The Power of the Spirit
Easter 6A | John 14:15-21
You know how there’s a classic you haven’t gotten around to reading, and at a certain point, you’ve run out of excuses? I just started reading To Kill a Mockingbird. And there’s a scene in the middle which sprung to mind. So please bear with me.
Aunt Alexandra has come to stay with the family and Atticus Finch tells his daughter, Scout, that she is to mind her father, Calpurnia, and her Aunt.
And I encountered that moment with a sense of deep tension. I’ve grown to trust Atticus and Cal. But I’m not so sure about the Aunt.
But I also encountered it as a middle-aged man with two kids who are both now older than Scout. So my mind is far closer to Atticus’s than Scout’s. I’m the one telling people who to mind, not the one being told.
And besides all of this, we might experience an exquisite tension in reading about relationships that feel so like one’s we’ve experienced. That we embody them. Or feel as if we ought to.
Of course we haven’t gathered here to hear my book report on a classic of American literature who was prompted to get around to it because his daughter was reading it for school.
We’re here for the risen Christ. And this morning, we’re hearing about the authority we’re to mind. But there’s something in that tension around authority, trust, and doing what’s right, that resonates for me with what we’re reading here.
About Love
Jesus is talking to his followers at the Last Supper. He’s telling them about his going away. As we heard about last week, Thomas is confused about the logistics and Philip wants to be sure Jesus can be trusted. [See, we’re always obsessed with authority.]
But Jesus comforts them and tells them they know the way because they know him. Listen. Follow. You’ll be fine. In a sense, mind him.
He had just told them what the commandment is, the one they need to keep. Love. That’s it. Love. Love in a way that helps people know that you are on the side of love. Reveal what love looks like and be recognized for who you are because of your love.
This is the tricky part, of course. Because sometimes we have to do hard things in the name of love. And in the moment, they don’t feel like love. And sometimes we do things that we think are about love, but aren’t recognized in the end as love.
For love to be love, it needs to be recognizable to God as love. Not so as to make someone mind you. Or to fit in. But for the sake of our love.
That’s keeping Jesus’s commandments. Our loving like him. A recognizable, generous love. A love that reveals the love of God. Full of hope and grace.
Another Advocate
Jesus speaks to authority, then. Keep the commandments, which we know from reading the gospel, is to love.
Then he says that he’s going to ask for God to “give you another Advocate”. Another advocate. As he is reassuring them (that they know the way) and that they’ll be making it to join him soon, he is also assuring them of presence, authority, leadership now.
Not in him. He’s going away. But in another. Another. An advocate, like him. But also unlike him. He is an Advocate. But a human one. A teacher/Messiah. This other one will be different. A Spirit. With you. And within you.
This new authority won’t be centralized in a Messiah, then. It won’t be embodied in a single person. It will be distributed among the people. Essentially, in 21st century terms: authority in the spirit is democratized.
Keep the commandments and trust in the Spirit, and The Way will be already known.
The Plan
I can’t help but feel a bit like Scout in hearing this. Atticus is trying to tell me something and I know what he’s telling me, but… There’s obviously more to it, isn’t there? Something he’s not telling me—or something I don’t yet understand about the world and how this works.
It was a lot easier when I only had one person to mind. And it’s somebody I trust. But now, I’m supposed to trust other people? And myself? This is the plan?
Yes, actually! And no amount of recrowning Jesus or crowning humans to be Jesus to us is going to change it.
The whole project of this crazy Jesus Movement is that the Spirit is alive both within us as people and within us as a people gathered together.
This is what we’re about. It’s our way forward. So why are we still so often confused by what to do?
Both/And
I suppose the reason people adore Atticus Finch is the sincerity of his conviction, his commitment to the truth and to the community, and the generous teaching he offers his children.
Which makes him a remarkable role model for generations of readers. I see in him someone I can be.
And yet, there is someone I am, in some ways, more likely to be. Scout. Her uncommon inquisitiveness and genuine regard for what is right, isn’t cast for the reader as the perfect person. But her’s may be the harder and more obvious path.
And I think that challenge—of who we are in the story—is revealed by how Jesus teaches his disciples, invites them into a more generous life, and frees them to experience life on their own merits.
We get to learn about things we have no business learning. And we get to choose love when the culture around us seems hell-bent on hate, distrust, and scapegoating the same people like it’s a birthright.
Living With the Spirit
I think we all get the love part, the commandment part. That is what we are trying to do around here, isn’t it? Be a people of love. Always becoming a people of love.
And also not be perfect. None of us is.
Perfectionism is more of a curse than a virtue because it seeks to achieve the impossible by condemning the miraculous. The Spirit dwells within imperfect people and is among us in our imperfect groups.
This isn’t aspirational or idealized. It isn’t perfect. We aren’t seeking a 5 star rating. Because the Spirit doesn’t show up when we get things perfect. The Spirit’s advocacy isn’t merit-based. There are no full-rides to the School of Love to National Merit Scholars.
Jesus says the Spirit is among us and within us. Here. Now. So we are the vessels of God’s love. Period. No because. And no explanation. We’re it!
So this is our purpose. That our joy reveals God’s joy in the flesh. Our love presents God’s love to the world.
That is an awesome responsibility. That we are given that authority. It is as improbable as it is undefinable. But it is the freeing act of a merciful God that we reflect the love we receive through the Spirit.
So may we have inquisitive minds, generous hearts, and unbounded courage to love our neighbors, this beautiful neighborhood, and all of its cast of characters.