Not Orphaned
Monday 5.4.26 - John 14:15-21 (Easter 6a)
Jesus does not prepare his disciples for absence by handing them more pressure. He prepares them by promising his presence.
TL;DR: John 14:15-21 speaks to the fear of being left alone. Jesus knows his disciples can feel the loss coming. He does not give them a harder set of demands. He promises the Advocate, the Spirit of truth, who will abide with them and be in them. This is not a passage about trying harder to prove our love. It is a passage about the life of Christ remaining present in us. By the Spirit, Jesus does not become a memory. Love becomes possible because we are not orphaned.
The Fear in the Upper Room
Jesus is talking to people who know something is changing.
The room feels unsteady. Judas has gone. Peter is about to fall apart. Jesus is speaking in a way that makes it clear he will not stay with them as he has been.
Underneath it all is a fear they can hardly say out loud.
What will become of us when you are gone?
Jesus speaks to the fear of being left alone.
That is why this line lands with such force:
“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you”
— John 14:18 (NRSVUE)
He chooses a deep word.
Orphaned.
More than sadness. More than confusion. The fear that the one who made life feel held is no longer here.
A lot of us know that feeling.
Sometimes it comes through grief. Sometimes through church hurt. Sometimes through disappointment that has been building for a long time. Sometimes through the quiet experience of praying and wondering whether God feels more like an idea than a presence.
Jesus does not brush that aside.
He speaks right into it.
“If You Love Me”
Then Jesus says,
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments”
— John 14:15 (NRSVUE)
Those words trigger the trauma I have from fear-based teachings.
Some of us were taught to hear them as pressure.
As if Jesus were saying, If you really love me, prove it. Try harder. Get your act together.
That is not the feel of this passage.
Jesus is talking about love taking shape in real life.
In John’s Gospel, the commandment is love. Love one another as I have loved you. So this is not a threat hanging over frightened disciples. It is a promise that love will still have a home in them after everything changes.
That is not what I heard growing up with those sermons that said, you better obey all of the commandments or you will end up in hell.
Fear can make religion feel like performance. It can turn faith into sin management in front of the God of Love. The irony.
Jesus is not doing that here. Jesus is reminding the disciples that love will still be their one job.
He is preparing them for a life where love can still grow, because he will still be near.
The Advocate
Jesus promises “another Advocate” and calls the Spirit “the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16-17).
Helper. Comforter. Counselor.
The word in Greek is paraklētos. The one called alongside.
The Spirit comes alongside us.
Not above. Not at a distance. Alongside.
Kallistos Ware writes,
“The whole aim of the Christian life is to be a Spirit-bearer, to live in the Spirit of God, to breathe the Spirit of God.”
— Kallistos Ware
That helps me hear this passage with fresh ears. Jesus is not only trying to reassure his disciples that they will survive. He is telling them his own life will grow love within them so they will thrive.
Ware says elsewhere that through the Spirit we do not know Christ as “a distant figure from long ago,” but “directly, here and now.”
That is close to the heart of John 14.
By the Spirit, Jesus does not become a memory.
In You
Jesus says of the Spirit,
“you know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you”
— John 14:17 (NRSVUE)
In you.
That is the phrase I keep coming back to.
Jesus is not only promising help. He is promising indwelling presence.
Scot McKnight nails it…
God “has chosen not only to communicate with us
but also has chosen to indwell us.”
— Scot McKnight
That is about as good a way to say it as I know.
So much of faith can drift toward ideas, beliefs, explanations, words about God. Some of that matters. But when it stops there, something beings to unravel. We can know the right language and still miss the living presence Jesus is talking about here.
The Spirit does not just give information about Christ. The Spirit makes Christ present.
The disciples have known Jesus in front of them. Soon they will know him within them. That is a more intimate kind of nearness than memory or duty can hold.
Restoration to Paradise
St. Basil the Great wrote,
“Through the Holy Spirit comes our restoration to paradise.”
— St. Basil the Great
That quote opens a whole new world.
Paradise reminds me of Eden, the garden of joy.
Shalom = Wholeness. The way things ought to be.
The Spirit does not only comfort us.
The Spirit restores us life as it was meant to be.
The Spirit, the breath of God, brings our dry bones to life.
Resurrection.
Jesus is not just helping his disciples cope with change.
He is drawing them into the life of God.
The life that humanity was created for.
Abundant life.
Eternal life.
Resurrection life.
The Christlike life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
The Spirit heals what fear has done. What shame has done. What years of trying to hold ourselves together alone have done.
That does not mean life suddenly becomes easy. Pain does not disappear on command. It means we are no longer left to carry our lives by ourselves.
The Spirit brings us home to God.
Maybe that is the deeper opposite of being orphaned. Not just being soothed. Being gathered back into communion with God. Theosis.
Because I Live
Jesus says,
“because I live, you also will live”
— John 14:19 (NRSVUE).
That is Easter in a single sentence.
Because Christ lives, his presence is still reaching us.
Not trapped in the past.
Not only someone we read about.
Not only a teacher we remember.
By the Spirit, Christ is present in us.
Closer than the air we breathe.
Right here. Right now.
Love can still grow in us.
Faith can still breathe.
The tired parts of us do not have to stay closed forever.
That might be enough for today.
The prayer might be this simple:
Come alongside me.
Stay with me.
Teach love to live here again.
Let’s Talk
1. How does this passage point to Christ?
Jesus names and meets the deepest human fear. We will not be left alone.
Christ promises his continued presence, not just his remembered teaching.
The risen Christ is known not as a past figure, but as present through the Spirit.
Jesus reveals God as relational. God stays, abides, and draws near.
Christ shares his own life with us. “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19, NRSVUE).
Jesus redefines obedience as participation in his love, not performance for approval.
Christ shows that God’s response to fear is not distance, but deeper nearness.
2. How does this passage form Christlike people?
It forms people who trust presence over panic. We are not abandoned.
It grows love from within, rather than forcing behavior from the outside.
It shapes a life of abiding instead of striving.
It teaches us to come alongside others as the Spirit comes alongside us.
It loosens fear-based faith and replaces it with relational trust.
It invites us to carry Christ’s presence into ordinary, wounded places.
It forms people whose obedience flows from love, not pressure.
Thank you for this! I used to pray to God because I didn’t want God to be angry with me. I didn’t realize how much the fear of God’s judgment shaped me, my faith, and my life. Over the years, I have come to a place where I do dwell in the shelter of God’s love and grace, and it has changed me. I am grateful! Your writings continue to open me up to God’s living presence in me, through me. I continue to pray for my adult sons who have turned away from church. I know Jesus, the great Shepherd, continues to search for them. I pray they, and their families, will open up to God’s great love. In the meantime, I continue to love them and share my humanity and grace with them. Your writings teach, encourage and comfort me. Thank you. May God’s grace and healing rest in you.