In a couple of weeks, we will be celebrating Pentecost, the day when the disciples saw tongues of fire and a rushing wind and, filled with courage, tumbled out onto the street proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah. I have often wondered why most of us don’t have that experience today, why most of us don’t have the gifts of healing, of prophecy, of tongues.
It occurred to me reading today’s gospel reading which is part of Jesus’ final teaching to his disciples, that John’s gospel gives us a different view of the work of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the church from which this gospel came had a more subtle experience of the Spirit and so they remember Jesus describing the Spirit as an advocate. This is a tricky word to translate from the Greek. Some of you will be familiar with the old term, the Paraclete, not to be confused with parakeet!
Paraclete is basically the Greek word just anglicized, not translated. Some have used the Comforter but in contemporary English that sounds like a warm down-filled blanket, not one who strengthens which is the intention here. So we end up with advocate or counselor which tends to put us into a legal framework. So I’m wondering about coach as a better word for us today. The Holy Spirit is our coach.
How does that sound to you?
Jesus said, ”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another coach, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”
So we are given the Holy Spirit to coach us and guide us. Even though the people around us don’t know him and can’t see him. And this is what Jesus means when he says ”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.”
Isn’t that good news? It’s certainly good news as we shelter at home and practice the gentle art of social distancing.
This has been an interesting week for me as I have come to accept that this we are not in a short-term crisis but that this is the way things will be for a while and so we get to explore how we worship and serve God and draw others to him in this situation. Up until now I had been sheltering at home waiting for the storm to pass. Now I’m more like Noah and his wife – how do we manage life in the ark? And with that acceptance came a new wave of grief.
So it’s very good news that Jesus says, ”I will not leave you bereaved; I am coming to you.” And when he says I am coming to you, it’s not the future tense of “sometime next year I’m coming to see you” but the immediacy of the quick text. “We’ve just turned onto your street, we’re coming.”
In every moment of our lives, Jesus is coming. Not the physical human who walked the shores of Galilee but the unseen coach; the one who is here to teach us and to support us and the one who, like Jesus, is the way, the truth, and the life. And since the persons of the Trinity are all one, it doesn’t matter whether you call this coach Jesus, Creator God or Spirit.
But what does matter is that you don’t try to domesticate her. The Spirit is not here to do our bidding, to be made into our image of an ideal parent who provides what we need, but to transform us into the Christ. Back at the beginning of time, our ancestors tell us that God made humanity in God’s image, but we used our free will to go our own way and in the process tarnished that image. But the work of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit coaching us every day is to restore the God-ness in us, to make us like Christ.
There’s a wonderful verse in the second chapter of Philippians which we read in the Thursday morning Bible Study this week, “become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation in which you shine like stars in the universe.” In which you shine like stars in the universe – that’s what the Holy Spirit is up to – forming us into the likeness of Christ so that we shine like stars.
This God who lives in us and with us like a coach is also the spirit of truth. The spirit of truth tells us the truth about ourselves. It tells us that we are beloved, that we are so precious to God that she cares about every thought and every feeling. It also shows us, gradually so that we can bear it, where we are failing to live up to God’s standards, where we are in need of grace, where we can next change to become like Christ.
The Holy Coach is not that angry voice which says “you screwed up. You did it wrong.” That’s the voice of the ego. I don’t think I can say this often enough because I need to hear it again and again. The voice of the Holy Spirit is always loving, always compassionate. The Holy Spirit will correct us, will show us the truth about our behavior, which is not always pretty; the Holy Spirit will encourage us to change but never with an angry voice, always with love.
And as we tune in to that loving voice, as we choose to listen to the Comforter who is restoring us into the Body of Christ, as we choose to accept our failings with divine compassion, so we can look on the world outside ourselves with loving compassion.
This is what I think Jesus was talking about when he said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments… They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” It really is all about love; love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self.
In this time of restraint, some of our normal ways of coping are unavailable to us and so this is an ideal time to focus on the loving voice of our coach. It is an ideal time to learn new skills, new ways of loving. We are still called to be an expression of the Body of Christ in Los Osos, we are still called to be Christ-like children of God, we are still called to serve and worship God with all our hearts.
And the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth, our divine coach will gently show us how to do that for the highest good of all beings.
Photo by Dan Burton@unsplash.com
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