There is something different about John’s account of the Last Supper. Matthew, Mark and Luke have already told the Church what happened that night. They tell us that Jesus took bread and wine and said those words that would forever change the world: “This is my body…this is my blood.” John doesn’t. John gives us chapter after chapter about that night, yet never gives us the institution narrative of the Eucharist. Why? Perhaps because the Church already knew what happened. John wanted us to remember what Jesus said.
In a way, reading these chapters feels almost like listening to a eulogy—not a eulogy for a dead man, because John knew better than anyone that Jesus was alive, but the recollections of an old man remembering the most important words spoken by the person he loved most. John had leaned against Jesus at the Last Supper. He had stood beneath the Cross with Mary. He had run to the empty tomb. He had seen the risen Christ. He had watched his friends suffer and die for the Gospel. Then he lived on for decades, carrying those memories with him. The earliest Christians remembered John as that old man, living among the churches of Asia and continuing to tell people about Jesus. Polycarp belonged to the generation that knew John, and Irenaeus, who knew Polycarp when he was young, later wrote about that living chain of memory. Imagine being able to sit with John and hear him say, “I was there. I heard Him say it.”And what did John consider important enough to preserve? “I will not leave you orphans.” “I am the vine, you are the branches.” “Remain in me.” “The Advocate…will teach you everything.” “He will guide you to all truth.” And then in John 16: “When he comes he will convict the world in regard to sin and righteousness and condemnation.” John remembered Jesus telling frightened men that God was not going to abandon them.
Jesus knew exactly what the next few hours would look like. The world would reject Him and condemn Him: sin. They would beat Him and crucify Him: sin. The Apostles would watch Him die and believe for a time that everything they had hoped for was gone. But Jesus would rise and return to the Father: righteousness. And the devil, who thought the Cross was his victory, would discover that the Cross was actually his defeat: judgment. “The ruler of this world has been condemned.” Victory.Jesus was telling them, When darkness comes, do not believe the darkness. I will not leave you wandering through the night, waiting silently for My return and fearing whatever may be hiding there. I will send you a Guide. I will fill your hearts. I will lead you into truth. I will show you sin, righteousness and judgment. I will bring you through the darkness and into victory. This is not a God who leaves His children alone and tells them to figure out the road home. This is a God who comes after us, stays with us, fills us with His Spirit and leads us home.I think most of us who have really tried to follow Christ have experienced something of that. I know I have.
For me, encountering the Holy Spirit was almost like someone suddenly turning on a light in a dark room. You would think that once you experienced that light you would never want darkness again. Why would you? But as I sat there enjoying the light, I noticed something. There was a bookcase against the wall, and behind that bookcase the light cast a little shadow. I remember thinking, It’s pretty bright in here. A minute behind that bookcase wouldn’t hurt.So I walked over, and on those shelves were memories. Oh, there’s that great party where everybody got drunk and we danced all night. What a night. There’s the deal that filled my bank account and allowed me to buy all kinds of beautiful things for myself. There’s that girl from college; we were so in love and the sex was amazing. There were dozens of memories on those shelves—great stories, funny stories, wild adventures that I could tell around a dinner table and have everyone laughing.
Then I stepped out from behind the bookcase and back into the light, and suddenly those memories looked different. If I am completely honest, many of the stories I once considered the great adventures of my life were actually stories about breaking God’s commandments. I can probably find eight of the Ten Commandments represented somewhere on those shelves, and worse, I have a funny story about breaking most of them. Maybe this is exactly what Jesus meant when He said of the Holy Spirit, “He will convict the world in regard to sin.”The Holy Spirit doesn’t merely give us a new list of rules. He turns on the light. The memory hasn’t changed; we have. Something I once remembered with pride I may now remember with sorrow. Something I once called freedom I can now recognize as slavery. Something I called success I may now recognize as vanity. Something that once made a room full of people laugh may now make me quietly say, Jesus, have mercy on the man I was.
Paul understood this perhaps better than anyone. Paul had his own bookcase, and there were some impressive things sitting on it. In Philippians he gives us his résumé: circumcised on the eighth day, an Israelite, from the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, zealous, righteous according to the law. Elsewhere we learn that he was a Roman citizen and that he had been educated under Gamaliel. This was Paul’s identity. These were the things that told the world, Saul is somebody.
Then Paul met Jesus, and the light came on. Paul looked back at that bookcase and said, “Whatever gains I had, these I have come to consider a loss because of Christ.” Then he goes even further. He says that he considers everything a loss compared with “the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” He considers everything else rubbish. And then, remarkably, Paul uses the very idea Jesus is talking about in John 16: righteousness. Paul says he no longer wants a righteousness of his own; he wants the righteousness that comes through Christ.
Suddenly John 16 and Philippians 3 illuminate one another. Paul thought he understood righteousness, but he didn’t. He thought persecuting Christians demonstrated his zeal for God. It was sin. He thought his accomplishments demonstrated his righteousness. They didn’t. Then he encountered Jesus, and the light came on. That is what the Holy Spirit does. He doesn’t simply reveal Christ to us; He begins revealing us to ourselves.
That can be uncomfortable because there are things behind our bookcases that we still enjoy looking at. There are stories we still like telling. There are accomplishments we still want people to admire. There are sins we have technically confessed but perhaps haven’t completely stopped loving. There is a difference between being forgiven for our old life and wanting our old life back. Grace doesn’t erase our memories; grace changes what those memories mean.
Perhaps, then, we need to ask ourselves whether we have merely accepted the Holy Spirit or whether we have really embraced Him. We can believe in Jesus and still occasionally wander behind the bookcase. We can go to Mass, receive the Eucharist, go to Confession and pray, and still romanticize the person we were before Christ changed us. But Jesus says something different: “Remain in me.” Don’t visit Me; remain. Don’t occasionally step into the light; live in it.
When we do that, something remarkable begins to happen. Christ doesn’t merely change the way we remember the life behind us; He changes the way we live the life still in front of us. We begin to understand that following Christ isn’t simply about the sins we stop committing. It is about becoming His hands and His feet. It is about allowing the love that He has poured into us to pour out of us into our wives, our children, our friends, our employees, the stranger, the poor, the difficult person and even the person who has hurt us.
Which brings me back to John. John remembered Jesus, and someday people will remember us. There will be a funeral. Someone will stand in front of our family and friends and try to explain who we were. They will tell stories. They will remember things we said. They will talk about what mattered to us. And eventually, whether they realize it or not, the life we lived will have written the eulogy for them.
I think I know what I want the first sentence of mine to be: “_____ loved Jesus. It was evident in everything he did.” It was evident in the way he loved his wife and children, in the way he treated his friends and strangers, in the way he conducted his business, in the way he treated the poor, in the way he forgave people who hurt him and in what he did when nobody was watching. There was no doubt among the people who really knew him that he spent his life trying to become the man Jesus wanted him to be.
Not that he was successful. Not that he made a lot of money. Not that he owned beautiful things or knew important people. Not even simply that “he was a good man.” Something much simpler and much greater: He loved Jesus, and everyone knew it.Near the end of John 16, Jesus gives us an extraordinary sentence: “For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God.”
Put your own name into those words for a moment: The Father Himself loves _____, because _____ loved Jesus and believed that Jesus came from God.That’s the eulogy I want.Perhaps John 16 is telling us how to live so that someday it can truthfully be said about us. Stay in the light. Let the Holy Spirit show us our sins. Let Him redefine righteousness. Let Him turn our failures into testimonies of mercy. Let Him guide us into truth. Let Him remind us that the ruler of this world has already been judged. Let Him transform even the memories sitting on our bookcase. Then tomorrow morning, get up and become the hands and feet of Jesus to everyone God puts in front of us.
John spent the rest of his life telling people about the One he loved. After John was gone, the Christians who had known him remembered a man whose life had been consumed by Christ. That is perhaps the greatest eulogy any Christian could receive.May the people who knew us be able to say that our lives told the same story.
