Sermon 5-10-26
Sermon 5-10-26 John 14:15-21 6th Sunday of Easter
See this little plastic Jesus I have here in my hand? It's pretty small, you might not be able to see it there in the back of the church where all good Episcopalians like to sit, but it's Jesus alright, I'll come back to that a little later.
Several years ago, while I was still coaching baseball, a young fellow showed up for practice one day with a T-shirt that had WWJD written across the front. I asked him, “What does that stand for?” He said, “What would Jesus do?” and looked at me like I was from another planet. I just said, “Oh, OK, go warm up”.
You used to see that acronym all the time, not so much lately.
Then there are the T-shirts, ads and billboards that say “Have you found Jesus?” Go to Google and type in “find Jesus meme” , there are pages and pages of them. My favorite is the one where the lady says, “I'm catholic, we never lost him”.
I got this little plastic Jesus from Elizabeth's sister, Laura. She hauled it all the way here from Oklahoma. She works in a big office building. She said that her co-workers have been bringing little plastic figurines to work and leaving them all over the place. She found this one, Jesus, on a shelf at the bottom of the elevator. She spent the rest of the day saying, “I found Jesus, in the elevator”.
Our gospel reading from John today is a short one, only seven verses. Those seven verses are ripe with information. There is way, way too much in there to cover before sundown. So I'll do what I normally do, use the Reader's Digest Condensed version.
Chapters 14 -17 of John's Gospel are considered by bible scholars to be what they call Jesus' farewell address. There are farewell addresses scattered throughout the bible: Jacob in Genesis, Moses in Deuteronomy, Paul in Acts of the Apostles and even twice from Jesus; once in Luke and here in John.
In last week's reading, both Thomas and Philip make statements that would surely have hurt Jesus' feelings. In chapter 14, verse 8, Philip says, “Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied”. Our reading today is the conclusion of Jesus' response to that request.
The first and last verses we have here repeat the same saying only in reverse order.
This type of literary construction is called an “inclusion” and is characterized by another literary tool called “reverse parallelism”. It's a teaching tool, interesting stuff if you like that sort of thing, but it could also easily bore you to tears if you don't.
The text between the first and last verses is intended to be taken as a unit.
There are three ideas presented in the body of this unit, also in parallelism. The Spirit is coming to the community of believers as a helper. The forces of evil cannot see or know the helper, the Advocate, and Jesus' disciples will be able to know the Spirit because He abides with us and lives with us.
The Greek word in our reading is translated and pronounced in English as Paraclete. We have “Advocate” in this version. It is also translated as: helper, counselor, comforter, Holy Spirit or encourager. According to professionals there is really no single English word that would work here, it would take a page or two.
I have two books called “interlinear Greek/English New Testaments”. I use them all the time. They have a line of the Koine Greek, pronounced koy-nay, ancient Greek, and right below that line are English word translations. Most of the time the nouns and verbs are backwards from each other. I have to read each line a few times for it to make sense. That's why I get the big bucks.
A simple explanation might be: someone who will guide you as to what to do and enable you to do it. Did you think Jesus? I did.
There is a term in mathematics called the Transitive Property of Equality. It sounds a lot more complicated than it really is. If A=B and B=C then A=C. Common sense really. This thing is true not only in math but in relationships in every thing.
God is equal to Jesus, Jesus is equal to the Spirit therefore God is equal to the Spirit. They're all equal and basically the same, just different names, like A,B &C.
Throughout the gospels Jesus tries to emphasize the fact that God does not abandon His community. He remains with it and keeps a constant vigil. Jesus tells us the Advocate will “be with you forever”. That's a long time.
That means the Advocate, Jesus and God will never leave. Never. All three, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are here for eternity.
Jesus says, “This is the Spirit of truth”. Keep in mind, these words were not spoken by one of our neighbors in 21st century America. Jesus the human was living at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea two thousand years ago in a culture that any of us would find it hard to understand.
The people of that area are what sociologists call “agnostic” , they're conflict prone. They only trust their family members and maybe a few close friends. No person outside that circle has the right to know the truth about anything dealing with the family group.
When we meet someone on the street we cannot wait to tell them our whole life history. That is not the way of the Mediterraneans. They are secretive. Lying to anyone you do not know is accepted behavior. They figure it is for the benefit of their family group.
The followers of Jesus, His disciples, His sect, become an “out group” from the rest of the population there. They even develop their own way of speaking to others in the group. They have their own way of using words that only they can understand, it's called anti-language by people who study those sort of things.
Watch a movie from the early 1960's about the beat-nick culture, a gangster movie from the twenties or thirties. Those people have their own dialects. Dig where I'm coming from man? Groovy!
Jesus uses the word “love” all the time. Love me, love one another, love your enemies. That doesn't mean love like we here today think of and use the term. It means the close, embedded relationships on which Jesus' group depends. It is John's term for loyalty and group attachment.
As Jesus is responding to Philip's request to “show us the Father” Jesus is once again trying to get them to understand about the relationships between God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the disciples themselves. Surely by this time the disciples listening to Him have a gut feeling something bad is about to happen.
Jesus reassures them that He will not leave them orphaned. He will come again.
The Advocate will be with them in the mean time. But, only the believers will be able to see the Spirit. Only the believers will be able to see the Risen Lord. Only the believers will be able to see God.
In this passage John uses a key element: it is only to the person who is looking for God that God reveals Himself. Sometimes it's easy to say, “I found Jesus”. You just have to look. Maybe even on a shelf along the bottom of an elevator.
Amen.
