My first car was a hand-me-down from my older brother: a faded red 1986 Dodge Ram 50, a half-size, stick shift pick-up truck whose speakers had long since fallen out of the doors, whose windows leaked every time it rained, and whose battery cables had a tendency to come loose on their own while driving.
At my small, rural Alabama high school, it was by far the worst vehicle in the senior parking lot, and that was saying something. But it was so bad it was sort of legendary. Everyone called it the Dodge Lamb. The football team would occasionally use it for strength training so every now and then after my cross country practice I would find a group of linemen had moved to the sidewalk. It was easy to break into, which was handy since I once locked my keys in it with it still running.
I loved that truck.
I still love that truck. That we wound up raffling it off my senior year as a fundraiser for my track team might be my biggest regret of my teenage years.
I had absolutely plastered it with all manner of bumper stickers—Star Wars, my favorite bands, snarky sayings. One of them I got at a summer rock concert said two simple words, “Question Authority.”
Which was ironic since I was a pretty meticulous rule follower and I’d never actually been in trouble a day in my life.
But it just goes to show you how even the most obedient kid like myself, still held this value of disobeying authority, breaking the rules, and not letting anyone tell you what to do.
It’s sort of been the rallying cry of generations ever since James Dean drove onto cinema screens in a 1949 Mercury coupe, a black leather jacket, a crisp white T-shirt and a cigarette as the rebel without a cause. Since then, there’s been everyone from Kevin Bacon in Footloose to my personal favorite, Malcolm Reynolds, the space cowboy from the TV show Firefly who impishly liked to say, “I am to misbehave.”
Whether you’re talking about kids obeying parents, politicians obeying their own laws, or Episcopalians considering the spiritual discipline of obedience, obedience isn’t cool. Nor is it popular. In fact, in our culture, it’s often portrayed as dangerous—and not without reason.
We are rightfully concerned anytime folks have blind obedience to any authority figure or cause. We are suspicious of “yes men”, people who fall in line, toe the party line no matter what, or explain that “they were just following orders.”
We often equate obedience with surrendering our own consciousness or moral compass. And to be honest, whenever humans have surrendered that authority, without question, to a mere human–be it the pope, a priest, a politician, or president–we’ve almost always ended up in moral quandaries at best and moral atrocities at worst.
So, obedience is a fraught subject, especially for a preacher.
In my 25 years in the Episcopal church, I can count on one hand—scratch that, one finger—the number of sermons I’ve heard on obedience and like any good Episcopalian, when I heard it, I disagreed with it.
Sermons about obedience in a hierarchical church can feel heavy-handed or self-serving. They can come across as legalistic and rules-oriented rather than full of grace and freedom. In our tradition, it can feel like it clashes with our core value of using our own reason in the exercise of faith.
So, a few disclaimers, just to be clear, I’m not suggesting obedience to me or any of the clergy. None of us want that kind of power or responsibility. It’s not healthy, for you, for me, or for the church. Neither do I think obedience is actually about following a certain set of rules. It’d certainly be easier if it were. And true obedience, in the realm of faith, certainly doesn’t want you to turn off your brain.
Still, given all that, it’s understandable that preaching authorities caution folks against sermons on obedience.
But, as my old bumper sticker suggested, I like to question authority, so let’s question that authority this morning.
Because, here in the gospel of John, during Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples, something about obedience is important enough to Jesus that he includes it as a central feature in his final exhortation to his closest friends. And that particular context—of trauma and confusion— is critical to understand what Jesus actually means by obedience.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” Jesus said, “and I will send you a holy companion, an Advocate, who will not leave you without comfort or as an orphan and who will be with you for all times.”
He’s not telling them to keep the commandments as a warning to prevent them from being disobedient or failing. Because they absolutely are going to fail and turn their backs on Jesus. Instead, the invitation to obedience is offered as a profound comfort in affliction and persistent hope in the midst of hopelessness. Tied up inextricably within that call to keep the commandments is God’s promise of unfailing presence even in the midst of something as terrible and soul-shattering as the torture and crucifixion of Jesus.
For Jesus, the idea of obedience is rooted fundamentally not in our slavish observance of things, but in keeping us connected to the life-giving, comforting eternal presence of God, particularly in the midst of dark and impossible times.
In other words, obedience keeps us tethered when our world has been blown apart; it gives us direction when the way seems utterly lost; it gives light when our souls are roiled in dark turmoil.
Obedience isn’t about conforming to the authority of a narcissistic God who needs absolute and perfect fealty or he’ll fly off in a rage of punishment and vengeance at our inevitable imperfections.
Nor does your obedience affect God’s disposition toward you, as if God needs you to be a good little boy and girl in order to give you a reward.
The truth of the matter is God doesn’t actually need your obedience. Obedience isn’t for God’s benefit, but for ours.
It is a loving gift, from a loving God.
The invitation to obedience is essentially Jesus looking at his terrified and shattered disciples and saying, “Trust me,” even though he knows, at that moment, they probably don’t. Or at the very least have their doubts.
That trust, that loving and reliable relationship, are the roots of true obedience.
It’s about trust in the one who loves you, who created all things and in whom we live and move and have our being, who knows us better than we know ourselves.
And obedience to that truth is how we cultivate hope in our world and our lives. Because it means we can trust that the ultimate authority in our world and in our lives is in something greater than ourselves, something greater than our nation, and something greater than this moment.
Because the sort of obedience Jesus invites us into isn’t measured in the moment to moment, day to day perfect observance of commandments. Obedience is more of a shape to life, a steady practice over years and years that slowly transforms our souls into something more like steadfast love in the face of hate, more like resilient hope in the midst of despair, more like joy even in times of sorrow, more like action in the midst of paralyzing overwhelm.
Ultimately, it’s the fundamental definition of discipleship, the long obedience in the same direction as theologian Eugene Peterson terms it.
A long obedience, in the same direction.
Now, of course, would be the perfect moment when a less stubborn priest would have a profoundly moving example about a time when they were obedient and trusted in God in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
Unfortunately, I typically spend most of my time trying to convince God to do things my way and that I’m actually the chief expert on my own life. I argue. I question. I catastrophize. I complain. My mind paces like a caged animal. Occasionally I sulk. Sometimes for weeks. Until, finally, I give up and move on, sometimes gracefully, but more often a little grumpily.
Time passes. I get a little less angsty about it. One day, I’ll be mowing the lawn or cooking a steak or watching the birds who’ve nested in the neglected bicycle helmet on my front porch, and in those soul-quiet moments, the gentle prompting of the Spirit calls my attention to that unresolved thing in my soul.
And inevitably, I get a glimpse of God at work somewhere in the midst of it.
Sometimes repairing what I had broken or what was broken in me, mending it into something I could never have fashioned or fathomed. Other times simply in sending steadying voices of wisdom and love to anchor me in something more than my own anxiety. Occasionally I see a plan far better than I could have ever dared dream in times when I thought I’d never have a real future again.
Time and again, God has proven faithful, most especially when I’m faithless.
And I keep hearing the Spirit saying, at least in retrospect, “Trust me. Just trust me.”
It’s the thing God keeps teaching me, over and over again.
That God is trustworthy.
And I trust that if I travel this long road in the same direction long enough, toward obedience, then maybe, one day, I’ll finally be able to hear that voice when the Spirit first whispers to me as the storm is just beginning.