Sermon for April 28, 2024 

John 14:15-21: The Spirit of Truth

[I am borrowing greatly in this sermon, from an interview of James Alison with Gareth Higgins, made at a storytelling conference I attended]

I am so privileged and honored to be able to be with you as pastor and preacher this morning continuing Pastor Jonah’s series on Resurrection Life, choosing every day to live into Resurrection life.

It has been quite a week. Resurrection life showed up for the United Methodist Church at our General Conference, postponed since 2020. After more than 50 years of loss and heartache for the LGBTQI+ persons and allies of our prejudice, rejection, and church trials based on abusive language, principles, and rules in our UM Book of Discipline, change has come. After so many years of division, of persons leaving the church, clergy’s orders removed, and churches disaffiliating from the denomination, like doubting Thomas we have touched the wounds and believed something different is happening. The fight and struggle to become a church with open hearts, open minds, and open doors has been long. Others of you come this morning with your own sadness, loss, confusion, and joys.

We gather around the table of reconciliation and communion this morning to listen to Jesus’ farewell words to his disciples before his body will be broken and his blood poured out. When it looks like all of the ministry, hopes, and dreams have been for naught. When the disciples will go on living in a world of struggle, pain, and uncertainty, Jesus has words of pastoral care for them and for us of how to choose every day to live in Resurrection life. 

“I will not leave you orphaned. I will not abandon you.”  After I am gone from your sight, I will ask God and our God will send another advocate who will remain with you forever, the Spirit of Truth. “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”

The author of the book, the evangelist John, writes these words in a world where Jesus was no longer present in the flesh. When Jesus’ face and all of the immediate emotions he carried, all of it was becoming a distant memory. Yet the community still felt the presence of very-God. Although alone, they knew very clearly that they were not. The words that John writes of Jesus’ farewell to the disciples tell us there is more to this felt presence than just a feeling, There is a deeper reality than we even know. Much more than a comforting presence that we might get from a picture or a piece of someone’s clothing to remind us of them, Jesus describes that Resurrection life will be sent to us in the form of an Advocate, the Spirit of Truth. 

The Advocate means the lawyer for our defense, the one who stands in the place of the accused and argues his/her/their case. The advocate turns the accusation back on the accusatory institution or agent. The accusation rebounds on the accusers. This is like the Bishop Karen Oliveto, the first openly out and lesbian bishop of the UMC preaching at General Conference on Monday morning this past week. “When we as church define ourselves by who we are keeping out, it begs the question, Have we ever let Christ in?”

Not if, but when we experience being under pressure, under attack, when lies are passed around just like they will be for Jesus, when we get confused and don’t know who to believe, we will have an advocate who will give us the words of defense and, equally important, enable us to live and suffer through and with the accusations as though Jesus were right beside us, taking all of it and still being able to love. At times we are given answers and understandings and even the words that we didn’t know we knew. Also, and maybe even the harder thing to understand, the Spirit of Truth will show us how to live in the accusations and lies without answers; where we simply live into the space of being the fool, the victim, the shamed one, resisting the great temptation to get revenge or to simply retreat and give up, but instead to stand in that space and fill it up with the truth which is love.

  The “Spirit of Truth” means literally to “stop forgetting.” We live within a system that depends on us forgetting the truth that is love. We carry around a myth so very deep that there is the “other” and then there is the “us”. The world has to exclude the Spirit in order to carry on with this myth in its ordinary way. Our so-called unity exists by periodically re-convening like the UMC did 52 years ago and picking out a group of people to blame for sin. We put into our Book of Discipline that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching,” stating that we need to keep those people out of ordination, refuse to bless their marriage, and punish those pastors who do not believe the myth. And then we teach that our unity depends on it. 

The Spirit of Truth will no longer let us do that. If we practice listening and remembering we will do as Jesus did. “Remember what I have done,” says Jesus. Remember that time when the group of religious law keepers dragged a woman before me that they had caught in adultery? They threw her down before me with their accusations, their stones in their hands, wanting me to give a judgment over her. The Advocate for this woman, the Spirit of Truth came out of my mouth, “The one among you who is without sin, you cast the first stone.” Words that left the accusers dropping the stones from their hands and turning away. 

And there is the time that will come, says Jesus, when the accusers will bring me before Caiphas and Pilate and will demand that Pilate give a judgment over me. You will become one with the accusers and you will all leave me. Pilate will sentence me to torture and I will die a slow and horrid death nailed up to a cross. I’m telling you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe that the Spirit of Truth means that the ruler of this world has no power over the truth that is love. I do as God has commanded me, so that the world may know that this is what the love of God looks like.

Our greatest temptation is to believe the lies and accusations are the truth and to join in. The accusations always begin with something like, “You do not have something that other person has.” And then it gos on, “you know why you don’t have it?” Because that other person has taken it as their own and you need to unite with us and blame them. It’s what our entire system is built upon. I don’t know exactly what your accusers tell you, but for me it’s something like, “This is not the way things were supposed to go and we need someone to blame for it.” The accusations are based on a system of competition and rivalry. We are supposed to be the victors. We are supposed to have it all. We are supposed to have the truth. And every so often in order to remain united in our lies, we need to reconvene and find another person or group to blame.

The world can only exist if it keeps forgetting the truth that there is no one to blame, that the accusations are lies about the victim. When we listen to the Spirit of Truth we remember that no one is to blame and the whole structure of lies begins to deconstruct. “This is what it looks like”, says Jesus. In that space of lies, of false accusations, stands Jesus and the people who receive the Spirit of Truth. And what are we doing? We are loving even more. I remember when I take the side of the victim, when I go and stand with the poor, the grieving, the lost, even the criminal dying next to me, I experience this joy and love bubbling up inside me that is Resurrection Life. I’m going to keep on loving because that is what the Spirit of Truth is. 

It takes immense practice and discernment to hear the Spirit of Truth, to choose Resurrection Life. Resurrection life is to hear the Spirit of Truth that tells us, ‘No. Not this way of finding a scapegoat and defining the enemy.” The Spirit of Truth is the power of Jesus, the power of love that fills the place of shame, accusation, and continues to love. This power enables us to see the truth that Christ is the hungry, the thirsty, the queer, the sick, the persons with disabilities, those in our prisons, the poor, the crying, the victims and we open our doors to Christ in all people. Resurrection life extends beyond the cross, beyond the empty tomb, beyond Easter, and well into every day of your life. 

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”