As long as I can remember, I have had a passion to learn.  Just last week I learned what a turkey saddle is.  Made my day!  I can remember as a fairly young child, armed with a brand new microscope, deciding that I would try to learn everything there was to learn about a blade of grass.  Sans internet or even a biology text, I was not able to learn very much at all, unfortunately.  I can also remember being fascinated about all the organisms and non-organic materials that might be found in a one-square foot area of ground, chosen at random.
    The point of all this rambling, is that despite a passion for knowledge, some things are beyond us.  For example, though our knowledge base has increased exponentially these past few centuries, we are still far from having anything like a complete understanding of the earth.  Witness the controversy over global warming, for just one example. 
    Furthermore, I am completely pessimistic about my personal ability to know very much at all about God.  More than anything, God is the greatest mystery of all.  Functionally, God remains virtually unknown.  In fact, could I know all about God, God would be unworthy of the title! 
    Despite our inability to fully comprehend the planet, we do find that we can be in a healthy, life-giving relationship with earth!  Similarly, though we cannot know very much at all about God, we can be in a healthy, life-giving relationship with God. 
    'How?' you might ask.  Jesus declared very succinctly in John 10:30 "The Father and I are one." If we believe the NT witness about Jesus, his relationship with his Father, his Abba, his Poppa, was fully and completely intimate.  Though God is relatively inaccessible to us, despite what we can know through that which he has made and through the biblical witness, Jesus is far more accessible.  His presence among us throughout his ministry was far more public.  Since Jesus and God are one, if we know and love Jesus, we automatically know and love God.
    So, then, how do we know and love Jesus?  Our gospel lesson for today gives us some invaluable insight.  "If you love me," Jesus declares, "you will keep my commandments."  Obviously an important clue to knowing and loving Jesus is to keep his commandments.  Notice that the word "commandments" here is plural.  This is puzzling, because essentially Jesus gave us only one commandment:  [John 13:34]  "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."  We can perhaps expand this a little by remembering Matthew 22:36-40, when a scribe asked Jesus:  "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" {37} [Jesus] said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' {38} This is the greatest and first commandment. {39} And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' {40} On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.""  Still, Jesus did not spend much energy giving us commandments.  Apparently the ones we already had were sufficient. 
    Commentators report that what Jesus meant here was not literally his commandments, but more broadly, his teaching.  'If you love me, you will live in harmony with my teaching.'  Ahh, this begins to make sense.  For us, a loving relationship with God depends on a loving relationship with Jesus, which we can find by living in harmony with his teaching. 
    Though this may feel a little challenging, it is actually very good news, for it implies that such a thing is actually possible for us.  God's love for us is so great that he gave us Jesus, not only to die for us, but to show us the way, here on our earthly journey. 
    However, Jesus' teaching is far from simple.  If you grab one of those red-letter bibles which feature everything Jesus said in red print, you will quickly see that there is a lot of red print.  Furthermore, not everything Jesus said applies equally to all of us all the time.  How can we do a very good job of comprehending Jesus' teaching, and living in accordance with it?
    The lesson answers this question too.  During his time on earth, as one person, who chiefly lived according to the laws of physics, Jesus could only personally guide a small number of people ... his twelve disciples, and perhaps a few more who followed him closely.  Worse yet, he was taken away from them.  Despite that he made them (and us) a very important promise.  "I will not leave you orphaned."  In other words, I will never desert you.  Not only will he come again, but in the meantime he has sent us "another Advocate" ... for which the Greek word is 'Paraclete'. 
    He taught us that this would actually be advantageous, despite our grief at losing him.  His presence would be extended to many; his work would continue, aided and abetted by the Holy Spirit.  As we review the references to 'Paraclete' in the Gospel of John, we quickly see that the work of this Spirit is quite varied.  Since Jesus referred to this Spirit as "another Advocate, another Paraclete, it is clear that he was the first, and we know his work among us was extremely varied.  John talks of the Paraclete as a presence who would exhort and encourage, comfort and console, as one on whom we could call for help.  The Paraclete would be Advocate, Teacher, One who reminds us of Jesus, glorifies Jesus, testifies to Jesus, one who confronts the world, a truth-guide, a foreteller.
    For the purposes of my line of thought, let me propose that the Paraclete, the Spirit whom Jesus has sent us, is the presence of Christ among us, in any way that we truly need Christ.  If we love Jesus, we will live in harmony with his teaching, and this not on our own, but with the help of the Holy Spirit.
    'How can we come to love Jesus?' you might ask.  I propose that the converse of Jesus' teaching here is also true.  If we keep his commandments, live in harmony with his teaching as best we can, humbly guided by the Holy Spirit, we will come to love Jesus.  And, loving Jesus, we will also be loving God!
    Christ has graciously promised that he will not abandon us, not leave us orphaned.  I believe he has kept that promise.  Nonetheless, none of us lives in perfect harmony with Jesus, and many people have no relationship with Jesus whatsoever.  What has gone wrong?
    Being orphaned is not the only way we might find ourselves without parental care.  Another way is the fact that we can run away from home!  Little children who try this often quickly find out for themselves how important and necessary relationship with their parents and their family actually is.  As adults, we can also "run away from home" in the sense of abandoning our relationship with Jesus, abandoning any attempt to live in harmony with his teaching.  God permits this.  If we are wise, we quickly see the negative result and return home. 
    The simple truth is that Jesus is the key to any life really worth having.  As the Peterson translation puts it, Jesus says to his disciples (and to us):  " ... because I am alive ... you're about to come alive."  Let us come alive in Christ Jesus, loving him and loving one another, guided by the Holy Spirit.  Amen.