Sunday
May 31
Receive the Holy Spirit
By Marsh Chapel
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Spirit
For the months and years ahead, we shall need… Spirit. Those who worship shall worship in spirit and in truth. Receive the Holy Spirit, beloved. Today is Pentecost! Receive the Holy Spirit!
Scripture and tradition depend on reason and experience. Spirit involves reason and experience. A question for you, day by day as our mortally challenging pandemic reminds us, is whether we can find the courage to trust our own experience and whether we can find the capacity to rely on our own reason. Opportunities to subcontract both are amply available. But in order to live a life that is yours not almost yours, Spirit is needed. More: not many of us signed up to make decisions, choices, on almost a daily basis, that may in fact have direct impact on another’s safety, health and well-being. We have the freedom of spirit, but there is a weight, a dead weight to that freedom. Said Robert McAffee Brown, This is God’s world. But it is a crummy world. And we have to live with both realities. It is the Triune God as Spirit that empowers, makes a space, for Brown’s proverb.
Wind at midnight. Wind from the sea. Summer wind, blowing in. The wind blows where it wills. Wind of God…
The strangest of strange outcroppings of Spirit in all of Scripture is located in the Fourth Gospel, in the odium theologicum of John 7, and on the windswept steppe of John 14, the ice-covered snow peak of the Bible, the haunted moonscape of planet Gospel, and, especially, come Pentecost, today, in the elusive presence of John 20. In John both the mystical eye and the ethical ear, in Samuel Terrien’s phrase, are alive, ethics here only meaning love God and love your neighbor. Once you have ascended John including to the last discourse, John 14ff, you are clearly in a strange, strange land and landscape. The venerable preacher who originally spoke to the late first century community in the town of Ephesus (say) if nothing else had absolute confidence in his own experience. It led him, and thus his church, to establish what became later emerging Christianity. Here, Logos. Here, Nicodemus. Here, Blind Man healed. Here, Lazarus—raised. Here, Beloved Disciple. Here, Paraclete, especially, Spirit, by another name.
John
John has had the courage to face the awful disappointment behind the New Testament: Jesus did not return, not on schedule, not as expected, not soon and very soon, not maranatha, not yet. But John looked at his own experience, and in biblical measure, with traditional tools, reasoned. In place of apocalypse, he celebrated the artistry of the everyday, and in place of the speculation about the end, he celebrated the Spirit of truth, and in place of parousia, the coming of the Lord, he nominated Paraclete, the presence of the Lord. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. One way to solve problems is to face them, to name them, to admit them. No parousia. Paraclete. To face our present challenge, with courage, neither with recklessness nor with anxiety, neither with rashness nor with timidity, as the President of Notre Dame put it this week.
The stark strangeness, the utter difference of John from the rest of the Bible we have yet fully to admit. In the COVID time, it may be, you will have the time or take the time or make the time, to become better acquainted: with the Bible, with the Gospel, with John. With faith. Faith, says my friend, is a response in the affirmative to the question whether life has any meaning. Is there meaning in life, to life? Faith says ‘Yes’. My beloved advisor, perhaps the greatest John scholar of our era, Fr. Raymond Brown, got only as far as saying that John is best understood as ‘an embraceable variant’ emphasis on embraceable less emphasis on variant. But when we get to the summit, John 14 and following out to John 20, we see chiseled there in ice and covered fully with wind snow, an enigmatic, mysterious riddle: Spirit. Paraclete. The endless enemy of conformity. The lasting foe of the nearly lived life. The champion of the quixotic. The standard bearer of liberty. The one true spirit of spirited truth. Yet we cannot even give the history of the term, nor fully define its meaning, nor aptly place it in context, nor finally determine its translation. And maybe that is as it should be. Paraclete eludes us. Spirit evades us. Paraclete outpaces us. Spirit escapes us. There is, says faith of meaning in life, says faith in meaning in life, there is a self-correcting spirit of truth loose in the universe.
Notice that the Spirit is given to all, not just to a few or to the twelve, definitely not. Notice that it is Spirit not structure on which John relies. Notice it is Spirit not memory which we shall trust (good news for those of us whose memory may slip a little). Notice that Spirit stands over against what John calls ‘the world’ in the later chapters—another dark mystery in meaning. Notice that the community around John’s Jesus is amply conveyed a powerful trust in Spirit.
John, Spirit in John, may be the verses of the Bible we most need in Corona Time. Especially recent graduates. Six months ago, you had multiple opportunities, jobs and internships and travel and study and any myriad of combinations thereof. Today? Today we need the Spirit to empower us to edit our dreams, to recognize past dreams and edit them for a new, challenging time.
Other parts of the New Testament take another trail. The Book of Acts offers confidence by way of hagiographical memories of Peter and Paul, and of exaggerated but loving assertions of the utter agreement of Peter and Paul. The
Pastoral and Catholic Epistles—and to some degree 1 John in opposition to his gospel namesake—rely not on memory or memories and not on Spirit, but on structure: presbyters, faith once delivered to saints, deacons, codes of conduct, stylized memories of orderly transmission of tradition. We need memory. We need structure. Neither can hold a candle to Spirit. That is, for John, what Moses, the Law, the historical Jesus, the Sacraments or any other can suggest, Paraclete provides. By Spirit we hear the Word God. God reveals by Spirit. God self-reveals by Spirit. Here the stakes are very high.
Raymond Brown: People who live by the spirit is the only way others will be convinced of the victory of Jesus (Hill, Courageous, 82). You. You living by the Spirit will be the only way others will be convinced of faith, of the affirmation of meaning in life.
Paraclete
Parakletos, Paraclete, is a word used only by John. In the first letter of John the word is used to describe Jesus. The word comes from kalein, to call, to call along side of. It is the legal form for advocate, one who has been called along side to help (ad vocare). The Holy Spirit will tell you what to say: this is the Synoptic claim. But that is not quite what John says here. Here the Holy Spirit is a prosecuting attorney. He puts the world on trial. There is a legal sense to Paraclete. A lot of this language and imagery ought to be understood in light of the trial of Jesus itself. The Paraclete is Jesus’ Spirit. The Spirit is not just a memory but is a living force.
In Job we hear “I know that my defender lives”. The figure here is probably an angelic defender. He will prove to the world Job’s innocence. The angelic figure in the Job passage is translated by the rabbi’s as “paraclete”. “My defense attorney”. The angelic spirit is related to the individual.
However, “the Advocate” is not the whole picture. “The Comforter” is also a part of this. The Spirit will comfort, will hold your hand. Paraclete has this notion too. Luther’s Bible emphasized the notion of the comforter. Thus, we have in English the Paraclete as comforter. Furthermore, this figure is a ‘he’, though there is no intention to emphasize maleness. This is Jesus’ Paraclete since he is our own defense attorney. And the Paraclete is with us forever.
Even Jesus was confined by time and space. But the Paraclete is not bound by time and space. The Paraclete is given to all who love Jesus and keep his commandments. There is no contract here for John. The Paraclete is not given only to a few. (In Acts, by contrast, the spirit is tied more directly to the twelve). In John, the Spirit is the property of all. The Spirit is an internal force which the world cannot see. The world cannot see the Spirit. And the Spirit has no name. His identity comes from Jesus and the Father. The Spirit takes on the role of Jesus, and is sent in Jesus’ name. He will teach. He will remind. He will tell. Just as Jesus did. This is the Teacher
for the Johannine community. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears. He will speak of the things to come.
At the end of the first century, the apostolic churches had a moment of paralysis. All the leaders were now dead. “How are we going to survive?”, they mused. We will hold on. Preserve what has been given. One way to cope is to structure, to pass on. This structure is the test of the Spirit. It is a mechanism for preserving the situation. There is a human witness, to be sure. But that witness is only powerful because of the Paraclete. Thus, the Beloved Disciple is so exemplary, because of the Holy Spirit. This is the notion of passing things on, in a viable, adaptable way.
The Paraclete teaches.
There are two different visions of Christian mechanisms for dealing with the future. One: Acts, the Pastorals, preserve and remember. Two: John, the Spirit. This is a most interesting tension: spirit guidance plus guidance from structure.
Here the Paraclete is also the grounding of the community. Says Jesus: For your own good, I will go away. The presence of the Spirit in the long run is better. I have many things to say, but you cannot bear them now.
Now
The person who possesses the Spirit possesses Jesus.
The Spirit is the Advocate. He calls forth and calls out and calls down. The word for Spirit, pneuma, is actually neuter in gender. Our friend Linda, an OWU and BU graduate, lives by Spirit. She happened to call, a Friday ago, to offer thanks for a BU program she had heard. When she finished her BA in Delaware Ohio and wanted to go on to study religious education her chaplain, James Leslie, son of former BU Old Testament professor Elmer Leslie, suggested BU. “Who knows, you may even meet your husband there” he said. She went and she did. Last year Linda was spotted holding a sign in traffic near an upstate New York shopping center. She and her husband Gary, a BUSTH graduate of 1964, served a dozen urban and rural churches together, never really complaining about itinerancy or salary or ministry. Gary retired and unexpectedly died shortly thereafter. Linda teaches Sunday school, writes letters to the editor, checks in on elderly preachers’ widows, and reads poetry. This particular day she was moved with a few others to stand in a busy traffic area holding a sign, ‘Remember the children of the Middle East’. An advocate. Do you possess, or are you possessed by, the Advocate?
The Spirit is the Counselor. A recent college graduate, call her Emma, works for an outdoor therapy program, aimed at delinquent teenagers. She loves nature, having studied the environment and environmental science in college. A 15 year-old boy asked her why he should bother to get up in the morning. He meant it. She
had no answer, at first. But then she brought him a paragraph the next day from Thoreau. She meant it. Somehow, maybe more for this trust in her and her care for him, a saving, an intervening word of counsel was spoken, and more importantly, was spoken and heard. Faith is the affirmative response to the question whether life has meaning. Do you possess, or are you possessed by, the Counselor?
The Spirit is the Comforter. On the edges of mayhem in various parts of the world, let us not forgot for all our current troubles, there are camps for refugees. Millions of refugees. There are tents, there is food, there are medical units, there is some semblance of order. Temporary, insufficient, makeshift order, but order nonetheless. A photo of one of the nurses in one, eyes wide and tear-filled and kind, stood out from the newspaper the other day. She stood for all the heroic first responders right around us in this pandemic. We all cannot do such work. But we can appreciate and admire, respect and support, those who do. We take order for granted, to our peril. One day we shall need the succor of such women, and the safety of such order, however temporary, insufficient and makeshift. Do you possess, or are you possessed by, the Comforter?
The Spirit is the Helper. Brian was admitted to my alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan, but really could not read well. He was failing everything, left and right and center. His history teacher told him ‘you do not belong here’. He tried, but he could not continue. He found his way to the registrar, and got papers to withdraw. He sat on the steps of Gray Chapel one afternoon, filling in the forms. A secretary in the admissions office saw him, remembered his spirit and spunk, his energy and courtesy, from the spring. She stopped looking into her computer and went out to look at him, asking what he was doing. He began to weep. He stumbled through an explanation. They sat quietly. “Brian, you are not going home, at least not today, and at least not in this way. We have help here. We are a small school and we take care of our kids. We have a writing center here. We have ways to make this work for you. Just come with me.” You may have seen or heard Brian. Today he is a prominent news anchor. He told this story the day our third, our youngest child, graduated from OWU. “She saved my life by helping me” he said. Do you possess, or are you possessed by, the Helper?
Hear the Gospel: If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him or knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you…These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you
–The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
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