“If you love me, then… you’ll do this thing or that thing?” How many times have you been on the receiving end of a comment like that? How did that make you feel? I know that every time I have heard that comment, I felt hurt. It felt coercive and manipulative, and I didn’t like the way it had an undertone of doubting that I loved this person. So, when I hear similar words from Jesus today, it makes me freeze just a little bit.
“If you love me and obey the commands I give you, I will ask the One who sent me to give you another Paraclete, another Helper to be with you always—” (John 14: 15-16). What do we make of this verse that feels so conditional, but also so hopeful at the same time? Now, we have to remember that this chapter of John is still following the Last Supper, when Jesus gave the new commandment to love one another, so that is still lingering in the background of this reading. But, I think to read this only as a conditional statement of Christ’s love for us doesn’t help us to understand the scope of what Jesus is doing here.
It gets back to the way Lutherans talk about what happens to us because of Christ’s death and Resurrection. The tagline for that in our Lutheran Confessions class was always “Freed from, freed for.” Our freedom is cross-shaped; we are freed from sin and death through the upwards relationship with God, and freed for the parallel relationship with our neighbors all around us.
By asking God to send the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit to dwell with us, Jesus is inviting us fully into relationship with the Triune God. We got a foretaste of that through the relationship of Christ with the disciples, but this is now fully enfolding us into the life of the Trinity. When we think of it that way, it is hard to still read this as a conditional statement because it seems like loving and caring for the world is the only response that we can possibly have to a relationship like this!
And, by asking God to send the Paraclete, I think Jesus is also helping us think about the relationships we have with the world around us. We need the Holy Spirit to help us mediate those relationships because otherwise it can be really difficult for humans to see others through the lens of Christ if we do not have some guidance about that. We tend to be a little less gracious and a little quicker to judgment. I’ve even been thinking about this in the way that we relate to the Holy Spirit because the Lutheran church is notoriously bad at not talking about the Holy Spirit. It’s almost as if we don’t want to be like those people over there, so it’s better to just leave it out. Or maybe we just don’t know how to talk about the Spirit.
I was talking about this with my theology class and I think in a lot of ways it’s because the Holy Spirit is the hardest for us to conceptualize. In Scripture we get different images, like a dove, the breath over the water, or like tongues of fire as we will see in two weeks on Pentecost. But we can imagine Jesus beside us because we are so accustomed to looking at other humans. And, regardless of our relationship with our parents or guardians, almost everyone has some experience with an adult who was like a parental figure. But this Holy Spirit is so hard because we cannot see the Spirit. Like the wind, we can only see the effects it has on the world around us.
So, perhaps, let’s just begin by talking more about the effects the Holy Spirit has on the world around us. Because, even though we are really lacking in talking about the Spirit in the ELCA, we do not have a lack of the Spirit. Instead, we have a rich abundance that I wish we could grow more accustomed to talking about. You see, we believe that it is the Holy Spirit that inspires faith, which means that humans do not have any part in converting others to Christianity, instead it is the Holy Spirit that draws them to faith, and we believe that the Holy Spirit is the one who draws us together for worship too. And then when we’re in worship, we believe that the Spirit is the one that makes Christ truly present through the reading of Scripture, the preaching of the Word, and breaking of the bread. It’s why I can say one thing in my sermon, but you might hear something completely different! But wait, there’s more! Because we also believe that the Holy Spirit is present and active in Baptism. It is the meeting of ordinary elements (bread, wine, water) and God’s Promises that result in our Sacraments. So really, the Spirit is a lot more active in our worship than we might realize when we just seem to tack the Spirit on to the end of prayers and blessings. Like I said, we often struggle to talk about the Holy Spirit.
But why does it matter today that Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to be with the disciples? For one, I think it’s important because they still don’t really understand who Jesus really is or what his purpose is, and that is definitely not going to clear up for them by itself when he dies on the cross. They need some additional instruction and guidance. But, just like in our church services, it is the Holy Spirit that sends them out. I imagine that this would be the last thing that they want to do after watching their friend and mentor be crucified in a brutal way, but it was what God was calling them to. Jesus isn’t going to be there any longer to teach them or others, so the baton is being passed to them to continue the race.
I think about all the ways that the Spirit still guides us today, especially through others. I’ve been thinking about this too as I remember my call to Luther Memorial a year ago this month. I had been told over and over again in Seminary to expect it to take some time to get a call, especially as a young gay female. And, I remember getting the call from the synod office as Emily and I were spending our day off wandering through bookstores and Pike Place. “We have a congregation, and normally we don’t do this, but we need to know if you’re interested within the next 24 hours.” That call came on a Friday. I had been officially assigned to this synod two days earlier on Wednesday. And, sometimes I can’t help but think that the Holy Spirit had a hand in guiding me here because if my process had been off by even a day, I don’t know if I even would have been considered as a candidate here.
I tell that story because I’m honestly still amazed by how it worked out, but it is also what grounds me as your pastor in trusting the Holy Spirit to guide our congregation forward. We are reminded today that we are given the Paraclete, the Helper who will be with us and will continue to teach us. Just as we are reminded that God’s love isn’t conditional, but it will change how we live and how we interact with the world around us. So, may we be open to all the ways that the Spirit is leading us and our love for Christ is calling us out into the world, especially when we don’t quite have the words to describe the experience, because often the Spirit is leading us in unexpected ways as it continues to teach us.