“Living in the Spirit”
May 10, 2026
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
Ah, the gospel of John. That world of layers upon layers upon layers. That worldview of signs and secret language, because of the serious backlash against John’s world, containing some of the earliest disciples. So even though we have already celebrated Easter chronologically, we find ourselves listening to Jesus talking to his disciples at that Last Supper (what is commonly called the Priestly Prayer that lasts chapters in John’s gospel). He is telling them about the rapidly approaching time when he will leave them. And as we have seen earlier in this gospel, this creates anxiety. But Jesus says they should not be afraid. And the reason they should not be afraid is that although he is going, God is sending another, An Advocate, what we term the Holy Spirit, to guide them, and be with them, as Jesus has guided and been with them. It is a message that isn’t just for those disciples long ago and far away, it is also a message for all of us.
I have used the pairing of the hymn “Do Not Be Afraid” with our gospel lesson because Jesus in the priestly prayer uses so much loaded language that it can be hard to decipher what is actually happening. The hymn acts as a palate cleanser—a “selah” if you wish—a moment when we can digest what Jesus has just said, even while we hear it put in different language and put to melody. The Jesus in John doesn’t often speak in short “simple” (although head turning) parables. This Jesus is like a philosopher—packing a punch into each sentence. The gospel of John, especially the Priestly Prayer needs to be read slowly, in small bites, chewed a long time, and then tasted again and again.
If you had to boil down the gospel of John into one word, I think it would have to be Love. It was Love that sent the Word, the Logos, Jesus into the world (captured in that famous verse 3:14—“For God so loved the world…”).
It is Love that is the new commandment Jesus gives to the disciples (in 13:34-35—“Love one another as I have loved you”). And it is in Love that Jesus promises that they will not be abandoned, will not be left comfortless, will not be orphaned, even though he knows that his time with them is drawing to a close. The Spirit will come alongside you, he says, to walk the way with you, to tie you closer to God.
I will remind you that the giving of the Spirit, what we celebrate as Pentecost, is very different in the world of the gospel of John. It is not tongues of fire and a mighty wind. It does not immediately propel the disciples into grand gestures of witness to the community as we hear about in the gospel of Luke and the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles. No, in the gospel of John, the giving of the Spirit, the pneuma, the breath of God, comes on Easter eve, when they are all gathered in a locked room, hiding from those who called them heretics. Jesus, post-resurrection, appears, and breathes on them, giving them the Spirit. It is this that Thomas missed (along with seeing Jesus and his wounds). No wonder Thomas felt he had to have that experience too!
To understand some of the images that the writer of John is expecting us to remember, we have to go back to the beginning of the gospel. Back to the actual beginning, the beginning of the world. In John’s version of creation we aren’t focused on the cosmos, or the creation of the world and all that is in it, we are focused on God. And this God, in the beginning, wasn’t a solo act. John wants us to understand that if we could have been present in the beginning, there was this relationship between what we call God (the Father, or God the Mother, God the Creator) and what John calls “The Word.”)
This Word was with God and was, in fact, God. The Word was part of the creation of everything. The Word brought forth life, and this life was the light of all people, and no darkness could overtake this Word of life, of love, of God.
So there is this picture of God (of the Trinity if we take some of the church father’s idea that there is God (Father), Jesus (Word), and the love, the relationship, between them, (Spirit). But almost immediately, as in Genesis, there is another one invited in—the creation, us.
We could even think of today’s readings as nesting dolls—one idea inside another idea inside another and so on. Let’s start with the most intimate idea, the most personal idea—Jesus says that the Spirit, this Advocate that the Father will send (so we will not feel alone when Jesus is no longer with us in the flesh) will dwell “in us.” This is maybe a new way of saying an old thing—remember Jeremiah hearing from God that God would write God’s law on our hearts? Maybe this is what the Spirit does. Writes God on our hearts—but more than that, this Spirit of God, is a companion, a friend, one who doesn’t let us feel alone. The bottom line is that we should not be afraid, we should not feel alone, because God is now closer to us than ever—“indwelling” in us.
And that happens because (next nesting doll), we are in Jesus. That’s a pretty heavy idea. How are we in Jesus? I think, John is trying to say that by following Jesus, by making our lives like Jesus, by immersing ourselves in what Jesus believed and taught and lived, we are remade in the image of Jesus, we shine forth more in the image of God. So, we are “in Jesus,” because the Spirit is in us, helping us to be all we can be.
And, of course, the next nesting doll is Jesus is in God (the Father). But as we know from the beginning of John, and from John 3:16, this isn’t just about a singular, personal line, from God to Jesus to us via the Spirit. You could imagine that a vertical line—but God is so much bigger than that. And here maybe our nesting doll approach breaks down somewhat. Because along with that vertical line (God/Jesus/us in the Spirit), there is this horizontal line that encompasses everything—God loving the world.
Or as Paul puts it in his speech to the Greeks, God, “the one in whom we live and move and have our being.” So, God/Jesus/us in the Spirit AND God who loves the world.
What does this tell us about living in the Spirit? It suggests that we need to stop thinking about God “out there, up there, over there” because God is all around and in here. It suggests that we get swept up into the already in progress, ongoing choreography of God’s life with us. As many of you know I was away last weekend to attend my nephew, Matteo’s last dance competition. He had a tap solo, which was wonderful. But as I thought about this living in the Spirit, I imagined the group dances that Matteo was in. Living in the Spirit is as if we arrived on the scene and the dance had already begun. We aren’t to be spectators, we aren’t to sit on the sidelines. We are to see ourselves as invited into the dance itself—a dance with other people, a dance with the cosmos, a dance with God, a dance with love.
It isn’t a solely interior dance, for there are others to dance with. And if you are dancing with a group you can’t just do whatever you feel like—there are steps to learn, there are partners to help, there is music underneath. You become part of the dance—sure, there are times when you come to the front, when you are featured, but then you melt back into the group, maybe you glide to the back of the line, you take your turn.
Jesus seems to say that if we join the dance (or whatever other group you want to imagine—a sports team, an orchestra or band, the cast of a play or musical, a healthy work team, maybe even a faith family), if we participate in this interaction, these relationships with love, that is what keeping the commandments is all about. Being part of the back and forth of love. Being part of the activity of love. Being part of sharing in God’s love, and sharing of God’s love with others.
It’s almost as if Jesus is telling the disciples that they need to stop focusing on themselves—on their own little inner circle, and remember that God loved the whole world—that wider space outside the inner circle. Isn’t it interesting that even in this gospel that is written in such a covert way, you can imagine the secret knocks and hand signals, you can imagine the dread of being “found out” to be a Christian in a world where that had sometimes fatal consequences—even in this worldview, John can’t hide what Jesus said to the first disciples, on that horrible evening when so many things went wrong.
It wasn’t a word of warning. It wasn’t how to go underground. If anything, it was a nudge to leave the nest. It was a promise of continued intimacy—but with a twist. With Jesus gone, the circle is broken, but broken to open up and include more and more people in this all important message. The God of love, the God who so loved us, all of us, pulls us into this radical stream of love, this torrent of life that nothing can stop.
We don’t need to be afraid, because the Spirit is with us and in us and beside us as we walk along the way of Jesus.
We don’t need to feel orphaned because we have entrance to this huge family of faith—with brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and aunts and uncles.
We don’t need to worry about how and where and when to keep the commandments. If we live a life of love for others, for ourselves, for our world, that is keeping right with what God wants from us.
That is what it means to be living in the Spirit. For the Spirit lives in us. What a round about and inside out and upside down kind of idea. An idea that we will spend our lives and our energies and our intelligence and our faithfulness exploring, together. It all started in the beginning. But we have been promised that God will be with us always. Beginning to End. Alpha to Omega. And everywhere—love.
May it be so, Alleluia, Amen.