Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
John 14:24 (NIV)
Words From the Father
A man who drove out for one lot has been standing at the back of the machinery sale for two hours. He came for a hay rake with a bent tine, and it’s somewhere in the second half of the list. Until it comes up he has nothing to do but listen.
The auctioneer is three lots ahead of everybody in the building and he doesn’t seem to blink. He’s got a run going that makes the numbers sound like one long word with no spaces in it, and he sees everything: a finger lifted off a hat brim at the back, a man who shifts his feet and means no. A hay rake is worth what the room says it’s worth in forty seconds, and he decides when the forty seconds are up. Every word coming out of his mouth is his own.
Jesus is with his friends in the hours before he goes away, and one of them has just asked why he intends to show himself to them and not to the world. Part of what comes back is about where the answer came from. “These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.”
He also says that anyone who doesn’t love him won’t obey his teaching, and he leaves love and obedience tied together without loosening the knot.
So obeying his teaching means doing what the Father said. The teaching came from the Father to the Son to the men listening to him, and the Son told them so while he was still with them.
That changes what a person is up against when a command is hard to take. The argument runs back past the man speaking it, to the One who sent him. Love shows up here as obedience, so a man who can’t find much love in himself on a given day can still do the thing he’s been told to do, and the thing he’s been told came from the Father.
The rake comes up late in the afternoon, and the man at the back gets it for less than he’d come ready to pay. He carries his ticket out to the truck. The man at the microphone never once said what any of it was worth to him.
A Prayer to Remember
You sent your Son to say your words, God, and the men listening to him were hearing you. I’ve handled the hard commands as though they were one man’s opinion and mine to argue with. Settle me under them. Let me do what you’ve said on the days I don’t feel much about you at all.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
