April 27, 2008

We pick up today where we left off last Sunday as Jesus gives his farewell words, which take up three chapters in John’s gospel, plus a fourth chapter in which Jesus prays for his followers. Jesus is saying goodbye to his closest friends and followers. It’s his last supper with the disciples. And, as Frederick Buechner says, Jesus “knew it was for the last time--they all did. The Romans were out to get him. The Jews were out to get him. For reasons that can only be guessed at, one of his own friends was out to get him, and Jesus seems to know that too. He knew, in other words, that his time had all but run out and that they would never all of them be together again.”[1]

As the candles flicker amid the shadows of that upper room, Jesus sees their faces etched with fear and desolation. And he senses an urgency to tell them what they need to know in the little time he has left. He tells them what he wants them to do. He tells them to love one another (15:12), and if they love him they will be devoted to what he has taught them. And he tells them that by being devoted to him and his way of love after he is gone, they will find themselves thrust in the eye of a storm. They will be hated just as he was (15:18), and they will need help.

So Jesus promises them, “I am leaving but I will not leave you alone.” I will not leave you “orphaned” is how it is most often translated. “Comfortless” is how it reads in the King James Version. “I will not leave you comfortless.” He is leaving them to go to the Father and he promises he will ask the Father to send them another “Advocate” or “Counselor” or “Comforter.” The original word is “Paraklete,” which means someone called to help, someone who is there to befriend and encourage. “I will send you another Helper.”

This holy Helper will be present forever, will be with them always. And the Advocate, the helping presence is the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Jesus departs to be with God and the Spirit is present to be in us as Jesus is in God (14:20).

The Spirit abides and dwells within us, assuring us that while the physical Jesus has left us, he has not left us alone. As old Peter wrote decades later to the young church, “He was put to death in the flesh, but make alive in the spirit. Jesus is with us now in a different way. He is not a physical, flesh and bone figure on earth any longer. He is with us as a spiritual presence, an unseen presence. Our risen Lord Jesus draws near in the Spirit to as the very presence of God indwelling and renewing and helping us with whatever help is needed.

And Jesus links the presence of the Advocate to his commandment to love. When we on or own are powerless to love one another as Jesus commands, or we are on the verge of giving up on love and abandon the holy ways of Jesus all together, Jesus does not give up on us or abandon us. As the unseen presence of the Spirit dwelling within us, Jesus himself is present giving our souls the power to love and to keep loving, the power to love as Jesus loves, the power to love compassionately as the One Jesus called “Father” compassionately loves, the power of love to forgive without limit, the power to lovingly live and endure. The next to human impossibility is a Spirit-given possibility.

If you have been around here very long, you have heard me speak of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the young German pastor and theologian who was opposed to Hitler and the Nazis and participated in the resistance movement. He was arrested and imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp and executed because he gave his allegiance to Christ as Lord instead of the Führer. In one of his journal entries he wrote of the time one night when his strength was gone and the Spirit, the Advocate, the Helper came to help him through. He wrote, I vividly recall that night of torture, and how I prayed to God that he might send death to deliver me because of the hopelessness and pain I felt I could no longer endure. How I wrested with God that night and finally, in my great need, crept to him weeping. Not until morning did a great peace come to me, a blissful awareness of light, strength, and warmth, bring with it the conviction that I must see this thing through. Solace in woe. This is the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, which enables a (person) to live and endure. The Holy Spirit is the very life and love of God throbbing, pulsating in our souls, helping us and enabling us to “live and endure.”

A Helper in every time of need. And who among us hasn’t known a time of need or even now is in need? In her novel, Saving Grace, Lee Smith has one of the characters say that there are really only two prayers: help and thank you.

A Comforter in every time of darkness. “Solace in woe,” Bonhoeffer said. This is the Holy Spirit.

A Counselor in every time of turmoil. Given all the demands and decisions of life, the Spirit of Christ is our guide and counselor.

An Advocate in every time of hopelessness and helplessness. We feel ourselves once more graced with faith and strength, and we sense Paul’s prayer in Romans has been answered in us: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit (15:13).

In a collection of 16^th and 17^th English Puritan prayers and devotions is this prayer to the Advocate, the Spirit of truth:

O Holy Spirit,
As the sun is full of light, the ocean full of water,
            Heaven full of glory, so may my heart be full of thee.
Vain are all divine purposes of love
            and the redemption wrought by Jesus
            except thou work within,
                        regenerating by thy power,
                        giving me eyes to see Jesus,
                        showing me the realities of the unseen world.
Give me thyself without measure,
            as an unimpaired fountain,
            as inexhaustible riches.
I bewail my coldness, poverty, emptiness,
            imperfect vision, languid service,
            prayerless prayers, praiseless praises.
Suffer me not to grieve or resist thee.
Come as power,
            to expel every rebel lust, to reign supreme and keep me thine;
Come as teacher,
            leading me into all truth, filling me with all understanding;
Come as love,
            that I may adore the Father, and love him as my all;
Come as joy,
            to dwell in me, move in me, animate me;
Come as light,
            illuminating the Scripture, moulding me in its laws;
Come as sanctifier,
            body, soul and spirit wholly thine;
Come as helper,
            with strength to bless and keep, directing my every step;
Come as beautifier,
            bringing order out of confusion, loveliness out of chaos.
Magnify to me thy glory by being magnified in me,
            and make me (scented)/redolent of thy fragrance.[2]

Jesus has left us. As Peter says, he has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God.” But he has not left us alone. He is with us now in the Spirit, our Comforter, our Counselor, our Helper, enabling us to love and live and endure.

[1] Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark, 265f.

[2] The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions, Arthur Bennett, editor.