You Gotta Believe Me

Today's Scripture

There are two fairly common human experiences that this morning's Gospel brought to mind for me. When I mention them, they are going to seem completely unrelated, but they are closely tied to one another. The first is this - you meet someone and they claim to be a fan of a particular team, but they can only name one or players in the lineup. Certainly, we would all see through this and discern that they might like the idea of being a fan of the team but hardly qualify as one without knowing the women or men who comprise the team.

The second one is perhaps a more personal experience. I think of it in terms of a middle-schooler for some reason, but it could happen at any age, I suppose - but I want you to put yourself in this scenario: you have been accused of something. Doing something you shouldn't have or doing something on purpose when it was purely accidental. You plead with your accuser (which in my case always seems to be a parent) 'you gotta believe me!' We are desperate for them to believe, not to get out of trouble, but because they are believing something about who we are. They are believing we aren't good at heart. We want so much for them to believe in our good intentions, for their view of us not to be ruined. We don't want the trust in us to be damaged.

Jesus, on behalf of His Father, has been working tirelessly to rebuild trust. The trust that was originally lost in the Garden of Eden. So He is 'desperate' for us to know where He comes from. I hesitate to use that word in connection with Jesus, but I think it lends the right emotion even if we can never see God as 'desperate'. Why is He so insistent? Because His job is to reconcile us with the Father. If we see Jesus as someone separate from the Father, then we will love all the cool stuff that Jesus does, but we might not feel any closer to the God who created us.

Ten times in John's Gospel, Jesus prays or encourages us to believe that the Father sent Hm. If we do believe this, then we will believe that what Jesus says and teaches do not originate from him, but from the Father who sent Him. Following what Jesus commands is not to be taken as the set of rules that get us to heaven but are indeed our way of loving Him. 'If you love me, you will keep my commandments.' This would be the completion of His mission, that we once again love and trust God.

This brings me back to my other scenario. If we do love God, then we will keep His commandments. If we don't know what they are, then we are like the 'casual fan'. We like the idea of loving God, but we aren't capable if we don't know His commandments. Now, I am not talking about the Ten Commandments - although they are included. We start with the two: Love God, Love Neighbor and then proceed from there. The rest can only be learned by continuing to hear Jesus' teaching by reading the Bible and following what the Church brought down to us through the ages as the life that accompanies Scripture. You gotta believe me.