A Friend Beside Us (Easter 6C)
Homily delivered at St. Mark’s Parish Church, Medford OR
Sunday May 21, 2022 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
Acts 16:9-15; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5; John 14:23-29; Psalm 67
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41wA9-xOp8g
Homily begins at 11:25
God, take away our hearts of stone
and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
I once had a colleague at the U.S. Department of State who was a self-declared “Bible believing” Christian. When she discovered that I was a regular Church-goer, choir member, and taught the weekly Adult scripture class on Sundays at my local Episcopal Church, she made it a point of regularly letting me know how her prayer life was going, and how proactive she and her church were in struggling against what she called the “wicked world we live in.” One Monday, she seemed particularly self-satisfied, and first thing she took me aside to update me on her spiritual life.
“Tony, I was so blessed today. I’m too low ranked to merit parking privileges downstairs and can’t afford the regular parking fees at Columbia Plaza across the street so I usually park over near the Lincoln memorial and walk the four blocks here. But I didn’t have time today, and so I just relied on God. I prayed for guidance, and Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to me and led me to a side street just a half block away where there are never any parking places. But just as I turned the corner, a car pulled out and I found a place within 100 yards of the C Street entrance! And it’s just the regular street meter fares that need to be fed only every 4 hours! I feel so blessed. God guided me, and sent his Holy Spirit just as he promised! Just shows what He’ll do when we try to follow his path!”
I nodded, smiled, and replied, “well it looks like you’re very happy.” It was only on my drive home that evening that I realized what it was that so annoyed me in what she had said. She was saying that Almighty God had been her personal parking valet, arriving at her beck and call, to save her the inconvenience of walking a few blocks and being late to a meeting. I had been working on some life and death issues involving the Korean peninsula, and the contrast was all too great. Really? God was personally caring for her parking needs because she was so close to God? And this in a world where it seemed that the Almighty couldn’t be bothered to move the hearts of the world’s people to abolish war, end racism, eliminate poverty, abolish handguns, or end hunger?
Perhaps that contrast was unfair, both to her and to God. Jesus taught us that if we pray with faith, God will grant us what we pray for. Paul told us to make our desires known to God. Many, many passages tell us to be thankful to God for all good things in our lives. Jesus tells us that God is aware of and cares for even individual sparrows in flight or hairs on our head.
Even with me knowing all this, she really had annoyed me, mainly because she seemed so self-absorbed. Maybe God did help her that day. Maybe the Spirit “guided” her. Her thankfulness was thus right. But making this into a servant to her own ego and sense of partisan advantage (“only we true Christians can experience such blessings!”) cheapened what otherwise might have been innocent open-heartedness.
Today’s scriptures talk about us being in touch with God, and God being in touch with us. The reading from Acts portrays a scene where the early apostles are led by the Holy Spirit to make major decisions on where to place their missionary efforts. There are surprises along the way an unexpected side trip to Macedonia, where, they find an improbable major donor and benefactor. A wealthy gentile woman who attends synagogue is among the first to be attracted by Paul’s message, and she convinces the apostles, seemingly against their better judgment, to make her home their base of operations. The reading from the Revelation of John tells of the final state of God’s created world, a beautiful city without tears or darkness, where there is no need for temples or churches, because God dwells with its inhabitants personally.
The Gospel reading is part of Jesus’ great farewell discourse in the Gospel of John. Jesus says he will not leave his friends behind alone, bereft. He will go away, but yet come back soon to them, by sending them “another, a paraclete.” Parakletos means someone “called to stand beside” you. It is from the verb kaleo, “to call”, and the preposition para, “along side.” Translated verbally in Latin as Ad-vocatus, we sometimes hear it translated as “Advocate,” with the overtones of someone who stands beside us in court or a dispute to defend us. But another way of understanding the word comes from a related abstract noun, paraklesis, which means “a standing with,” in the sense of consoling and empathizing. This is where the King James Bible gets its translation, “Comforter.” Eugene Peterson’s The Message translation understands it in a more comprehensive way, “The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request” (John 14:26).
In John, on the evening of Easter Sunday when Christ was raised from the dead, 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 50 days later, on the day of Pentecost, 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 basis of Christian spiritual life is having this Advocate, this Comforter, this “Friend” beside us, the Holy Spirit who makes Jesus present for us. And not just having that one beside us, but listening to them.
It is a much-abused concept, as I saw in that parking lot story. We saw such abuse this week in San Francisco, when the Roman Catholic Archbishop announced that Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi can no longer receive Holy Communion in his Archdiocese, her home. He appealed to canon law in this markedly graceless act, presumably because of inspiration by the Holy Spirit in his conduct of pastoral relationships. Simply because people think the spirit is talking to them does not make it so.
Saint Paul gives a practical guide for when the spirit is with us. He says, “the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal 5:22). Jesuit anthropologist Fr. Teillard de Chardin said that the infallible sign of the presence of the Spirit is joy.
Note that in John’s accounts both 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.
In today’s passage, the Holy Spirit has two functions: to “remind” us of what
Jesus has already taught us and to “teach” us new things (v. 26). This puts to rest the false dichotomy between
standing with tried and true, canonical, and legal constraints, versus being
bold in seeking new truth, with all the risk that entails. Modern neurological and psychological
studies of memory have shown that in fact, remembrance in its very nature
includes learning new things. We
normally think of memory as a bank of recordings in our brain that we access again
and again when we remember things. But
what the studies who is that when we access memory, we are actually accessing
not a simple recording, but rather, our experience of the last time we accessed
the memory. As we grow and change and
have more experience, we attribute new meaning to our prior experiences and
focus on new details. That’s why sometimes different people over time can remember
events so differently. Memory and
learning two sides of the same coin.
Siblings in Christ: I have had moments
in my life where I know I felt the Spirit: when I decided to marry Elena, to
study at the Catholic University of America for my doctorate, to join the U.S.
foreign service, to go to work in China, to become an Episcopalian, and to respond
to a call to Holy Orders. All of these
moments were marked with peace, clarity, loving kindness, courage, and
joy. I suspect you all have had such
moments as well. It is important to periodically review them,
remember them, and recall how they feel.
We are well advised to reason and study things out, to seek counsel and advice
to help us get our bearings and direction.
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, and we need to be tuned in. An active and regular prayer life 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—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.
Joy is here now.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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