into a new time in the year to the assurance that no matter what the answer might feel Jesus is present with us. Jesus continues to reveal himself to us, he does not leave us “orphaned”
For all that it is not an easy ride, and we still have to learn to grow into salvation as Peter told us last week.
The Easter readings have all contained within them the sense of hope and movement, whether it be eating breakfast on the beach, or walking to Emmaus, or simply even waiting in the upper room. At every turn of the page Jesus Shows himself present and still feeding …still being recognised as bread is broken and where two or three gather in his name.
As we move to Pentecost we earnestly pray that our hope and love is fulfilled and that Gods Spirit will burn within us in all that we do and say, and in all our attempts to be loving. And as Paul says in the Aereopagus…. God is indeed not far from each one of us. “In him we live and move and have our being”, wow is that not at the same time daunting and encouraging.
Why do we sometimes behave as if God were so uninterested and distant…. And judging (condemning)
Jesus says…. Do you love me. And we answer YES. Alleluia