Scripture: Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, 25-27

“But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you…”

-- John 14:26

The name that the translation from which I took our sermon title renders, “another advocate,” is translated in several other ways. For example, it is rendered “counselor,” or “comforter,” or, simply transliterating the Greek original, “Paraclete.” All these translations are good; Paraclete literally means, “one called to the side of,” that is, one who, like counsel for the defense in a criminal trial, stands beside the accused and defends him or her. Therefore, all the above translations are good because such a person performs the whole range of services covered by our translations; he comforts, counsels, and defends the accused. Two more vital functions of this comforting, counseling presence, according to our text, are that he is “the Spirit of Truth (vs. 17),” and that “he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you (vs. 26).” So we know that the Holy Spirit whom we celebrate today is a comforter and counselor, our defender when others accuse us (or we accuse ourselves too much), a Spirit of Truth, and one who reminds us always of Jesus and his teaching.       

John characteristically deals with the events of Jesus’ life, especially his miracles, by placing them within a context of interpretation which says basically that the event is important but not that important, and what really matters is that we understand the event as a sign pointing to who Jesus really is, and that we follow the sign to faith in him. The only truly important event that the Gospel of John wants us to see is you and I coming to believe in Jesus as God incarnate because of what John has written and we have read.

So let us try to imagine how John would read our passage from Acts, the traditional narrative account of the day of Pentecost. We discover that the point is not the so much the event itself as the miracle of restored human understanding across cultural differences. All those present understand what the Apostles are saying, there are no more language barriers, the disaster of the Tower of Babel has been reversed and we can understand each other despite the difference of languages. This event is the beginning of the church and so the church is an inclusive, transcultural community. When we read Luke in a Johannine way we discover that the point is not that we should expect flames on our heads, or wind in the rafters, all the literal things that the fundamentalist interpreters emphasize, but rather a renewal of our ability to communicate with all life, and thus a forging of true relationships around the world.

So from our passages we have the following descriptions of the Holy Spirit: he is Paraclete, he is Truth, he is universal understanding, and in all of these functions, as a summary of them all, he is the true presence of Jesus our Lord. Let us consider each one of these items in order. As Paraclete the Spirit gives us what these days we call support, or another way of saying it is, “he is there for us,” there when we need him, there when we fall into danger or despair. The forensic meaning of the name is especially interesting because it takes account of the fact that many of us feel guilty for no obvious reason, as if someone were accusing us. One of the famous novels of the last century, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, begins when a certain Josef K wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime. The nightmarish novel centers on his attempts to find out what he is supposed to have done so that he can defend himself. He never finds out what he is accused of, and ends up being convicted of an unknown crime. This bad dream of guiltiness is the negative correlative of the Paraclete; he assures us that we are not guilty, have committed no crime. In traditional Christian thinking the accuser in such a context is the devil. One of his titles is “the accuser.” So God the Paraclete by being there for us, to assure us that we are not guilty, to assuage our anxiety, delivers us from the devil. As the Truth the Spirit enables us to separate what is true and real from all that is false and phony. When we know the truth we are free, when we do the true we are healed. In chapter 10, John says of the true shepherd that his sheep recognize is voice and therefore follow him, while they do not recognize the voice of the stranger. In these days especially, but in all our days in this media drenched culture of lies, we must be listening for the voice of the true shepherd. That voice is the Truth of the Holy Spirit, and we recognize it when we hear it. Thirdly, as mutual understanding the Spirit is the miracle of those moments when we are able to see the world through the eyes of another, when we truly feel the co-humanity of the hated stranger, the Muslim form Saudi Arabia, the African–American from East Palo Alto. Let’s for a moment at least here in the presence of God who knows all recognize the racism, xenophobia and chauvinism in ourselves, and give it over to the Spirit.  Finally, the summary of these three experiences is that they are the things of Jesus that the Spirit makes real again for us. Jesus is there for us, Jesus is true for us, Jesus is real relationship for us, and that is why the Spirit achieves all that he does simply by making the things of Jesus live again in us and for us.

Therefore, the Holy Spirit is the term that the Gospel of John uses for the ongoing presence with us of the living Jesus. This is very important to remember; the Spirit is Jesus with us. Why is it important? Because cut loose from this definition the Spirit becomes an independent power that many people think is at their disposal to be used for their own purposes. Today there is a powerful spiritual movement called Pentecostalism, and while there is much that is authentic and blessed in it there is also a major negative possibility, namely, that those who believe they possess the Spirit will fall into a more or less severe state of megalomania. People in this state give great authority to their intuitions, taking them as guidance from the Spirit rather than hunches to be checked out rationally, empirically and critically. Such people are dangerous, not least because they are often so totally convinced of the rightness of their decision that they convince other people. We are so pathetically susceptible to persuasion by those who are totally convinced. I am told that in some schools of psychotherapy this is called “identification with the archetype,” that is, in our religious case, such a person has identified entirely with God and comes across as speaking the Word of God. Most sects have leaders who do this sort of thing, the so-called charismatic leaders, and many people are psychically overwhelmed by them.

Clearly, when John tells us that the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth and the possibility of mutual understanding has as his main function taking the things of Jesus and making them live again for us, he means something other than enabling us to identify with the archetype. Rather John means that the Spirit is primarily the power in us to witness to Christ not to identify with Christ. This is the all-important distinction, the distinction between Christ and me. The Spirit does not identify me and Christ, but rather facilitates and infuses a relationship between us. What is the difference between identification and relationship? A relationship by definition includes a separation that the relation reaches over to make contact, while identity means the difference has disappeared and two individuals have become one. This is the way it is with human relationships, - since identification is not possible - and this is the way it is in our relationship with Christ; relationship not identity, the meeting of two separate persons not the melting of each into the other.

This separation is what is in play when Jesus talks of his going away; the chapters in John that we have been considering for the last several sermons are called the “Farewell Discourses,” and for good reason. Jesus separates himself from us and then returns to us over the gulf of that separation as another advocate, to stand by us, be there for us, to open our minds to the Truth, to enable us to understand over the distinctions of language and culture.  

Amen.