May 10, 2026 Sermon
Sermon Title: “If You Love Me, Keep My Commandments”
Scripture: John 14:15-21
(Other lectionary suggestions include Acts 17:22-31, Psalm 66:8-20, and I Peter 3:13-22.)
John 14:15-21
The Promise of the Holy Spirit
15“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. 18I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
Once again, Happy Mother’s Day! I said I wasn’t going to preach a Mother’s Day sermon, but I changed my mind! If you go to the Logos Productions website, you’ll find a few suggestions from the Rev. Karen Engle. One of her examples of strong women comes from II Kings 4:1-7. (1Now the wife of a member of the company of prophets cried to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead; and you know that your servant feared the Lord, but a creditor has come to take my two children as slaves.” 2Elisha said to her, “What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?” She answered, “Your servant has nothing in the house, except a jar of oil.” 3He said, “Go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels and not just a few. 4Then go in, and shut the door behind you and your children, and start pouring into all these vessels; when each is full, set it aside.” 5So she left him and shut the door behind her and her children; they kept bringing vessels to her, and she kept pouring. 6When the vessels were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another vessel.” But he said to her, “There are no more." Then the oil stopped flowing. 7She came and told the man of God, and he said, “Go sell the oil and pay your debts, and you and your children can live on the rest.”) The woman sought wisdom from God through the prophet Elisha, and at first her expectations were limited. When Elisha asks in verse 2, “What have you in the house?” She says “Nothing.....except a jar of oil.” Then Pastor Engle says, “There’s no more wine. We have only five loaves of bread and two fish. Sound familiar?” But a jar of oil is more than enough for God. In the publication, Preach for a Year, Robert Campbell points out that this woman found the answer to her need in her own home! Then Karen Engle says, “Elisha’s question is a good one for not only mothers but all who trust in God: what do you already have that God can use? When the widow did what Elisha asked, God provided for her needs from what she already had. This ‘anointing of oil’ though small, was enough for God to multiply so she could pay off her debt and live off of it, too. The main point? Whatever you have is enough for God to use for his good purpose.”
Hebrews 11:23-27 says: 23By faith Moses was hidden by his parents for three months after his birth, because they saw that the child was beautiful; and they were not afraid of the king's edict. 24By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh's daughter, 25choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26He considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward. 27By faith he left Egypt, unafraid of the king's anger; for he persevered as though he saw him who is invisible. The preacher I checked out on the Logos Productions website looks to the courage and daring of Moses’s mother, too. What we read in Hebrews says that by faith ((in God)) Jochebed (Moses’s mother) hid her son for three months, an act that set in motion Moses’s life within the Egyptian community and his eventual leading of Israel out of slavery. By God’s miraculous design, after Jochebed protected her son by sending him down the Nile in a basket - was Moses the first BASKET Case in history?! - where he was “coincidentally” found by the king’s daughter, Jochebed was asked to be Moses’s wet nurse. And, we assume, Jochebed passed her trust in God to her son. Says verse 24, “By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.”
For me, the most moving Mother’s Day story is when Jesus was dying on the cross, and he tells his disciple John to take care of his mother. He says, “Son, behold your mother.” And he tells his mother Mary, “Mother, behold your son.” That’s in the Gospel of John. Tradition has it that John was one of the few disciples to lead a long life; the others died violent deaths. John lived until Mary died. At least according to tradition.
Let me ask you: Did you have a good mother? I hope so. Not everybody does, you know. Some people shouldn’t have children. There is a lot of pressure in our society to have kids. But that doesn’t mean everybody should procreate. I must say, I was lucky. Both my mother and my father wanted children, and they had four sons. They were not perfect parents, but they tried hard. And their kids wound up making good. One brother is a lawyer (retired), and two sons were college professors of music. I was the oldest, and I ended up as your minister! (I did other things, too, but right now I believe the ministry is where I belong.)
I have one funny story. My mother had a miscarriage after having three boys, and as she was crying in the doctor’s office, a nurse said to her, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Lindeman. Do you not have any children?” My mother said, “Yes. Three boys.” The nurse said, “THREE BOYS?” It was as if she were thinking, “And you want MORE?” My mother laughed at telling the story, but she cried when she lost that baby. Later, she gave birth to my brother Steve, who is 12 years younger than I am.
My mother was a good mother of boys. She was quite athletic herself, and she enjoyed seeing us play sports. In college, she went to Ball State, in Muncie, Indiana, and she played on a women’s basketball team called the Indiana Steel and Wire girls! And whenever we would be shooting hoops at the basketball goal on the back of our garage, she would come out and want to join us in the activity. She was super! I hope your Mom was as good as mine. Happy Mother’s Day! Amen.
Pastor Skip
