“The Holy Spirit: God-Breathed Love” (John 14:16-17; 15:26-27; 16:4b-15)

Sunday, May 20, 2018

            We pray, hoping that someone is listening.  Does this make sense?  As Christians, we believe that good wins in the end.  More specifically, we believe God, expressing God’s love, ultimately prevails over evil.  Under this audacious belief, we live lives in which we expect things to turn out well.  Should we?  We hope for the good and live as if we’ll get what we’re hoping for.  Does this make sense?  Such hope stands on what, exactly?  What’s the foundation of our faith?

            Reading an Edgar Allen Poe poem last week, I was swallowed by a damp, thick, vague, darkness.  It is what Han Solo means when he says, “I have a bad feeling about this.”  People familiar with Poe might tell me I have just described all his poems, not just the one I was reading last Thursday.  Yet poets and Star Wars characters are not the only ones to trust their gut instincts instead of evidence.  I have seen the most down-to-earth of people fall prey to indescribable, untouchable yet still palpable feelings.   Something is there.  Intuition. I have heard the most sober-minded of church members talk about the feeling of being blanketed by a thick spiritual heaviness. 

            I’m no poet and I wasn’t in star wars.  But I have had my own moments where feelings existing outside the realm of 5 senses have overcome me. 

            I was on the streets of Washington DC in 1993 outside an establishment that featured exotic dancing.  As men with lust in their eyes and wads of cash in their hands lined up to pay the cover charge, I felt evil in the air.  It clung to my skin like the steamy air after a hot summer rain. 

            Indeed, why should we Christians have optimism or hope or faith?  Evil is about in the world.  Demons; temptation; the sin of man against man, woman against woman; what good news can we offer?  To what hope can we cling?

            We stand at a border in a war zone.  Before us is no man’s land.  That phrase originated in World War I.  Between the German trench line and the French trench line was a space uncontrolled by either side.  Any venture in might mean poisonous gas, bombs, or exposure to enemy gunfire.  To go into no man’s land was to stare into death.  But there was no winning the war without advancing.

            After the resurrection of Jesus and the ascension, where Jesus went to sit at the right hand of the Father, the disciples sat in utter uncertainty.  Were they destined to be executed as Jesus was?  If so, would it do any good?  If death was before them, did they have the courage to face it?  They had become dependent upon the physical, bodily presence of Jesus.  Were they ready for life without him with them?  Staring into the void, exposed in no man’s land, the disciples saw God’s love for them in the coming of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit came as Jesus promised the Spirit would. 

            We cannot see the Holy Spirit.  We cannot measure the Holy Spirit through any form of scientific observation.  Relating to God the Spirit, even believing in God the Spirit, is an act of faith.  We live in this condition, in faith.  And that lands us right in that most dangerous of places – no man’s land.

            We have our life experiences.  I live with what I have seen and felt.  I have severely sprained both ankles in pick-up basketball games.  The pain is alive in my memory.  When I am watching a game on TV, and player is injured, and the broadcast shows it over and over in super-slow motion, I can’t even watch.  I feel the horrible pain. 

I remember a time in a Hardees restaurant, 27 years ago.  I was visiting my friends at Radford University.  We were in the restaurant laughing about something, and a Radford student thought I was laughing at him.  The next thing I knew, this guy was threatening to fight me.  I was so shocked to go from carefree laughter to fight or flight mode, I didn’t even really size up my attacker.  Thankfully that confrontation was posturing, not an actual fight.  Still, all these years later, I remember.

I remember the best hugs I have ever had. I remember times my dad and brother and I laughed at the silliest of things, laughed until we cried.

I remember watching my son joyfully run up the garage steps upon returning home from school.  I delighted in his happiness.  Then his foot slipped and he went down, face first, breaking his tooth in half on the steps; all that blood.  I get a little nervous now, when the kids run up those steps.  I walk up those steps with a little more care.

These are tactile experiences, memories with taste and touch, emotions and reactions.  I cannot recall “seeing” the Holy Spirit of God in any of these experiences.  From this no man’s land, this space of memory, I – we – stand at the border of the physical world and the great unknown.  We have deeper cuts than sprained ankles and broken teeth.  We have injuries to the soul, wounds only God can heal and we cannot see this God we desperately need.  We have no choice.  We have to step forward into the unknown future.  Where is God?

We were made for relationships.  Even those among us who enjoy quiet and solitude need others.  We all need intimacy.  Yet, nothing hurts us as much as the person we love who rejects us.  We cannot look into the mind and heart of another person.  So we step into relationship not knowing if we will be laughed at or loved.  And if we are laughed at, then who picks us up?  Where is God?

All we can do is step into the future.  We cannot be squatters in No Man’s Land.  We can live isolated from relationships, a life lived alone, but that leads to intolerable emptiness.  We must step into the unknown.  But how?

            I mentioned the uncertainty of the disciples at Jesus’ death.  Even seeing him resurrected, still they were unsure of what was next.  They had lived life with him, in his bodily presence.  They were in the boat when he calmed the raging storm.  They saw him raise dead people to life.  Being so close with him, they discovered their very best selves.  Once he ascended to the Father was gone, no longer with them in body, could they continue to be their very best selves?

            I doubt they really understood the mission or the message at this point.  We venerate Peter and Andrew, James and John, Matthew and Thomas and the rest, and rightly so.  But in that short time between ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit, I believe the disciples had greater anxiety than the spiritual uncertainty we live with daily.  They surely felt that their lives were on the line.

            The teaching of Jesus at the Last Supper, recorded in the Gospel of John, specifically what’s in chapters 14, 15, & 16 is God’s answer to the disciples’ tremulous confusion in the days after the ascension.  What Jesus says there is for us in the moments when we desperately ask, “Where is God?”

            God is here!  “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate” said Jesus (14:16).  “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf” (15:26).  The New Revised Standard Version uses the word ‘Advocate’ to translate the Greek word ‘Paraclete.’  In reality, no single word in English adequately captures the meaning of this word; we might even say of this name. 

            The Paraclete is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit sent by God.  English translators have called this one ‘Advocate,’ ‘Comforter,’ ‘Helper,’ ‘Teacher,’ and ‘Mediator.’  The Spirit fills all of these roles.  The presence of the Holy Spirit is so important for living the life of a follower of Jesus, he actually said it was for the best that he depart.  His ascension was the best thing that could come for the disciples because the Holy Spirit would not come until he departed.  I find it hard to understand how I am better off apart from Jesus’ bodily presence, and I never met Jesus in the body.  How much more would these disciples whose feet were washed by him become incredulous when he said his departure was for the best?  But that’s what he said.  They, we, need the Spirit more than we need Jesus present in the body.  We cannot be disciples apart from the Holy Spirit.  We cannot be Christians apart from the Holy Spirit.

            However, this does not mean we strain to see or hear or feel the Holy Spirit.  Yes, we can listen, quiet our minds, open our hearts, and truly listen.  But, communing with the Spirit is not something we accomplish.  It’s something we receive, a gift of God’s grace.  The Spirit is sent by God as God’s presence with us.  We have this gift and God won’t ever go away.  God may sit patiently waiting for us to be responsive to the Spirit, or the Spirit may act in ways we cannot easily see, but the Spirit is God’s promise that God is always with us.  As we come to understand this, we see that No Man’s Land is transformed and becomes God’s Space.

            In John 16:8-11, the Spirit is an accuser who proves the depths of error found in the world.  Remember, in the Gospel of John, the world is fallen and dying, and is a dangerous place.  If we get too wrapped with the world, apart from God, we die with it.  The Spirit shows that world does not understand sin, righteousness, or judgment.  Sin is life lived in rebellion against God.  Righteousness is life lived in right relationship with God.  Judgment is God’s verdict that the world will die and be destroyed before entering the resurrection and being made new.  The Spirit exists within the evil world to teach this lesson about sin, righteousness, and judgment and at the same to time to speak God’s condemnation. 

            Such wrath-filled rhetoric might give us pause, raise our fears a little, but we can be comforted.  The same Spirit that speaks judgment to the world takes the church, the followers of Jesus, by the hand.  The Spirit guides us to the path of absolute joy and eternal life.  I would say the Spirit guides us gently and much of the time that is so.  But sometimes, some of us need more than an arm on the shoulder.  We need a swift kick to get us moving in the direction of God.  When need be, the Holy Spirit provides the necessary nudge. 

            Jesus said, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth” (16:12).  He’s called the Spirit of truth and he guides us into the truth.  And by the way, the Holy Spirit has no gender.  I say “He” because of the insufficiency of language. Earlier in John 14, we hear Jesus say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  So when Jesus declares that the Spirit will guide us he means two things.  The Holy Spirit enables us to truly see the world as it is, and guides us to Jesus. 

            Jesus says that he sends the Spirit.  He also says the Spirit comes from the Father.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus and the Father are one and whenever one acts, we are assured it is as if the other said that word or performed that deed.  All that I am saying does nothing to clarify the mystery of the Holy Trinity.  I cannot make the 3-in-one nature of God simple.  Next week we will talk more about our Trinitarian understanding of God.  I fear confusions will persist.  What I offer – what the Bible offers – what Jesus promised is not answers, but presence.

            God knows that John’s gospel presents the world as evil.   God knows the struggles, the uncertainty, and the sense of isolation that we face.  God knows.  God loves us and what God has done for us is to come to us.  God is with us in the person of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit is the ultimate testimony that God is love.  God’s ultimate value is love.  When you or I feel abandoned or defeated or collapsed in guilt or lost, God says to us, “I love you.  I will show you my love by being with you.”  This is God: love.  God is love. 

            Many years on Pentecost Sunday – today – we would read Acts 2 and see how the dramatic coming of the Holy Spirit launched the beginning of the age of the church, the body of Christ alive and active in the world.  This year on Pentecost Sunday, rest in who God is.  God is the one who loves you and is with you.  The world is dying in sin, but you are rescued for eternal joy, eternal love, and eternal life.  The Spirit has come and is here.  We need not fear.  Because of who God is, we can live in the midst of evil as witnesses to the truth.

AMEN

First Sunday of Lent - Forgiveness (Psalm 32)

            This Psalm begins, “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven.”  Doesn’t that assume that the transgressor feels guilt and shame because of his misdeeds?  If he didn’t, he would not need the forgiveness to feel happy.  Maybe the sin itself gives him a thrill, a guilty pleasure, if you will. 

            Have you had that experience with sin?  You know a particular word is offensive, an abhorrent word, but you giggle when you hear it or say it.  Gossip; does it really even count sin?  And systemic sins – sinful systems; who ever heard of such a thing?  Am guilty for benefitting in a sinful system?  Seriously, who feels guilt over sin whether it’s individual or systemic?  You know the phrase.  I’m only human.  Why even make a big deal about disobeying God? 

            But this singer, in Psalm 32:3, says, “While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.”  Kept silence; he, or she, the singer, kept it inside.  Whatever the sin was, he buried it deep in his heart.   This Psalm is attributed to David and his most public of sins was to have an adulterous affair, try to cover it up, and then have the wronged husband, Uriah, murdered in a way that would protect him from guilt.  David committed both individual and systemic-power related sins in the Bathsheba episode.  You can read about it in 2 Samuel 11-12.  Psalm 32 is one of David’s confession songs. 

            However, the Psalms are portable.  What David sang, you or me or anyone could sing in reference to our own sins.  We could sing, if we feel guilty.   David had help feeling guilty.  He says in Psalm 32:4, “Day and night your hand, [O Lord], was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.”  The way God’s hand fell on heavy David was through the confrontation provoked by the prophet Nathan. 

            God’s heavy hand sets upon us until we have to face our sin, the damage it does, and the guilt it throws on us.  Two of history’s most acclaimed authors have captured this guilt sin has wrought.

            We’ve already mentioned that a parable from the prophet Nathan provoked King David’s guilt.  In 1843 Edgar Allen Poe published “the Tell Tale Heart.” In the poem, the narrator is driven by his own madness to the kill the old man.  He thinks the murder and brilliant cover-up has relieved his gnawing insanity, but it only drives it all the more. 

            A couple of police officers come to the door because a neighbor heard a midnight cry.  The narrator has successfully hidden the body and the police officers are about to leave the house when his screaming madness awakens with a vengeance. 

Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men --but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder --louder --louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

            Day and Night, God’s hand is heavy upon us in our sin.

           

            Twenty years or so Poe published his account of agonizing guilt in ‘The Telltale Heart,’ Fyodor Dostoevsky’s presents a similar theme in his novel Crime and Punishment where the gifted but starving writer and student Raskolnikov bludgeons the old woman Alena Ivanova.  She is stingy with her money and has no pity on this able, but poor young man.  The police suspect someone else in the crime, and that man commits suicide.  Raskolnikov is in the clear.  But, we are never in the clear. 

            Leaving Lieutenant Elia Petrovitch, Raskolnikov knows he is free, but when he steps from the police station, there she is waiting, his beloved Sonia.  She knows what he has done.

Her countenance expressed the utmost despair.  At the sight, Raskolnikov smiled, but such a smile!  A moment afterwards he had gone back to the police-office.  Elia Petrovitch was in the act of ransacking some papers.  “Ah!  There you are again!  Have you forgotten something?  But what is the matter with you?”  With pale lips and fixed gaze, Raskolnikov slowly advanced toward Elia Petrovitch.  [He] allowed himself to sink into a chair that was offered, but could not take his eyes off of Elia Petrovitch.  For a moment, both men looked at one another in silence.  “It was I – “said Raskolnikov.  “It was I who killed, with a hatchet, the old moneylender and her sister, Elizabeth, and robbery was my motive.”  Elia Petrovitch called for assistance.  People rushed in from various directions (p.421).

In the Psalm, David sings, day and Night, God’s hand is heavy upon us in our sin.  We are not murders like Raskolnikov or Poe’s narrator, or David for that matter, but sin rests just as heavy on us.  Our sense of guilt is enough to crush us and when it does not, God’s Holy Spirit convicts our soul.  When our conscience is dull and we seem content in spite of our words and deeds that hurt others, not bothered that we are agents of pain and deception, then God steps in and pricks the conscience and convicts the soul.  As long as we deny our need for forgiveness, we waste away, groaning all day.

However, there is hope – the best of hopes.  That’s the point of Psalm 32 and the simple message of this day.  There is a way out of this fog of sin, a fog so thick it is only cleared after God the son is murdered by us all when he’s nailed to the cross.  There’s a light that shows the path from crippling guilt and shame to unfettered freedom, a freedom that enables us to soar to the heavens. 

Again, the Psalm: “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  Happy are those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, in whose spirit there is no deceit” (32:1-2).  David knew that happiness because he confessed, received forgiveness, and rose to stand as a new man.  He says as much in the Psalm.  “I acknowledged my sin to you … and you forgave” (32:5).  It is a basic, central Christian belief.  When we confess our sins by name, repent of those sins by turning away from them, and turn to Jesus, we are forgiven and we are made new.

In this Psalm, God is not an angry judge waiting to crush us in our guilt.  It is our guilt itself that crushes us.  In the Psalm, God’s heavy hand is meant to lead us to confession that we might be forgiven and rescued from the weight of our sins.  Verse 6 says, “Let all who are faithful offer prayer to you.”  And in the next verse, the singer sings to God, “You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance” (32:7).

Confession is freeing.  We fear it because walking through our guilt is painful, but God walks with us.  And the church must walk with people so they don’t have to face their own shame alone.  We cannot be a judging community that compounds the pain and shame of the guilty by rejecting them.  We have to imitate our Lord by forgiving as God forgives. We have to be a community of grace, a community in which grace is extended to all.

In this way, and only in this way, does confession bring freedom.  And, O, what freedom it is!  Dostoevsky captures it well at the end of Crime and Punishment.  Sonia goes with Raskolnikov to Siberia.  She will wait for him to serve out his 7-year prison sentence.  She has been his conscience, by her purity forcing him to confess, and staying with him when he did.  She did not preach at him, but she lived her faith.  She gave him a New Testament, but never forced him to read it.

On the last page, he sits in his sell, holding the closed Bible, contemplating all that has happened: his crime, his confession, Sonia’s love for him.  He notes that as hard as things have been for her, “nothing could take her joy!”  And thinks to himself, “Her faith, her feelings, may not mine become like them” (p.434).  The books ends, “Now a new history begins: a story of the gradual renewing of a man, of his slow, progressive regeneration, and change from one world to another – an introduction to the previously unknown realities of life.”  Those are the realities of the happiness and freedom we have when we turn to God in Christ and receive forgiveness. 

A final note from the Psalm reiterates the necessity of grace from God to us and from us to one another.  Verse 10 says, “Many are the torments of the wicked.”  And we might expect the next stanza to say, “But great are the delights of the righteous.”  However, it does not say that.  It says, “Steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.” 

The contrast is not between the wicked and the obedient, the sinful and the righteous.  David, the singer of this Psalm, knows we all sin.  The contrast is between those who are miserable because they are stuck in sin and don’t see the way and just suffer the pain of it all, and those who, in the midst of the messes of their own making, turn to God and trusted God.  God can be trusted with our junk, with our messes.  “Steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.”

Enter that freedom today.  Fully confess your sin today and look to the cross and know that you are forgiven.  One of the ways God makes things right in the world is the gift of freedom.  God frees us from our own sins by forgiving and making us clean and new.  Confess today, and receive the new life God offers.

When we do that, then the final verse, Psalm 32:11 is ours.

“Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart” (32:11). 

AMEN