Called to Our Side
17 May 2020
Sixth Sunday of Easter Year A
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
God, give us hearts
to feel and love,
Take away our hearts
of stone and give us hearts of flesh.
Amen.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus
friends are afraid and feeling abandoned.
Jesus is about to die, and he says goodbye. Everything they had hoped for—the in-breaking
of God’s Reign, a close community with a kind and loving leader who stood by
them, healed them, listened to them, gave them hope—all this was evaporating
before their eyes.
How could they breathe? How could they live? How could they hope? How could they do anything but howl?
In this scene of loss and grief,
Jesus tells his friends, “I will not leave you orphans. I am going away, but will come back. I will ask the Father, and he will send you another
helper called to your side, who will stand with you no matter what.”
Parakletos is
the word used here for “helper,” from para-kaleo
to call to one’s side. This idea is expressed
in Latin as ad-vocatus, behind the
word used in the translation we used today, advocate. The King James expresses it as
“comforter.”
To this point in the story, Jesus
has been the one who has been comforting, standing by, and defending. Jesus has welcomed all to his table, healed and
forgiven with no judgment, and has acted indeed as the very Spirit of Truth,
the breath of life.
Jesus before he leaves promises us that
the Father will send us another helper called to our side, another advocate, another
comforter, giving us life and breath.
Remember, breath in Latin is spiritus,
or Spirit.
In John, the evening of the
Resurrection Jesus returns to his friends and says, “Peace,” and then breathes
on them adding, “receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:21-22). In Luke/Acts, the coming of the Holy Spirit
to the Church is placed on the day of Pentecost, 50 days after Passover and
Easter, after the Ascension of Jesus.
But though John wrote decades after
Luke, his view seems to reflect the earlier understanding of the coming of the
spirit: Paul writing just a decade after
Jesus’ death, says that “the Lord” (that is, the Risen Jesus) “is the Spirit”
(2 Cor 3:17)
The presence of the Risen Lord in
our hearts and minds is the basis of Christian spiritual life. This Advocate,
this Comforter, this “Friend” beside us, the Holy Spirit—this is who makes
Jesus present for us.
It is a much abused concept. People say the Spirit inspired them to do
this or say that, to find a parking space here, or excommunicate that person,
or go to war. Some say the spirit tells
them to disregard public health practices aimed at reducing the transmission of
Covid-19. But simply because people
think the spirit is talking to them does not make it so.
Saint Paul puts it simply: “the
fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self control” (Gal 5:22). One of the reasons I can say with faithful
hope that the Episcopal Church was guided by the Spirit to include women in
ministry and gays and lesbians in our common, sacramental life, is that all
these fruits of the spirit are present in the intuition behind this
decision. Jerry Falwell or Franklin
Graham saying the Holy Spirit tells us in the Bible to reject such people, not
so much.
The Spirit blows where it will. It is not a set of legal rulings nor
canonical rubrics. It is flexible, but
inexorable in its demands: life-affirming, loving, and joyful. Note that both in John’s account of the Last
Supper and of the Risen Lord’s appearance on Easter evening, the spirit is
promised or given along with the gift of peace, of a sense of wholeness,
abundance, and calm.
I have had moments in my life where I know I felt the Spirit: peace, clarity, loving kindness, and courage. I felt it when I asked Elena to marry me, and thirty years later, when I asked her to take Christian vows of marriage with me. I felt it when I sought confirmation in the Episcopal Church, and when I recognized God’s call to me to be a priest. I have felt the gentle promptings from Jesus as I have counseled and consoled people, and as I too have needed consolation and courage. I have felt its sweet calming comfort even amid the stress of the Covid-19 isolation and distancing.
We are well advised to reason and study things out, to seek counsel and advice to help us get our bearings. And it is wise to be cautious in making claims of “being guided by the Spirit,” if only to relieve God of the burden of having silly or wrong things chalked up to his account.
But we need to listen. Active and regular prayer as part of a rule
of life, reading scripture as well as thoughtful, uplifting and even
challenging books, a regular practice of contemplating beauty and serving
others, and listening to spiritual direction from a trusted and discreet friend—all
these are ways to help hear the Holy Spirit.
I invite us all this week to look at how we’re doing in pursuing such regular practice.
Jesus is here now, present for us. The spirit of love and holiness is here now. It is up to us to do what we can so that we better hear his voice and recognize the hand of God in the world about us.
Thanks be to God.
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