My wife Marianne has a peculiar memory. She can remember words and what people say with often utter clarity but struggles a bit with an ability to remember physical details or features of people. On more than one occasion, we’ve had a conversation that went something like this: Don’t forget that you’re meeting with Andrew today. Okay, I say, what does Andrew look like. How will I recognize him? Is he tall? No, I don’t think so. Does he have any distinguishing features? Not that I can recall. How does he dress? Average, I think. And then I find myself talking to a guy who’s 6’4’’, full-beard, and dressed immaculately in a suit. If you’re a robber – you want Marianne to witness it. She will remember nothing. This series that we are embarking on is about the Holy Spirit. And today we will have Jesus describe a little about the Spirit – the who and the what which also tells us about ourselves. There is both specificity and vagueness, metaphor and detail, and we need to honor both.
The Who: The Holy Spirit is a blowing, flying, birthing, advocating, life-giving, truth-telling, chain-breaking, adoption-making, transformational power source, resurrected presence of Jesus sent from the Father for you.
Friends, there’s also a lot in the Bible about the Holy Spirit that is strange and hard to understand. Whole denominations have begun or split based almost solely on this third person of the Trinity, much to the Trinity’s dismay. Can I suggest something to you? Let’s keep the Holy Spirit weird. There’s much in our passage that isn’t exactly easy to figure out. The danger is not that we don’t fully understand the Spirit. The danger often is that we make the Spirit mundane, tame, or imagine that we know too much. That’s not to suggest that we shouldn’t use our brains, mustn’t practice discernment. I’m not telling YOU to be weird. But let’s never imagine that our language, our theology, is utterly capable of capturing all who God is. That Jesus often leans toward metaphor is significant and shouldn’t be quickly dismissed. The power of metaphor is that it expresses and identifies without making something too simple or caricatured. He’s not giving us a detailed Wanted Poster but a character sketch, a personality profile. God is always mysterious. That word “mystery” is so important in Christianity. It doesn’t mean puzzle or problem, which can be solved; rather, the word defines God as being endlessly understandable. If our theology and depiction of God allows for weirdness, strangeness, quirkiness, then we are more likely going to be humble.
With that understanding, who is this One we are being told by Jesus will come? Which is essentially asking, “Is God trustworthy?” Well, Jesus says, “God is a Paraclete, an advocate.” The word parakletos literally means One who calls or talks alongside. In the ancient world it meant a lawyer in court but also 'one who consoles' (cf. Job 16:2). Jesus describes the Holy Sprit as an Advocate sent by the Jesus and the Father, “to help you and be with you forever” (John 14:16); a truth-teller who will testify about Jesus (16:13), who will challenge the world (16:8), and glorify Jesus (16:14).
In John 14:16, part of the same long speech that chapters 15 and 16 are a part of, Jesus says, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever.” Jesus calls the Spirit another advocate. Who, then, is the first Advocate? 1 John 2:1 speaks of Jesus as an “advocate.” So Jesus is the first advocate and the Spirit is the second. If you want to understand who the Spirit is you need to understand the first advocate – Jesus. Like Jesus, the Spirit is continuing to walk beside us, to be for us, to be with us like Jesus was. The Spirit is God’s definitive answer to the question, “Can I trust God?” Because Jesus isn’t saying that God is a lawyer. He’s saying God is YOUR lawyer. He’s utterly and always for you. One of my favorite shows is the The Office. It’s about a quirky paper company led by it utterly inappropriate and bumbling manager, Michael Scott. In one episode, Michael’s jokes about women create a hostile work environment necessitating a confrontation with the Vice-President and a potential law suit. She arrives with the company attorney only to have Michael introduce another lawyer, a cheap, personal-injury lawyer, as his attorney. The Vice-President is aghast and says, “Michael, our corporate attorney Mr. O’Malley, IS your attorney – here to help you avoid a lawsuit.” Friends, don’t be like Michael Scott and hire a cheap attorney to defend you from God. God’s corporate attorney, God’s own self, is YOUR attorney. The Spirit as an advocate is the Spirit for you.
The What: the Spirit’s work is to speak and act Jesus in the world.
Not surprisingly, it’s easy to think of the Holy Spirit as someone that is for me alone – and we’ve already seen that there is some truth to that. But it’s also important to remember that the “me” in our passage today is not you and always Jesus. The Holy Spirit cares deeply, powerfully, passionately for that me. The Spirit, Jesus says, only speaks what he hears from me, will glorify me, receives from me, and testifies about me. Vss. 8-9 reflect the heart of the Spirit’s work according to Jesus in proving the world wrong and it’s an utterly surprising work. Did you notice? It’s purely Jesus-work. For the Spirit challenges the world’s understanding of what sin, justice and judgment are but not how you might expect. The Spirit’s work with sin is to point people to Jesus and to “prove” that the troublesome sin is not believing in Jesus – his word and his work. The world wants to make sin a moral problem. The Spirit wants us to understand that the real problem isn’t our moral failings but our failure to see and know God. The moral contemporaries of Jesus were looking for the coming of the just king who would condemn sinners and vindicate the righteous. Jesus announced the presence of God’s kingdom by justifying sinners and calling out the righteous. On justice, the world says, “you’d better stand on the right issue.” But the Spirit says you should stand with the right person - Jesus. The world wants to talk about issues. Jesus is always more interested in people. The Spirit’s work with justice is to vindicate the absence of Jesus by continuing Jesus connecting with people so that they love God and love one another. Third, the world wants to say that you are responsible for making your own way, conquering your own demons or that politics is where we win. The Spirit’s work of judgment is to tell us that the darkness is already defeated – conquered by Jesus.
The Spirit’s work then is much like a Jesus floodlight. If you walk by a house at night and it’s lit up, you say, “Look at that beautiful house.” You don’t say, “What a gorgeous flood light.” The floodlight’s job is not to show you itself but to illuminate something else. All the Spirit wants to do is shine the light on Jesus and empower us to live like Jesus.
The All Y’all: the Spirit empowers us and leads us requiring us to be aware and surrender.
Here's the thing: the role of the Spirit is not set upon making you a better human being, conjuring a supernatural magic show, or asking you to be solely responsible for your spiritual work. The role of the Spirit is to help us transform our lives so that we might join with him/her in pointing to Jesus and doing what Jesus does. The role of the Spirit is to transform our brokenness into a new community that speaks Jesus and there is an element of consent that’s necessary on our part.
The “you” is always y’all in our passage. Jesus will speak of the work of the Advocate for us and then will say, “And y’all also . . .” in vs. 27. There is never a sense that you are something controlled by the Spirit, some sort of Spirit empowered Jesus robot. And yet, neither is there a notion that this is an equal partnership. It is not said that the Spirit will help the disciple bear witness. That would make the actions of the disciples primary and that of the Spirit auxiliary. What is said is that the Spirit will bear witness and that – secondarily – the disciples are witnesses, with the help of the Spirit, also. Jesus doesn’t ask us to find truth but tells us that the Spirit will “guide” us to the truth. Jesus doesn’t ask us to so much scrunch our will power together and know and glorify Jesus but to let the Spirit make him known and glorify him. The element that powers this enterprise is the Spirit and not yourself.
In that context, two postures of consent are necessary “awareness” and “surrender.” Awareness is the recognition of who I am and what I am asked to do and what the Spirit is doing. Surrender is the reality of submitting to God being the most important actor in the transformation of the world and our lives. Both of these are cultivated in prayer. The Holy Spirit is God’s revelation and transformation in real time. That’s what’s freeing about the Spirit. You can’t blow wind into your own sails and you aren’t a solitary boat. So let the wind of the Spirit do its thing and let go of always blowing real hard trying to make something happen. You can look for the wind, prepare your sails, and point yourself in the right direction, but let God be the active agent who moves you by the power of the Spirit and never imagine that you do it alone. Let this old sea shanty be the blessing for you this series. Take it to heart, make it your prayer, it will be your freedom because God is your lawyer, who’s all about Jesus, and filling us all.
Come all ye young hearties, who follow the sea. Blow, blow the man down. The wind that’s a blowin’ will soon set you free. Give me some time to blow the man down.
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