the advocate
May 20, 2018
John 15:26-16:15
Well here we are again. This time only 3 months have past since the last time we were here. Have we become numb to it yet? Do we just expect to keep coming back to this place? Is that why our outrage seems to be a little less than it has been before? Or is it because only 10 people died in this school shooting in Texas instead of 17 who died in Florida’s school shooting in February. Santa Fe High School became the latest scene of carnage in what has become a national epidemic of mass shootings. For the second time in the past three months, the victims were children and their teachers. This time we lost:
Sabika Sheikh, an exchange student from Pakistan who came to the US through the YES program funded by the U.S. State Department;
Ann Perkins, a beloved substitute teacher who was well-loved in the community;
Angelique Ramirez, a young woman full of energy who stood up for what was right. A beautiful child finding her way and hopeful for the future. On Facebook her aunt wrote shat she has a “broken heart and soul”;
Shana Fisher, a Santa Fe High School student who happened to be in the art room when the shooting began;
Kimberly Vaughn, another Santa Fe student in that same art room;
Chris Stone, a Junior at Santa Fe High School whose First Period Class happened to be art. He was among a group of students who blocked the door to try to prevent the gunman from entering their classroom;
Cynthia Tisdale, a full-time substitute teacher, married to her husband for forty years. Mother of three and grandmother of eight. Before leaving for school Friday morning she left her husband a note that read in part, “Had to go meet a teacher. I love you. Hope you feel better today."
Christian “Riley” Garcia, a 15-year-old whose Pastor, Keenan Smith, mourned his death early Saturday by writing, “He has grown up in our church, I baptized him many (years) ago. I just left his wonderful, loving family and extended all of the prayers and love for them from our Church,” Smith wrote along with a picture of Garcia taken nearly ten days ago. "Riley you are greatly loved and greatly missed. Please continue to lift up this family and all the other in your prayers."
Jared Conrad Black, a young man with so much life in front of him having celebrated his 17th birthday only 2 days before being killed; and
Aaron Kyle McLeod. A freshman who went by Kyle. He could always be counted on to make light of any situation, said close friend Kali Reeves, who added she wouldn't have been surprised if the 15-year-old "made a joke about getting shot" if he were still alive.
I don’t get it. And I’m not sure I ever will, nor am I so sure I ever want to.
*************************************
Yet here we are on this is Pentecost Sunday… that Sunday commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit. That Sunday celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit and I find myself crying out for this Holy Spirit to be known. The thing is, in John’s account, Jesus isn’t just telling his disciples about the Holy Spirit in some general way, he is telling his disciples about a specific trait of the Holy Spirit. Here Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete, or as our text today translates it, the Advocate. This is who I cry out for today. The Advocate.
We could easily say that the Holy Spirit is promised to the followers of Christ, that the wind that blows through and animates the church was given on this day in history and is promised to all members of the church. But such a claim would be a superficial reading, superimposing the overall New Testament picture of the Spirit on a passage that presents a unique aspect of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
Where is this Advocate? That is the question I haven’t been able to get out of my mind since Friday.
**********************************
You see, Jesus makes clear that the Holy Spirit would become the conduit through which would flow all the energy and riches of God. The Spirit would become the jumper cables to re-infuse us with the Father’s energy whenever the Church’s batteries ran down. The Spirit would become the cosmic water main through which the cleansing tide of baptism would flow. The Spirit would become the ultimate radio beacon who would broadcast truth, letting all of us who have been fitted with the right antennae learn on a constant basis the implications of the gospel for our lives. Use whatever image you want, but it is clear that the Holy Spirit has been the Church’s living connection to God ever since the great day of Pentecost.
But this tends to be the limit of our thinking about the role of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, we quietly restrict the Spirit’s primary work to the interior life of the Church and of its members. That’s why John 16 is so arresting. Because here when Jesus talked about the Spirit’s work, he focused as much on the Spirit’s work in the wider world as he did on the Spirit’s work in the church. In fact, in verse 8 the very first thing Jesus says has to do with what the Spirit would reveal not to the church but to the world.
Maybe it is through the act of revealing that the Spirit becomes the Advocate. Maybe that is why Jesus teaches that the Advocate can make us see that the root problem is really relational. The root problem is really broken relationships. Just talking about the fact that this world has problems is not enough. In fact, it has never been too difficult to convince the world that something is fundamentally amiss. The key is to underscore not just that something is awry with life but why that is so. After all, it should sicken all of us to know how easy it is to note the horrors of this world. The underlying message that needs to be revealed by God’s Spirit is that the source of all that wrongness is relational. It is the brokenness of relationships. There’s a cause behind hunger and terrorism, behind corporate greed, behind shootings, and that cause stems from our inability to value life itself. For reasons that are inexplainable to me, we have normalized killing. From all accounts, God desires a relational world, one in which everything embraces its connection to everything else… A world where everything embraces its dependence on everything else… A world like the one God created instead of the one we created. The Holy Spirit of Pentecost, the Paraclete, the Advocate, reminds us of this, and it is in the reminding that we can know the Holy Spirit is alongside us. It may not make the horrific event any easier, but as everyone here knows, the first step in recovery is to identify and admit the problem.
Anybody can talk about what’s wrong with the world. Christians, I believe, are good at it. We do it a lot. But the key item to check is whether or not we do this with hope. Are we just lamenting what’s bad for the sake of lamenting? Are we merely wringing our hands and shaking our heads and wagging our fingers in order to highlight our own moral integrity? Or are we letting the Holy Spirit inject even our critical words with a strong dose of the hope that comes through Jesus the Christ?
It’s the difference between screaming at someone “That’s wrong!” and then walking away in disgust as opposed to saying instead, “That’s wrong but now let me come along side you to spend however much time it takes for us to work it out. And to let you know you are loved no matter what. And to let you know that no matter what this relationship matters to me.” Sometimes convincing people of this may take a very long time. But if we cannot find a way to present the gospel even at the same moment when we confront the world with its faults, then we’re missing not just one piece of the Spirit’s work in the world, we’re missing all the pieces of the Spirit’s work in the world.
So as people of Pentecost, we need to let the Advocate use us to tell the world what’s wrong, but we need to do it with hope in our voices. At their best, I believe that’s what these marches are doing. No bitterness… No hatred… Just people coming together identifying how broken our relationships are, all the while full of hope… Hopefully cheering for us all to do better. I don’t know what will come of the people of Santa Fe High School after this tragedy, but now each time I look at those students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School marching and advocating for rebuilding and reclaiming relationships, I now see the Holy Spirit... I now see the Advocate. And I now realize when I cried out for the Advocate, “Where are you?” I wasn’t looking for the Advocate I was looking for the Fixer. The Advocate does something completely different… The Advocate advocates. The Advocate is not supposed to fix. The Advocate shines light on the problems and empowers us to fix. The Advocate is not the Fixer. As bad as we want the Advocate to be the fixer, he/she is not the Fixer. The Advocate shines light… And the Advocate, I truly believe, is shining light. Shining light as bright as the Advocate can.
I now see the Paraclete. I now see the Advocate doing what the Advocate does… Tirelessly walking alongside to rebuild and reclaim the world God created. And it is my prayer to let it be so.
Amen!
John 15:26-16:15
Well here we are again. This time only 3 months have past since the last time we were here. Have we become numb to it yet? Do we just expect to keep coming back to this place? Is that why our outrage seems to be a little less than it has been before? Or is it because only 10 people died in this school shooting in Texas instead of 17 who died in Florida’s school shooting in February. Santa Fe High School became the latest scene of carnage in what has become a national epidemic of mass shootings. For the second time in the past three months, the victims were children and their teachers. This time we lost:
Sabika Sheikh, an exchange student from Pakistan who came to the US through the YES program funded by the U.S. State Department;
Ann Perkins, a beloved substitute teacher who was well-loved in the community;
Angelique Ramirez, a young woman full of energy who stood up for what was right. A beautiful child finding her way and hopeful for the future. On Facebook her aunt wrote shat she has a “broken heart and soul”;
Shana Fisher, a Santa Fe High School student who happened to be in the art room when the shooting began;
Kimberly Vaughn, another Santa Fe student in that same art room;
Chris Stone, a Junior at Santa Fe High School whose First Period Class happened to be art. He was among a group of students who blocked the door to try to prevent the gunman from entering their classroom;
Cynthia Tisdale, a full-time substitute teacher, married to her husband for forty years. Mother of three and grandmother of eight. Before leaving for school Friday morning she left her husband a note that read in part, “Had to go meet a teacher. I love you. Hope you feel better today."
Christian “Riley” Garcia, a 15-year-old whose Pastor, Keenan Smith, mourned his death early Saturday by writing, “He has grown up in our church, I baptized him many (years) ago. I just left his wonderful, loving family and extended all of the prayers and love for them from our Church,” Smith wrote along with a picture of Garcia taken nearly ten days ago. "Riley you are greatly loved and greatly missed. Please continue to lift up this family and all the other in your prayers."
Jared Conrad Black, a young man with so much life in front of him having celebrated his 17th birthday only 2 days before being killed; and
Aaron Kyle McLeod. A freshman who went by Kyle. He could always be counted on to make light of any situation, said close friend Kali Reeves, who added she wouldn't have been surprised if the 15-year-old "made a joke about getting shot" if he were still alive.
I don’t get it. And I’m not sure I ever will, nor am I so sure I ever want to.
*************************************
Yet here we are on this is Pentecost Sunday… that Sunday commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit. That Sunday celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit and I find myself crying out for this Holy Spirit to be known. The thing is, in John’s account, Jesus isn’t just telling his disciples about the Holy Spirit in some general way, he is telling his disciples about a specific trait of the Holy Spirit. Here Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete, or as our text today translates it, the Advocate. This is who I cry out for today. The Advocate.
We could easily say that the Holy Spirit is promised to the followers of Christ, that the wind that blows through and animates the church was given on this day in history and is promised to all members of the church. But such a claim would be a superficial reading, superimposing the overall New Testament picture of the Spirit on a passage that presents a unique aspect of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
Where is this Advocate? That is the question I haven’t been able to get out of my mind since Friday.
**********************************
You see, Jesus makes clear that the Holy Spirit would become the conduit through which would flow all the energy and riches of God. The Spirit would become the jumper cables to re-infuse us with the Father’s energy whenever the Church’s batteries ran down. The Spirit would become the cosmic water main through which the cleansing tide of baptism would flow. The Spirit would become the ultimate radio beacon who would broadcast truth, letting all of us who have been fitted with the right antennae learn on a constant basis the implications of the gospel for our lives. Use whatever image you want, but it is clear that the Holy Spirit has been the Church’s living connection to God ever since the great day of Pentecost.
But this tends to be the limit of our thinking about the role of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, we quietly restrict the Spirit’s primary work to the interior life of the Church and of its members. That’s why John 16 is so arresting. Because here when Jesus talked about the Spirit’s work, he focused as much on the Spirit’s work in the wider world as he did on the Spirit’s work in the church. In fact, in verse 8 the very first thing Jesus says has to do with what the Spirit would reveal not to the church but to the world.
Maybe it is through the act of revealing that the Spirit becomes the Advocate. Maybe that is why Jesus teaches that the Advocate can make us see that the root problem is really relational. The root problem is really broken relationships. Just talking about the fact that this world has problems is not enough. In fact, it has never been too difficult to convince the world that something is fundamentally amiss. The key is to underscore not just that something is awry with life but why that is so. After all, it should sicken all of us to know how easy it is to note the horrors of this world. The underlying message that needs to be revealed by God’s Spirit is that the source of all that wrongness is relational. It is the brokenness of relationships. There’s a cause behind hunger and terrorism, behind corporate greed, behind shootings, and that cause stems from our inability to value life itself. For reasons that are inexplainable to me, we have normalized killing. From all accounts, God desires a relational world, one in which everything embraces its connection to everything else… A world where everything embraces its dependence on everything else… A world like the one God created instead of the one we created. The Holy Spirit of Pentecost, the Paraclete, the Advocate, reminds us of this, and it is in the reminding that we can know the Holy Spirit is alongside us. It may not make the horrific event any easier, but as everyone here knows, the first step in recovery is to identify and admit the problem.
Anybody can talk about what’s wrong with the world. Christians, I believe, are good at it. We do it a lot. But the key item to check is whether or not we do this with hope. Are we just lamenting what’s bad for the sake of lamenting? Are we merely wringing our hands and shaking our heads and wagging our fingers in order to highlight our own moral integrity? Or are we letting the Holy Spirit inject even our critical words with a strong dose of the hope that comes through Jesus the Christ?
It’s the difference between screaming at someone “That’s wrong!” and then walking away in disgust as opposed to saying instead, “That’s wrong but now let me come along side you to spend however much time it takes for us to work it out. And to let you know you are loved no matter what. And to let you know that no matter what this relationship matters to me.” Sometimes convincing people of this may take a very long time. But if we cannot find a way to present the gospel even at the same moment when we confront the world with its faults, then we’re missing not just one piece of the Spirit’s work in the world, we’re missing all the pieces of the Spirit’s work in the world.
So as people of Pentecost, we need to let the Advocate use us to tell the world what’s wrong, but we need to do it with hope in our voices. At their best, I believe that’s what these marches are doing. No bitterness… No hatred… Just people coming together identifying how broken our relationships are, all the while full of hope… Hopefully cheering for us all to do better. I don’t know what will come of the people of Santa Fe High School after this tragedy, but now each time I look at those students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School marching and advocating for rebuilding and reclaiming relationships, I now see the Holy Spirit... I now see the Advocate. And I now realize when I cried out for the Advocate, “Where are you?” I wasn’t looking for the Advocate I was looking for the Fixer. The Advocate does something completely different… The Advocate advocates. The Advocate is not supposed to fix. The Advocate shines light on the problems and empowers us to fix. The Advocate is not the Fixer. As bad as we want the Advocate to be the fixer, he/she is not the Fixer. The Advocate shines light… And the Advocate, I truly believe, is shining light. Shining light as bright as the Advocate can.
I now see the Paraclete. I now see the Advocate doing what the Advocate does… Tirelessly walking alongside to rebuild and reclaim the world God created. And it is my prayer to let it be so.
Amen!