Spirit of Truth

This is the sermon I preached for Trinity Sunday on May 26th.

I was reminded this week while attending a presbytery meeting at Paw Creek Presbyterian Church about something I had heard some time ago. The idea is that someone went out onto the streets of a major American city and asked random people two questions.

Contemplative Jesus

The first questions was, "Who is Jesus Christ?" The person asking the question obviously got all kinds of answers. A human man who lived a long time ago. A healer. A great dude. There was also a response that he was the son of God.

Then the interviewer asked another question. "When you think of Christians, what do you think of?" Unfortunately the responses to this question were not as upbeat as the responses to the first question. People responded by saying judgmental, close-minded, and hypocritical.

These responses indicate some interesting trends going on in America right now. The first trend is that people are getting strange glimpses of what the church of Jesus Christ looks like. I'm sure you can relate to this sentiment. It seems like many of us have heard something a Christian has said and we have felt like politely jogging in the other direction.

The other trend is that people are moving away from the church. This is something that religious leaders have been noticing for quite a long time now. There seems to be a trend developing that values personal faith over religious institutions. The role of spirituality versus the role of the "church." This has been indicated by the rise in what many people are calling the "nones." They don't typically attend church, yet many of them self-identify as spiritual, and they are growing like wild-fire.

A none might ask , "Why do you feel as though it is important to worship in a sanctuary? Why do you bother going to a church? I have a personal relationship with God without any of that stuff." You would of course answer, "I can't imagine my life without my church. If I didn't have to make money to feed my family I would be there every day!" Well, you might not say that exactly.

These nones and others that don't attend church have a point - personal spirituality is very important in the Christian faith. It is important to be close to God, to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. These things are crucial.

I have a friend in ministry who understands post-modernism much better than I do. One of the things he likes to say, and something that many people say now, is that we have reached the end of Christendom. We are in a so-called post-Christian world. So why do we even bother?

I can't help but wonder if the disciples felt the same way. In our passage today, Jesus is in the midst of his Farewell Discourse. Jesus was giving instructions to his disciples. You see, they may not have realized it at the time, but they were facing the end of something too. Mere hours later Jesus Christ would be arrested and taken off to face the cross. The disciples were facing an end to Christendom too, in a different sense...the end of the life of Jesus.

Jesus dies on the cross, and it is fascinating that his movement did not die with him on that hill right then and there. With so few followers having been gathered and such a gruesome end of the leader's life, it would not be surprising if this movement had died out within a number of years.  It would not really have been that surprising if the followers of Jesus had decided that they could be religious and believe in Jesus without having to uproot and live in one place.

Back in the his Farewell Discourse, Jesus has just finished telling his disciples not to fear, not to be discouraged. After he is gone, he will send them a helper. Something to be with them after he is gone. A presence.

Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit. He's talking about the part of the Triune God that will be with his followers after he has left. This includes us. This includes the believing community across the ages. This is not the first time Jesus has spoken about the Holy Spirit, but the claims he makes about the Spirit in these verse are particularly important.

Jesus says that the Spirit will guide us into all the truth. This is an easy part for us to get side tracked on because when we think of truth we usually think of facts, data, wisdom. Things that are true. John is talking about something different. When John speaks about truth, he is referring directly to Jesus. Jesus said earlier in this gospel I am the way the truth and the life. John not talking about something that is true, he is talking about someone who is the truth. The being of Christ is the truth. His presence in the world, his ministry, his healings, his death and resurrection, those are the truths to which the Spirit will guide us.

That is all well and good, I guess, but I have trouble imagining this Spirit. Maybe part of it is because of my first impressions of the Holy Spirit when I learned the Apostles Creed as a young child. I would get to the part about Jesus being conceived by the Holy Ghost, and, quite honestly, it skeeved me out a little bit. I didn't know about this ghost thing and isn't that kind of creepy?

Jesus says that he is departing but he is going to send this Holy Spirit to guide the community of believers. And I think this is our answer to why the followers of Jesus stuck around after he was gone. They realized that, as alone as they felt, God was still with them and they knew this was true because of this Holy Spirit. Jesus' teachings had not come to an end for the disciples. This was the role of the Holy Spirit - to ensure that the disciples will not face the future alone. This is what he means about how the Holy Spirit will tell the disciples about things to come. The Spirit will guide them into the future, not as a fortune teller or as a soothsayer, but as God who guides people to the truth of Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit is at work in ways we could never imagine, instilling us with passion, guiding us to care for one another, dwelling in the midst of this human condition. The Holy Spirit was certainly present in Oklahoma this week. In the midst of so much chaos and destruction, teachers felt the love, compassion, and dedication necessary to cover their students trying to protect them. This is the Holy Spirit at work.

The spirit has been at work in people all over this country in the wake of these storms.

Marty Taylor is a pastor at a megachurch in a town south of Moore, Oklahoma. They have had volunteers at the church all week sorting diapers, teddy bears, ramen noodles, and an incredible amount of clothing. They have received so many donations that they are having trouble finding a space to worship. Now if that isn't a good problem, I don’t know what is. They have received so many items, that they are asking people to just send money to help at this point. Marty says, “So many people feel this urgency, I’ve got to do something.” This is the Holy Spirit at work.

One of the reasons I’m glad we have the denomination that we do is because of a group called Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, or PDA. PDA steps in to help connect congregations to those who have been affected by catastrophe. In recent years they have been present in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, the tornado in Joplin, and this tornado in Moore. PDA holds a place in my heart as they were one of the caring groups of people that made their presence quickly known at Virginia Tech in the days and weeks following the shootings there in 2007. And how is such an organization formed, funded, prayed for, and motivated? This is the Holy Spirit at work.

The Spirit works in community. The Spirit works in relationships. That is the truest and deepest gift of the Spirit, it keeps us together, it unites us when we don't feel united. It gives us hope when all hope seems to have passed.

These questions reflect a truth, the world is changing. But why can't they reflect another truth –that the church is changing too? We certainly have a Spirit in our midst that wants to guide us to the truth of Jesus, and why can't this be one of those truths?

The Presbyterian Church USA is hosting an initiative called 1001 New Worshiping Communities. This is an initiative designed to open 1001 new communities of worship in the US over the span of 10 years. But this is not just a push to open churches, this is an attempt to allow that Holy Spirit to work in us. It's an attempt to recognize this growth of people who are not in churches and to see that as an opportunity, rather than a failure.

These worship communities are designed so that they can look very different from churches. They are designed to meet people where they are. They are designed to say to these nones "you can worship God without having to step into a church." Why are we willing to do this? The Holy Spirit.

When we use the Holy Spirit to spread the truth that is Jesus, we are fulfilling our calling. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are a beautiful union. This is what we say at the end of worship. The grace of Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with us and all people.

We are filled with the grace of Jesus who would enter this world for us. We are overwhelmed with the love that God shows us in our creation and in the gift of this life. And we discover these wonderful things when we share our lives with one another in community. Would that we can love enough to reach out. Would that we can be the community in which the Holy Spirit works so that all people, everywhere, might have the chance to experience God in community. Amen.