When All Else Fails, Follow Instructions: Sunday Reflection

This morning’s Gospel reading is John 14:15–21:

Jesus said to his disciples:

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him. But you know him, because he remains with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”

Today’s headline is one of my father’s favorite sayings. In his case, it’s a bit ironic, since my father has the mind and discipline of an engineer, not to mention the patience of one. Give him an instruction set, and he could build or rebuild anything.  Back in the days when televisions had replaceable tubes rather than solid-state circuitry, Dad would buy the schematics for every TV in the family and do repairs on them all. We’d go down to Ball Electronics in Anaheim to test all of the suspect tubes and to replace any that were faulty. He bought the Chilton manual for every car he owned and did his own repairs, once even completely rebuilding a carb on the family car that ended up with me, with not a single piece out of place.

I, on the other hand, liked to wing it. In my view, instructions were more like guidelines. Back when I did my own car maintenance, I’d replace brake pads (along with my best friend, who drove a similar model), and we’d end up with mysterious parts that never made it back on the car. Assembling furniture always turned into an adventure, even at times when I did pay some attention to the instructions. Some disassembly required became a pattern for me. 

For Dad, the saying When all else fails, follow the instructions is more of a joke. For me, it’s been a way of life. 

All this comes to mind in today’s Gospel, and perhaps even more, in light of last week’s readings. In the passage immediately preceding today’s Gospel, Jesus makes the fullness and necessity of His authority clear to the disciples. “I am the way and the truth and the life,” Jesus instructs them. “No one comes to the Father except through me.” In today’s passage, part of the same conversation, Jesus emphasizes the need to trust in His leadership and remain faithful to His teachings. “If you love me,” He says, “you will keep my commandments. … Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”

Jesus almost literally hands us an instruction manual. So why is it so difficult for us to follow it? Even those of us who profess the Gospel and want to evangelize can get lost in attempts to wing it, look for shortcuts, and avoid the difficult requirement to surrender to God’s will. 

In the past week, I came across a clip of a Christian preacher who tried to soften the Gospel reading from last week. (It’s not necessary to link or directly expose her, because – as we will see – she doesn’t pose an argument that all of us make within ourselves.) She tried to comfort her congregation and followers by asserting that Jesus didn’t mean that he was the exclusive way, the only truth, and the sole path to eternal life. We could find our way to salvation through our own goodness, through kindness to others, and hinting that grace was within our own grasp.

It’s an appealing message, especially for those with loved ones outside the faith. It’s worth pointing out that even the Catholic Church teaches that God is the final arbiter in all things and that we cannot know how far His mercy may go or whether conversions at the moment of death would be effective. However, we do have the explicit words of Jesus in John 14, with the very clear definite article on each point: “I am the way, the truth, and the light,” Jesus says, with the further provision that “no one comes to the Father except through me.” To do so, Jesus emphasizes, we must love Him and put our faith in Him to receive eternal life by living His commandments.  

Those are clear instructions, and to follow them requires significant sacrifice. We must put aside our own appetites and ambitions to live the life of Christ in the world. The idea that none of this is actually necessary to find our own way to grace is not new, but very, very ancient. It started in the Garden of Eden, when the Lord had only one law: Don’t eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, but put your faith in Me. Adam and Eve wanted to find their own way to divinity instead and got cast out of the divine life with the Lord.

Later, God called His people Israel out of Egypt and offered them another instruction manual: the Ten Commandments. Once again, His children rebelled and had to wander the desert for 40 years before entering the Promised Land. Through Moses, the Lord sent out a new and very detailed instruction manual in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, with over 600 commands to follow.  

And yet, as the arc of salvation emerges from the Old Testament, the Lord’s people kept choosing their own path rather than trusting in the Lord. This stiff-necked refusal to fully embrace the Lord’s commands results in ruination after ruination, with prophets constantly warning through the scriptures about the wages of disobedience and sin. By the time Jesus comes on His mission of salvation, the Lord is asking: Have you had enough yet?

The same is true for us, each one, on a personal level. We all aspire to be gods ourselves, and so we ignore the instruction manual and attempt to build our own path to Heaven. The idea that we do not need the Lord to aspire to His love is so deeply ingrained in our nature that we call it Original Sin, and it afflicts us all. We attempt to build salvation by skipping all of the difficult steps in the instruction manual, which is akin to building an Ikea entertainment center by only following steps A, C, F, L, Q, and Z. We might figure out some of the intervening steps by instinct, but we will inevitably watch it collapse under the weight of our incompetence and hubris. 

And when we have made a ruin of our lives through our obstinacy and rebellion, we will inevitably turn our faces and voices to the Lord and cry, “Why?” 

Thankfully, that’s what the Lord is waiting to hear. Jesus came to the world to answer that cry and to remind us of the Father’s undying and immeasurable love and mercy for us, and to pay our penalties in His blood if and when we choose Him as our Savior. It is in that cry, when we recognize that we are not God and can never be Him, that we open our hearts to that possibility and can finally listen for the sound of the Good Shepherd’s voice. That cry allows the Good Shepherd to find us where we are, offer us mercy and guidance, to put us back on the way, to the truth, and to enter the life of Christ.  

 When all else fails, follow the instructions – and the voice of the Shepherd.  

Previous reflections on these readings:

The front page image today is my little attempt at humor. I promise to use a more artistic approach the next time. 

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature that looks at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections can be found here.