Bloomsbury
Central Baptist Church
25th
May 2014, 11.00
John 14.15-21 "If you love me, you will keep my
commandments. 16 And I will
ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you
forever. 17 This is the Spirit
of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows
him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. 18 ¶ "I will not leave
you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19
In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because
I live, you also will live. 20
On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in
you. 21 They who have my
commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be
loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them."
Acts 17.22-31 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and
said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23 For as I went through the city
and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an
altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as
unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24
The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and
earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human
hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life
and breath and all things. 26
From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he
allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where
they would live, 27 so that
they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him-- though
indeed he is not far from each one of us.
28 For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even
some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.' 29 ¶ Since we are God's
offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or
stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30 While God has overlooked the
times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on
which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has
appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the
dead."
Today's
reading from John's Gospel
offers
us an account of the imparting of the Holy Spirit to the disciples.
Which is fine, except...
I
continue to find the whole language, and indeed concept, of 'Holy Spirit'
to
be the point at which Christianity starts to get a bit ‘weird’.
I mean, my oh-so-rational,
post-enlightenment mind-set
can
cope with the concept of God as love,
the
one in whom there is no darkness at all.
It can even cope with the concept of
Jesus as God made flesh;
a
human being in whom is embodied all the fullness of divine love.
But when we get to the third person of
the Trinity,
and
start talking in terms of the Holy Spirit as present with, and indeed within,
the
faithful followers of Jesus,
it
all starts to get a bit close to home,
a
bit upfront and personal.
A bit, as I have said, ‘weird’!
‘Who’, I find myself asking, or ‘what’,
is this 'Spirit '.
Is
the Holy Spirit an idea?
Is
it a concept? Is it a ghost?
Is
it a he, or a she?
There seems to me to be no two ways about
it:
the
language of God as Spirit,
this
idea of God as being in some way present with his people,
and
being so in a way that is tangible,
is,
well, a bit ‘weird’!
Now don't get me wrong here;
I'm
not wanting to express any great or profound doubts
about
the existence or presence of the Holy Spirit.
However, I am admitting to the fact
that
I find it quite hard to understand.
John's Gospel offers us two related
images for the Holy Spirit,
which
may help to shed some light
on how we might understand what Jesus
is doing,
when
he gives the gift of his Spirit to his disciples.
Firstly, John's Gospel speaks of the Spirit
as
the 'Spirit of truth' (14.17; 15.26; 16.13; cf. 1 Jn 4.6).
But the gospel also uses another word
to describe the Holy Spirit,
and
this is the word best translated into English as ‘advocate’
(14.16,
26; 15.26; 16.7; cf. 1 Jn 2.1).
The Greek word in view here is one
which crops up from time to time in sermons,
so
I'm afraid you're going to get it again briefly this morning.
It
is the word Paraclete.
When preparing this sermon, I did take
a moment to chuckle to myself
about
the fact that my spellchecker insisted
on
automatically replacing the word Paraclete with parakeet.
And although it may be true that the Spirit
of God is a wind that blows where it pleases,
I
think the analogy with members of the parrot family
is
probably not one that I shall pursue too far!
This Greek word Paraclete has been
variously translated into English,
with
the word ‘counsellor’ sometimes being used.
However, I think that the best way of
understanding the meaning of Paraclete correctly
is
to translate it as ‘advocate’.
So, in our reading this morning from
John's Gospel,
Jesus
says that he will ask the Father,
and
the father will give to the disciples a Paraclete, an ‘advocate’,
who
will be with them for ever.
And Jesus tells them that this advocate
is the Spirit of truth.
The thing that strikes me about these
two images,
of
the Spirit as ‘truth’, and of the Spirit as ‘advocate’,
is that this language of truth and advocacy
takes
us into the realm of the law courts;
truth and advocacy are legal terms.
It’s no coincidence that one way of
thinking
about
the overall structure of John's Gospel,
is
to picture it as a legal drama, as a courtroom drama.
It begins with a mystery,
with
the tantalising hypothesis that the divine ‘word’ has become ‘flesh’ (1.14).
Then, as it proceeds, slowly the Gospel
narrative
presents
the reader with mounting evidence, clue upon clue,
and
the witnesses build up one upon another,
to
the point where the trial itself is ready to begin,
and
the truth is ready to be revealed.
John’s gospel is in many ways a
detective mystery, based around truth,
and
at stake in the trial at the end, is the question summed up
by
Pilate’s final statement to Jesus, as he hands him over to be crucified.
‘What
is truth?’ says Pilate, posing the central question of the gospel (18.38).
Our passage today, from chapter 14,
comes
at the turning point of the gospel.
We are moving from evidence and
witnesses towards the trial itself.
It
won't be long now before Jesus finds himself before Pilate,
presenting
the accumulated evidence of his life and ministry,
as
the trial to establish truth begins.
However, one of the greats ambiguities
of the trial of Jesus in John's Gospel,
is
that it is never quite clear exactly who is on trial.
Is it Jesus himself?
Or
is it rather the ‘world’;
is
the trial really about unmasking that complex interplay
of
systems and structures
that
distorts and demeans humanity,
obscuring
truth and replacing it with deception.
It is in this context that Jesus calls on God the Father
to give the gift of the Spirit of Truth to those who would
follow his example.
It is in this context, of a
legal battle over the nature of truth itself,
that Jesus secures for his disciples an advocate for the
truth.
The legal role of ‘advocate’
was well known in the ancient world,
and the function of an advocate
was to ‘stand up in a court of law
and explain to the judge or jury
how things are from his or her
client’s point of view.’
In other words,
‘the
advocate pleads the case’.[1]
The Jews well understood this
role of advocate
from their own religious and legal tradition.
But in addition to human
advocates,
and the role they played in normal legal
processes,
the Jews often used the image of a lawcourt
to depict their understanding
of what
was going on in the heavenly realm.
So we get the picture of the
heavenly courtroom
occurring in a number of places throughout the Hebrew
scriptures,
with God seated where the king would sit in an earthly
court,
dispensing justice and adjudicating
righteousness.
And within this ‘heavenly
court’, there was a structural role for advocates, or intercessors,
for those persons or angelic beings
whose role was to plead the cause of the righteous.
These intercessors were the heavenly
advocates,
and the idea of intercessory prayer finds its origins in
this process,
with the advocate, or intercessor, speaking
to the heavenly court
in favour of one who is unable to speak for
themselves.
And so Jesus calls for an
advocate,
for one who will remain with his disciples,
speaking in favour of his cause,
interceding
for him in his absence;
offering ongoing witness testimony,
to the truth that has been revealed in his
life and ministry.
Within the courtroom drama of
John’s gospel,
the time is coming when Jesus will no longer be able to
speak for himself.
He will offer his final
testimony before the Roman court,
and Pilate will hand him over to be crucified,
silencing the one in whom God’s truth has been revealed.
At this point, the role of
the advocate, the Spirit of Truth,
is to remain with the disciples,
continuing Jesus mission of testifying to the truth.
Jesus actually describes the Spirit
as ‘another’ advocate (14.16),
recognising that he himself was the first advocate to the
truth (cf. 1 Jn 2.1);
anointed by the Spirit at his
baptism
for a life dedicated to the revelation of truth
and the unmasking of deception (1.32).
The brute fact of the
existence of Jesus,
this
moment in history when the word of God become flesh,
had put the world on trial,
revealing
and exposing the terrible depths of the human capacity
for deception, deceit, and
dishonesty,
whist
pointing the way to a new way of being human,
where
pretences are stripped away,
and new life is encountered in the light of
God’s revealed truth.
So the ongoing role of the Spirit
of advocacy
is to ensure that this testimony to the truth,
that came into being with Jesus,
as the divine word became human flesh,
is not lost to a world that
continually
conspires to ensure its silence.
So the trial and execution of
Jesus,
becomes the trial and conviction of the world.
It is the moment of terrible unmasking,
the moment of horrific revelation,
as the truth of the nature of reality without God becomes
inescapable.
There is nowhere to hide as
the world without God reveals its hand,
putting to death the very one
in whom divine life-giving truth had taken tangible form.
In the handing over of Jesus
to be crucified,
Pilate, on behalf of all empires everywhere,
secures a guilty verdict on the world without God.
The truth that is revealed in
the trial of Jesus,
is the truth that without God, the world stands
condemned.
Not even the Jewish legal
system is let off the hook here,
with the religious leaders of the Jews conspiring with
the Romans
in the execution of the divine word.
It seems that even the law of
Moses,
based on the God-given ten commandments,
is found to be ineffective in revealing truth to the
hearts of humans.
So it is that Jesus invites
those who would live in love
to do so not by keeping to the ten commandments,
but by believing his own testimony to the
truth (14.1),
and by living according to his own commandments
of mutual love (13.34) and mutual service
(13.14-15).
He says:
If you love me, you will keep
my commandments.
16 And I will ask the
Father, and he will give you another Advocate,
to be with you forever.
17 This is the Spirit
of truth, whom the world cannot receive,
because it neither sees him nor knows him.
You know him, because he
abides with you,
and he will be in you. (14:15-17).
There is a saying that ‘all
of life’s a trial’,
and it seems that, certainly the way John’s gospel
pictures it,
this is the nature of reality.
Not in terms of life being
difficult,
although that certainly is true for some.
And not necessarily in terms
of the inevitability of persecution,
although it remains a very real possibility for many
that they will be dragged before the courts, and worse,
for their testimony to the truth of Christ.
But ‘all of life’s a trial’,
because the truth that came into being in Christ
continues to put the world itself on trial.
The world continues to be
called to account as the truth of Christ,
testified
to by his advocate,
and witnessed
to by his disciples,
offers its persistent challenge the human tendency
to construct power systems and structures
based on self-deception and self-interest.
Just as the truth of the
word-become-flesh
challenged the legalism of the Jewish religious system,
and the domination of the Roman imperial system,
So the truth to which the
advocate bears witness in our own time
continues to challenge those human behaviours and power
systems
which derive
from self-righteous legalism
and self-interested
imperial domination.
Just as Paul, standing in the
Areopagus in Athens,
pointed the Athenians to the truth of God revealed in
Christ,
through their altar to the unknown God.
So those of us, in whom and
through whom the Advocate continues to speak,
are called to engage with the cultures, systems, and
powers of our own time,
pointing to the truth that
casts out fear,
and releasing people from deceptions
that distort, demean, and divide humanity.
The courtroom drama of John’s
gospel does not, of course,
end with the death of the innocent man.
It ends, much as it began, with
a mystery.
It ends with an empty tomb,
and with Jesus once more present with his
disciples,
testifying
to them the glorious truth
that even death itself does not get the final
word on human life.
And so, we who live in the
light of the resurrection of Jesus
are called to a politics of truth, compassion, and
justice;
We are called to build
communities of inclusion,
where the unlovely discover that they are loved,
and the isolated find themselves no longer alone.
We are called to obedience to
the command of Christ
that we must live lives of mutual service, and mutual
love.
And we are called to live
lives of truth,
as the Advocate within us bears witness to the truth
that in Christ Jesus, the word has become flesh,
and continues to dwells among us.
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