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Rev. Hannah Lovaglio’s Sermon: May 10, 2026
I in you, and you in me
Jesus gives a command, followed by a promise. And from the promise, we circle back around to the command.
If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will give you another advocate that you will not be left alone or orphaned; You in me and I in you. You have my commandments, so keep them, they are for those who love me.
Today, I think it’s best to start with the promise, and from there, to go to the command.
John 14 comes from a night full of impending loss. Jesus preparing his disciples for his absence. He has washed their feet. Judas has slipped out into the night. Peter’s bravado is cracking around the edges. And Jesus begins speaking about leaving them, words that he hopes might stop the spinning of grief, confusion, and heartbreak in the midst of the nightmare that will soon unfold.
To let his words really land, you might first need to think of the distance, and separation, you feel in your own lives. These words come from what we now call Maundy Thursday, from the celebration of the Last Supper. We spend a lot of emotional energy trying to avoid Maundy Thursday feelings, feelings of disappointment and denial and looming death and hard truths, and here I am – or rather, here the lectionary of readings is – asking us to step back into Maundy Thursday feelings, on Mother’s Day, of all days.
Though maybe that’s fitting. Because for some, Mother’s Day may feel more like Maundy Thursday than the cards would lead you to believe.
Sometimes days like today make us keenly aware of the separation.
Separations can arrive suddenly, like a life taken too soon and a goodbye that was never meant to be the last.
And separations can come quietly, like the slow pull of another month passed, more words not spoken now even harder to carve out space to speak.
And sometimes separations settle into the ordinary so thoroughly that we stop noticing how much loss, how much ache, we are carrying, underneath it all, apart from the resentment that keeps bubbling up.
Even those with family and loved ones and mothers nearby, distance can remain.
The distance between what is and what we hoped for.
The distance between the version of ourselves and our lives that we show the world, and the truth.
The distance between people, even between loved ones in the same room.
The distance between ourselves and who we imagined we might become by now.
The disciples may not fully understand what is happening yet, but I imagine they can feel it. Something is changing. Something is ending. The room is thick with confusion and fear and the ache of anticipated loss.
It’s fertile ground, for remaking ourselves, stepping more fully into the lives God has called us to, if we let it be.
Understanding all of it, and more, Jesus offers the promise: I will not leave you orphaned.
Let the tenderness catch you. The promise is of presence.
I will not leave you orphaned.
We know the feeling of being orphaned, made to feel alone or cut off; untethered.
We are orphaned by grief.
We are orphaned by disappointments, too. Estrangements.
Orphaned by hopes deferred and dreams quietly folded and tucked away.
Orphaned by relationships that send us further into our inner recesses of our mind, in hopes of finding safety there.
Even there we can be orphaned, orphaned by thoughts that betray us, that lie to us, and tell us alone is the only thing we’re worthy of being.
Orphaned too by unbearable futures, realities that cannot be remade or undone by the sheer force of love, diagnoses that will seemingly have the last word despite all bargaining with ourselves, with others, and with God for a better ending.
Wounds caried invisibly for decades. Longings that become so woven into a life that they almost feel like another organ in the body.
Even if not orphans, we know what it is to feel orphaned.
And into a world like that, Jesus says: you will not be alone in this.
Because into that separation,
into those gapping holes,
into those places of unbearable loneliness – another advocate is coming.
Another – Jesus is one, and here comes another. A presence, a help, a guide, a friend and companion, a heart to beat with, an endless resource from which to draw life, love, and light from. A quiet, constant whisper of God’s love for you and in you and with you. Your safe dwelling and abiding place.
You cannot separate that promise from the command that proceeds and follows it.
Which is this: If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
The language of obedience can feel complicated.
Too often, we hear obedience as a synonym for silence, submission, the surrender of self; too many of us have been taught that holiness is shrinking.
But Jesus speaks these words only after showing his disciples what he meant. The kind of love Christs asks for is the return of the kind of love he’s been giving.
Love that
- Washes the feet of another, even those who will betray and deny you
- Offers living water to the Samaritan woman at the well
- Feeds the 5000 from just a few loaves and fishes
- Heals, again and again and again, every stop of the journey
- Blesses the broken-hearted
- Gives sight to the blind
- Weeps alongside Mary and Martha, and resurrects their brother Lazarus
Jesus is not describing obedience as fearfulness or control or the loss of agency; he is inviting the disciples to remain inside the life he has already been showing them.
A life shaped by mercy, and accompaniment, and the refusal to abandon one another. A life of choices made for the sake of another, and in those choices, finding yourself.
We often imagine love as a feeling that arrives effortlessly, something spontaneous and uncontrollable. But the love Jesus describes is practiced love. Chosen love. Love that takes shapes in actions large and small over the course of a lifetime. The kind of love that stays near.
Jesus himself has been their advocate, their companion, their guide. He has walked alongside them and shown them in flesh what it looks like to love like that. And here comes another advocate, to continue the work.
To accompany, to remain near, to help carry what feels unbearable.
You know the Spirit, Jesus says, because the Spirit abides with you.
The Spirit remains, stays, dwells, already, with you.
The whole passage circles on this promise of nearness: I in you, and you in me.
The words almost feel too intimate, too close.
God is not distant from human life, observing from afar. God communes, shares in life with us, a presence woven in so deeply that it is both our breath and outlasts breath as we know it.
I in you , and you and me.
That is what allows love to continue in a fractured world.
Neither sheer willpower nor moral perfection will allow love to remain, continue, grow – only a God who communes
and a Christ who remains
and a Spirit who abides makes possible such love.
A love that makes home, in the midst of the brokenness, that accompanies, through all the joys and sorrows, that makes us and shapes us and opens us and frees us.
Such love makes it possible for the disciples to become, themselves, people who come alongside, accompany, commune, abide, remain with others, too.
People who accompany grief instead of rushing it.
People who make room for tenderness.
People who advocate for those pushed aside or forgotten.
People who can hold the truth, without needing to fix it.
People who learn, slowly and imperfectly, to trust the abiding presence of God, and then in turn to love the way Jesus loves.
The promise is not that life will stop breaking our hearts.
The promise is that heartbreak will never be the only thing holding us.
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Obedience to such love is not the shrinking of a life, but the deepening of one. A life spacious enough for compassion, and steady enough for mercy, and open enough for another person’s pain.
I in you, and you in me.
And because we are accompanied, we learn how to accompany one another.
May it be so, Amen.
Rev. Hannah Lovaglio (she/her/hers)
Minister, Central Presbyterian Church