Please note: due to family visits, there will be no Sunday Notes on May 21 or 28. Scheduled to begin again on June 4, with a posting here June 5th or 6th. Thank you!
From the Sunday Note, with additional thoughts:
Jesus said to his disciples:
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father,
and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always,
the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept,
because it neither sees nor knows him.
But you know him, because he remains with you,
and will be in you.
I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
In a little while the world will no longer see me,
but you will see me, because I live and you will live.
On that day you will realize that I am in my Father
and you are in me and I in you.
Whoever has my commandments and observes them
is the one who loves me.
And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”
John 14:15-21, Gospel for the 6th Sunday of Easter
When we try to parse out Christian teaching about the Holy Trinity—One God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yet only One—we can be left with an unhelpful headache and not much the wiser. Jesus, speaking to his disciples in this passage from John, takes another approach. He’s not talking to philosophers nor is he speaking to brilliant theological teachers. He is speaking to men more or less on our everyday level of thinking and understanding.
Our reading begins with the most basic thing he has taught from the first: they are to keep his commandments. That is, they are to put into practice the way of living he described to them in the Sermon on the Mount. To this point, right before he is arrested and killed, he had repeated those teachings, illustrated them in his own actions and words, and corrected, encouraged, and clarified elements of that practice over the 2-3 years he has lived among them.
But he is not going to be living among them much longer. He knows he is going to die (and Rise) but in the Father’s plan, he will not permanently resume his previous ministry. Why not? The Father is preparing for a centuries-long, eventually world-wide mission to spread the Good News and give access to eternal life. The Father is ready to move into the next phase of his plan to offer everlasting life to all peoples. And even when Jesus is permanently risen from the dead he can only be available to a limited number of people in a limited geographical area.
Yet these block-headed disciples have shown a continuing need for Jesus’ presence among them to keep them on track. How will the Father deal with this problem? Jesus tells them he will not be leaving them as orphans but will ask his Father in heaven to send them “another Advocate to be with you always.” What is an “advocate”? In that day an Advocate was someone who stood with you as a friend, an advisor and confidant, say in a legal proceeding. You might be all caught up in the moment, acting on emotions, not thinking ahead. Your Advocate would remind you of important points, encourage you, and guide you into the best way to handle a situation or to respond to a challenge. Jesus calls the Advocate the Father will send “the Spirit of Truth.” This Spirit of Truth from the Father is not limited by time, space, or numbers of people involved—once sent, the Spirit operates in the world, but without the normal limitations of material reality. Time, distance, number, matter in any form—none of these in any way limit the reach of the Spirit.
Our world does not accept the truth of this. “[I]t neither sees him nor knows him” for it is a spiritual, not a material presence. One of my high school friends, feet firmly planted on the ground, used to say, “Stick to the nubby facts, please!” Finally, though, to insist that reality is only material becomes a dodge. Not even all known facts are “nubby” (simply material) as Physics in its farthest-reaching and most fundamental discoveries has come to understand in our lifetime. Jesus tells his followers they will gradually come to realize that the Holy Spirit is with them, within them, and that this Spirit unites them with each other and with Christ himself.
“On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.” This will be a unity much more far-reaching than Jesus ever achieved in his years of ministry with and among the Twelve before his Resurrection. This unity of Jesus, his Father, and the Christians, all connected in the Spirit, will enable the transformation of each individual Christian during their lifetime on earth and the spreading of the Good News throughout the world of space and time. This way, God can bring all his wayward children home to him forever. In the Spirit we can hear that Sermon on the Mount from the inside, come to understand it, and live it out.
For further reflection:
Our first reading, from 1 Peter 3:15-18, includes this line:
“Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear, so that when you are maligned, those who defame your conduct in Christ may themselves be put to shame.”
Note: “when” not “if” you are maligned. It will happen. Misunderstandings always do. And on top of simple misunderstandings, we Christians have REAL opposition from the forces of Evil in the world, forces resentful and full of hate for what Christ offers to his people.