John 16:4b-15
June 10, 2001
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
For some years now, we seem to be going through a resurgence of interest in the Spirit. “Americans are becoming more spiritual,” someone said to me the other day. Just this past week, a woman representing a film crew filming on Waverly told me that she grew up a Catholic and even though she was not very religious, she is very spiritual.
We have TV shows about angels, pastor’s family, and a physician in Providence who is regularly haunted by her deceased mother wearing the same dress she died in. The book section on spirituality at Barnes and Nobles has gotten bigger. It does seem, if popular culture is a valid indicator, that we are becoming more spiritual.
Even our church is emphasizing the importance of spirituality when we sponsored a “spiritual renewal” retreat last weekend.
You are probably thinking that for me as a religious person that I would be celebrating this outbreak of spirituality. I would if this popular culture spirituality is for real.
As a church, we have been in this business of spirituality for a long time. We know that not all forms of spirituality are equal or authentic. In one of his letters to a church he helped to establish, Paul speaks about the need to “test the Spirit.” “Not every spirit, “ says Paul is the “Holy Spirit.” According to Paul, there can be good spirits and bad spirits.
Today people are talking about spirituality as a good thing. If we can just get a little spirit, we will receive help with our problems, have more satisfying lives, a lowering of our blood pressure, and on and on. So there are hundreds of seminars and workshops to help us discover the spirit that is in us. We only need to find that special key to lead us through the door of spirituality.
I am telling you today that you can’t find the Spirit just by getting in touch with yourself. The Holy Spirit is a power, a power outside of us. The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness, but also a power that pushes us, prods us, pokes at us, and rarely leaves us as we are. None of those self-help books will deliver the Holy Spirit to you.
Today is Trinity Sunday in the church calendar. One equal member of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. According to Jesus, the Holy Spirit is not only a power, it is also a person. One aspect of the nature of God is the Holy Spirit.
But for most mainline Protestant churches like ours, we are guilty of neglecting this third member of the Trinity. We talk about the Son, Jesus our friend, the example to be like, and Savior. We talk about God the Father, the creator, and the author of the world. But when we come to the Holy Spirit, it’s amorphous, a vague blob of something, “spiritual.” It’s hard to imagine what the Holy Spirit looks like. The Holy Spirit is not what we wish to make it up to be.
The Advocate
We see in today’s Scripture that Jesus is going to leave his disciples. For a little while, they will no longer see Jesus. They will suffer persecution and agony like that of a woman in labor, although eventually they will rejoice. In the meantime, they are to pray to God, who will make their joy complete.
But before Jesus leaves, he teaches them that it is better that he left so that the Holy Spirit, the Advocate will come. Jesus said, “If I go, I will send him to you.” While Jesus is completing his mission in the world, he passes on the job to the Holy Spirit to continue on. You see, the Trinity is three-in-one and one-in- three. They work together like on a team.
Now it is the Holy Spirit’s turn to “prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.” The Holy Spirit will continue teaching them about truth—truth about God’s mighty power in the world in the love and mercy found in Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit came last Sunday in what we call, Pentecost. It came as “a sound like a rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where the disciples were sitting.” The Holy Spirit didn’t emerge and seeped out of our own body and self. It came from God. It came from the outside.
When the spirit we like to possess comes from inside of us, it’s a safe spirit. It’s a no-risk spirit. It’s whatever we want our spirit thing to do for us to make us happy!
But when the real spirit, the Holy Spirit, comes, you got to be careful. You got to hold onto your hat, your hairpiece, your scarf, your breath because this Spirit is coming from the outside. It’s coming from God and it is like a rush of a violent wind.
Spirit in Control
Although I wouldn’t say that I am a “control freak,” I do like to be in control. Life can be disordering enough, and I like order. I like to get up in the morning, brush my same teeth, pick up the morning paper, eat the same granola cereal, and move on to do the things on my list. Our daily rituals and patterns are needed in these dislocating times in which we live. It’s good to have a few things tied down and predictable.
I might think that with a little spirit, I’d be in better control of my life. But you know the Holy Spirit is about none of that.
I also like to be in charge. Joy and I sometimes fight to be in the driver’s seat. I like to make decisions, set goals, priorities, and move toward them, one at a time, achieving them until I am finished. Knowing that life hits you with enough strange stuff, it’s good to feel that you have some say-so over the world.
I want some of that inner spirit that would give me a cutting edge to be in charge. The Holy Spirit is about none of that.
And because of my desire for predictability and control, I have a strong yearning to know. I want to understand why things work the way they do. I want to be able to explain the incongruities of the world, to define, understand, and explain. We men know what that’s like when we are with women. We want to do something to solve the problem. All they want from us is our empathy.
The world can be mysterious. People don’t behave as you expect. Things don’t turn out as they are supposed to. There is a great deal of confusion, unknowing, and ignorance about what’s what. We all like to get things explained, defined, understood—we even want to define God.
I want some of that enlightening spirit to know more than anyone else. You know, the Holy Spirit is about none of that.
There’s a true story about Carole and her husband George, a couple who couldn’t have children of their own. George was in the military and not long after they were married, they were sent overseas for four years. They decided this would be a good time to adopt a child. The adoption agency approved of their application, and they began praying for the right child.
One night Carole had a dream. She hadn’t had a baby, but she was in a hospital, and her husband was presenting her with a newborn infant. The baby was a girl with dark skin and black hair. Carole and George were fair skinned.
Several days later Carole and George went to a lawyer’s office to begin working on their will. When the lawyer asked if they had children, they told him they were on the waiting list with a certain adoption agency.
The lawyer said, “I just heard there’s a child being born today that the agency is having difficulty placing. The child’s father is part Asian.”
Carole was amazed. They contacted the agency. The agency instantly agreed to let them have the child, and they hurried to the hospital to wait for the child to be born. The baby was a girl, and she had lots of black hair. Because the doctor gave the baby to George first, it was George who presented her to Carole.
Carole and George’s adopted daughter is now grown. She is very gifted and a committed Christian. She has been a joy to them.
Dreams are a great mystery. Often they are simple ways that we process the day. Sometimes they are insights about areas of our thinking that are flawed, areas that we need to change in order to grow. Sometimes, they are God’s way of guiding us into the truth about the future. The Holy Spirit breathes truth and possibilities into the areas of our lives that we thought are dead or are only limited to one predictable outcome.
In the book of Ezekiel, we read about a valley of dry bones. The prophet Ezekiel lived in a time of Israel’s great despair. In the midst of exile, the nation devastated and laid in waste; it was like Israel was dead. Therefore when he had a strange vision of a parched valley full of dry bones, the prophet didn’t have to ponder long what the vision meant. This was Israel. Here were not only bones but dry and fried bones. These bones were dead, really dead, without life, without hope. This was his beloved Israel.
But then, in the vision, there came something that Ezekiel did not expect. A strange wind blew into the valley. The dry, dead bones began to rise up, began to take form, be put back together, take on flesh and life.
In life, we come to expect orderly and predictable death. We come to expect that our hopes of ever having a baby will not be so. We come to expect that a little nation like Israel is going to be jerked around by a more impressive and powerful nation like Assyria. That’s old and predictable news!
But what is news is when the life-giving breeze overthrows oppressors and the weak triumphs over the powerful. It’s news when the life-giving breeze in the form of a dream gives us a baby that brings joy and happiness. It’s news when life-giving breeze challenges my need for control, being in charge, and wanting to know and then I am in awe of the Holy Spirit’s plan to change my life.
Ready for God’s Truth
When Jesus told his disciples that he was going to leave them, they were afraid of being left alone. They thought about returning to their old jobs as fishermen and shepherds as everyone expected them to do. It’s time to return to orderly and predictable lives—to raise a family and settle down.
But Jesus told them that when he leaves, the Holy Spirit comes. The Holy Spirit like Jesus will continue his teaching that will enlighten them and continue to reveal the nature of God to them. The Holy Spirit will change the disciples’ lives forever. The revelation will now come from the Advocate. So Jesus breathes on them the Holy Spirit.
And we become spiritual not because we discover something warm and fuzzy in our guts, but Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit as a teacher. We become spiritual beings because we continue to learn from the Holy Spirit—revelation from God now comes from learning from the Holy Spirit “who will guide us into all the truth.”
Now listen again to what Jesus said to his disciples, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” Jesus wasn’t saying that there was more factual information or teachings that they still needed to hear about. Jesus was saying that they were not ready to understand the love that he has with God, his Father. This love that he shares with God and the Spirit is always present as a gift for us. That love is the truth and the truth is love. And when he leaves them, the Holy Spirit will teach them this truth.
We know that the truth is the love of God revealed in Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. We don’t come into this world knowing this truth. We don’t automatically become all-knowing “spiritual” beings. It doesn’t bubble up from inside of us. We need instruction from the outside. We require revelation from God. For us to continue growing, Jesus gives us the teacher called the Holy Spirit. And like the disciples, we may not be able to bear all the truth right now. It may need to come slowly as the Holy Spirit takes time to teach us.
One year a huge blizzard moved across the Midwest. So the pastor of a small, country church figured that no one would show up for worship that Sunday. But the minister bundled up and walked from his parsonage over to the church and turned on the heat, just in case someone would come.
Sure enough, before too long an old farmer pulled up in front of the church in a horse-drawn sleigh, shook the snow off his boots, and walked into the church.
The minister was pleased but surprised to see the man and said, “Olson, it’s good to see you. But I think that you’re the only one who’s going to make it this morning. Do you think that we should have a service for just one?”
Olson replied, “Well, pastor, when I go out to feed my horses and only one shows up, I feed her.”
“All right, then,” said the pastor, “let’s begin the service.”
When it came time for the sermon, the pastor had planned a message about making and keeping commitments. But the minister was so pleased that Olson was there and drew so much inspiration from him, that he went on for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and finally finished the sermon after about 50 minutes. At the end of the service, the pastor walked down the aisle to the church’s front door, where he waited to shake Olson’s hand.
“Well, Olson,” the minister said, “What did you think of being the only person in church today?”
“Well, pastor,” Olson replied, “When I go out to feed the horses, and only one of them show up, I feed her. But I don’t give her the whole load.”
God has a lot to say to us. But God doesn’t give it all to us at once. Jesus sensed that the disciples were not yet ready to hear all about the truth in the love of God. He sends the Holy Spirit to continue to teach us where he left off.
Spirit of Truth
Real spirituality is not something vague inside of us. It is something that Jesus gave to us and the Holy Spirit continues to teach us about the spirit of truth is the love of God. Christian spirituality isn’t just some kind of projection of our inclinations about God.
It is about the revelation of the Trinity, the disclosure that the true nature of God is found in three persons: the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit.
When we meet up with this living God through the Holy Spirit, we will be challenged from our orderly, patterned, and controlled lives. Life was pretty orderly for us in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. For 20 years, we knew where to shop, how to get to the airport, where to take our dry cleaning. Dr. Hill, our dentist cleaned these same teeth for 20 years! But the Holy Spirit wouldn’t let me lead an orderly, predictable, and safe lifestyle. The Holy Spirit will rearrange and shatter our cherished notions of sameness and predictability.
The Bible talks a lot about the “gift of the Holy Spirit” that we received in baptism and this Spirit that enables the church to be the church, to be the Body of Christ in the world. And when this gift comes to us, it’s a gift that is demanding, pushing, and prodding. This Spirit pushes us into new places that we would not have gone if it had been left solely up to us. This Spirit introduces us to new people, people like the poor and the defeated whom we would avoid if it had been left up to us. The hurting, the untouchables, the unconventional—all of these people are made sisters and brothers by the work of the Holy Spirit. Even people like me who yearns for order and predictability are surprised that when the Holy Spirit comes, we are challenged to continue to learn new things. We are challenged to learn more about the love of God in the world.
There may just be a spiritual renewal happening in our country. It is one thing to feel good inside with some kind of spiritual satisfaction, but it’s another thing to receive the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity.
Do you want that Spirit? Do you want to receive the same Spirit that Jesus breathed on the disciples? The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the truth that God is love is demanding and blessed—a wonderful gift from God!
Let us pray.
Lord God, thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit that comes from you to rearrange and reorder our lives to understand your grace and love for the world. Prepare us for spiritual surprises that will change us to know you. In the name of Christ we pray in the Spirit of Truth, Amen.