John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
June 11, 2000
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
After a long day at church on Sundays, I treat myself to one TV show that I watch at ten o’clock on ABC. The cliff-hanger last year was George Vogelman, the decapitated head carrying podiatrist who sought the help of Ellenor when his condo association evicted him of moral turpitude. But their professional relationship got too personal for Ellenor when she accepts his dinner invitation. Meanwhile Jimmy, known as the “grunt” leads the firm’s defense of a family friend—a dentist with a bug fetish accused of strangling one of his patients.
This is the award winning courtroom drama series by David E. Kelley, “The Practice.” Bobby Donnelly is the principal of the law firm who tries to keep his law partners of Lindsay, Ellenor, Eugene, Rebecca, Jimmy, and Lucy the receptionist from representing only rich clients and selling out from their commitment to stand up for the accused criminals in society. “The Practice” focuses on the complexity and moral ambiguity of our legal system. I like it because it is a good reflection of the ambiguity of our life today.
William Willimon wrote about a time when he was invited to speak to a group of students studying to be attorneys. They wanted him to speak on the topic of “being a lawyer and a Christian at the same time.” Some of you are snickering. Some of you are thinking, “Isn’t that the definition of an oxymoron? A Christian lawyer? Believe it or not, we know at least one Christian lawyer: Paul Fong!
Willimon was touched by how these young attorneys were afraid of going into law. They wondered what would happen to their character. They said they were troubled by the public perception of lawyers. Perhaps their fears are testimonial to what the legal profession has become. Or perhaps it is testimonial to our society’s ambivalent feelings about law.
However, if you are in trouble or find yourself in a situation where it’s your word against that of the police, or you see your name across the docket from “The People of the United States” in some legal action, suddenly lawyers look good. And I’m sure glad that Pungo is on our side!
Although I have never been called to serve on a jury, I know that if you are ever called before the court, you’d better get a good lawyer. We have all seen people who lost their cases, not on the lack of merit of their case, but purely because they had a lousy lawyer. And we all know people who got more breaks than they deserved because they had a skillful attorney who wisely argued their case.
An Advocate
Today is Pentecost Sunday. In the lesson from John’s gospel, Jesus is instructing his disciples. He is preparing them for his departure, telling them that he must leave in order that he might be with them in a different, even more intimate and powerful way. He promises them an advocate, the Holy Spirit.
The definition of an “advocate” is one that pleads the cause of another before a judicial court.” Imagine this, before Jesus leaves, he sends us a lawyer! Today, at Pentecost, the Gospel of John encourages us to speak of the Holy Spirit as an advocate.
In 1 John 2:1, it says, “If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” And who among us here today have never sinned? I think we all need a lawyer before God.
Imagine yourself standing one day before the throne of God, holding your life in your hands, all that you have said and done over the years, the battles you’ve fought and won, as well as the battles you fought and lost. What would you say to God in defense of yourself?
A few years ago, when the president of the United States was being investigated for his improprieties and misdeeds, fifty million dollars were spent investigating his life. Would you be able to stand up to such an investigation? And once your secret misdeeds and mismanaged acts were uncovered, by what argument would you defend yourself?
If God knows everything you have done, every word spoken in anger, every deed done in darkness, every sin that we so quickly forgot remembered, then what hope have any of us standing before the throne of God? Who could defend us or take up our case?
Jesus says that he is going to send us an advocate. He departs, but he sends one to us, the Holy Spirit who argues for us, defends us, and speaks before God for us. When you stand before God, when your life is held up for divine scrutiny, you need an advocate, someone to argue your case.
Care Partners
After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples. Jesus came to the house where the disciples had gathered and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you.” After that he showed them his hands and his side and the disciples rejoiced because they knew it was the Lord.
Then Jesus said to them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
When Jesus fulfilled his promise and gave us the Holy Spirit, our advocate, he breathed on us the power given by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus said, in John 20:23, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” We are given the power to love one another, power to tell the story of Jesus, power to do good deeds, power to fight evil, power to care for each other.
Here’s a real story of how one person became a caring advocate for those less fortunate.
There’s a church that had a clothes closet and a food pantry for the needy. People came by the church two mornings a week looking for help.
There was a businessperson in this church, a man who had spent his life in an upper-level management position in a large corporation. Without warning, things at the company changed and he was fired. He became depressed, sullen. The pastor was worried about him.
Out of concern for him, the pastor asked him to help out a couple of mornings a week at the church clothes closet. He was reluctant at first. Maybe he thought this was quite a come-down for one who had previously been in a high position of power. But he consented.
While working there, he met a woman, mother of three, trying to make ends meet in her little family on her meager wages as a domestic worker. She happened to tell him about her problems with the electric company. She had paid her bill late, but the company still turned off her electricity, and now they wanted the unbelievably huge sum of fifty dollars to restore the power. What was she to do?
She had called the electric company half a dozen times, she said, but no one could help her. A rule was a rule, they said.
The retired executive said he would call for her. When he inquired into her bill, he was shocked at the way he was treated. He demanded to talk to the manager, an old friend of many years. He agreed to help the woman with her problems.
This led to another poor person asking him to call a loan company about a problem she had with her loan. He did and he got action.
A new area of ministry opened up for this man. In giving, he received. He learned what a gift it is to be able to talk on the phone, to cut through the red tape, to speak up.
He said, “I never knew what it was like to be unable to figure out all the levels of red tape and organizational smoke screens.”
He had become an advocate for the poor, someone to plead their cases before the powerful.
Our church through the leadership of our Deacons and specifically Roger Tom and last year, Milton Dong have recruited over 60 caring advocates for our church. These Care Partners may not necessarily be cutting through red tape for you but they are there to support you and to plead your case. With the Holy Spirit, they have the power to do good deeds, to love you, to tell the story of Jesus, to fight evil.
Later today, these Care Partners will participate in an orientation and training session so that they may practice these new powers from the Holy Spirit to be used with you and others in our congregation as well as in the world.
Pentecost
It is really providential that today is Pentecost, the birthday of the church and we are training and commissioning our Care Partners. In Acts 2, the disciples were in one place. Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
The Holy Spirit enters the disciples as tongues of flame. But it does not enter the world until Peter opens his mouth. And when he did and when the other disciples did and when the women and others who were there did and when the Care Partners do and when we do, we have the ability and power to change the world. Whenever we speak out the name of Christ, we have the power to change the world just as Peter and the disciples have!
Last Sunday we had a good old-fashioned Baptist church meeting. Didn’t we? We had some tough questions and some good answers. When we made our different views known to each other, it was a sign of a healthy church. We are able to do this because we have received the power of the Holy Spirit. We may have thought that we had “divided tongues, as of fire” but with the Holy Spirit, we were able to speak with each other and received the freedom to express our thoughts. We couldn’t have done this ourselves. It was the Holy Spirit in our midst.
Surely there was tension in the room. But because we have the Holy Spirit who was advocating and pleading for us to maintain our unity as the Body of Christ, we are together as a church.
God vs. We the People
Although we may differ in our understanding of some things, we are also bound together because we all have sinned and fallen short of God’s will.
In our passage for this morning, Jesus said, “And when he, the Holy Spirit, comes, he will convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment.” (John 18:8) Unless we are convicted, we cannot be pardoned. We are all in need of God’s grace for we have all sinned against God and against each other. You see, we all find ourselves on the same side of the docket. If there were any case against anyone, it is God versus We the People.
It’s the Holy Spirit, our caring advocate who will plead our case before God. And when God finds out that we have all sinned against him and each other, the Holy Spirit will seek for our forgiveness from God. Unless we have been convicted, we would not know what pardon is like.
Jesus says that he is going to leave this world. He will not be present with his disciples as he has been before. But he will not leave us desolate either. He will send us the Holy Spirit, the near presence of God to stand beside us, speak up for us, to plead our case, to take up our cause.
Yes, we will be convicted because we have sinned. But we will also be pardoned and forgiven for every word spoken in anger, every deed done in the darkness, every sin that we so quickly forgot remembered. And our divine lawyer is always ready to take up our case and fight as long as we want him to.
Because the Holy Spirit shares in the life of Jesus, the Spirit knows our need, find words that articulate our opinions and maybe even disagreements. You are not alone. None of us are alone standing in front of the judge. Our church is not alone. We don’t have to speak up for ourselves before the throne of God or argue our cases in the courts of the almighty. You and I have a caring advocate. The Holy Spirit is our lawyer representing our lives.
Thanks be to God!