Monday in the Fifth Week of Easter, May 11, 2020

John 14:21-26

Jesus said to his disciples: “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” Judas, not the Iscariot, said to him, “Master, then what happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me. I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”

It happens more than once in the Gospel of St. John that someone asks a question and the answer Jesus gives does not seem to address it at all.  This is the case here.  St. Jude asks a perfectly good and straightforward question: “Master, then what happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?”  To this, Jesus responds, “Whoever loves me will keep my word.”  How does this answer the question?

Jesus answers Jude’s question while continuing the theme upon which he has embarked, speaking of his relation to the Father.  The answer is an indirect one and Jude will only understand the answer when the Holy Spirit comes upon him at Pentecost.  Jesus is telling him that “my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.”  That is, Jesus will reveal himself to the world, and he will do so through his Apostles and their successors.  Jesus does not intend to fly about through the wide world making stops in the various cultural centers in order to preach, and he will not be born again elsewhere as he was in Bethlehem.  The Apostles themselves are to carry him.  That they will be able to do this effectively Jesus makes clear in speaking of the coming of the Holy Spirit: “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”

We see here how someone can ask Jesus for one thing and then be given something quite unexpected instead.  As St. Paul tells us, “we do not know how to pray as we ought” (Romans 8, 26), but God answers the need we do not know how to express and does not overwhelm us with what we expect but which will not help.  Jude phrases his question almost as a reproach: Master, what happened that you . . . will not reveal yourself to the world?  He seems to have his own ideas for how the Lord is to do this.   The Lord’s reply must have bothered him like a pebble in a shoe until he finally understood.

You and I are also called to this work of revealing Jesus to the world.  By obeying his commandments, the Father and the Son will make us their dwelling as surely as when the Son was made flesh and swelled among us on earth.  And with the impetus and power of the Holy Spirit we will bear witness to the Son in all that we say and do.  This is the work and the privilege of the believer.