"Lead In the Way"

Our text today is found within the long farewell discourse that Jesus has with his disciples in the 4^th Gospel. Jesus teaches his disciples throughout this Gospel with many signs and miracles. These are found in the first 12 chapters of the Gospel of John. In Chapter 13, Jesus begins his farewell discourse in which the next seven chapters reveal the last teachings Jesus left for his disciples. All of which probably left the disciples confused. Jesus spends the night before his arrest pointing to all that was to come. In the discourse, Jesus’ articulates the need for him to go away so that another can come in his place. Amidst the disbelief the disciples must have felt, Jesus puts forth the assurance that they will not be left alone. He prepares them, because he must leave in order to fulfill God’s promise. He proclaims that when he goes, he will send the Advocate, a guide, to continue to speak the truth to the disciples.

John’s understanding of the Spirit, focuses on relationship. This is the relationship that is between God and Jesus. Jesus’ death marked the end of the incarnation of God. Which leaves John with the big theological dilemma: if we know God solely through the personhood of Jesus, then what happens after Jesus dies? Thus the fourth evangelist resolves the problem by developing the Advocate, in Greek it is the paraclete-the parakletos. This paraclete, has a few meanings: the one who exhorts, the one who comforts, the one who helps; and is used three times in this discourse to discuss the identity and function of the Spirit in the life of the community. The Advocate-will come up beside the disciples and continue with them in their work. The Spirit will remain with the disciples in their journey of faith together.

Just as for the disciples, this very Spirit moves into the very fabric of our faith today. This very Spirit makes it possible for the succeeding generations of believers to come to know the God revealed in Jesus. For us to know Jesus. This Spirit makes it possible for us to know the God revealed in Jesus. Even if we don’t think we are open to sensing it, or feeling it or speaking about it. The Spirit is with us, everywhere, and every day.

As we sang in our opening hymn this morning, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty. Holy Holy Holy merciful and mighty, God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity. Today is Trinity Sunday, the day on the Christian Calendar when we celebrate the Holy Trinity, the unity of three persons in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three-in-One!

This passage for Trinity Sunday names the nature of third person of the trinity, the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of truth will guide and declare to the disciples and to us the things that are to come (16:13). As the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we wrestle with how they are interconnected. God, the father, the creator of all the earth, of all things seen and unseen comes into the world-incarnate in the only Son-Jesus Christ. God, the Son comes to the world as "Emmanuel-God With Us" and is the manifestation of God. When it is time for the Son to leave and fulfill God’s promise, another must come to maintain the relationship with the disciples. God, the Holy Spirit takes what Jesus proclaimed and translates that message into relevant guidance.

The Spirit acts as the agent for God in the community, which will guide them in truth and point the community in the proper direction for the future. The movement of the Spirit benefits the community and leads it into all the truth which Jesus provides. Jesus gets out of the way-to fulfill the promise and in doing so leaves the space for the Holy Spirit to enter our lives. This Spirit, will "prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment."

Jesus encourages his disciples to think as a community of faith-not as individuals. How does the body of Christ function without all parts of the body in good working order? How does the community move forward in faith, if there are nay-sayers in the mix? How does the collective seek to discern God’s will if there is one voice of dissent that puts interference in the air? Jesus points us to a community of faith, and the Spirit points us to the truth that is relational. The Spirit emanates from the relationship between the Father and the Son. This Spirit yields a truth that is far beyond us.

But today-this text also pushes us to think about the ways we encounter a God who dwells in and among us. What sort of encounter do we see between us, the Contemporary Christian and the triune God, what ways do we hear the good news continually proclaimed? How do we learn more about Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit? Scott Black Johnston suggests to us that

"This passage is a reminder that the Spirit of truth is ever at work, tirelessly proclaiming the gospel so that people will come to believe, and in the believing will encounter Christ anew in the concrete moments of history."

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Jesus communicates in a way that points people to God, and in our passage Jesus offers and assures us that the Holy Spirit will communicate in such a way that points people to Christ.

When we come to the point of our text this morning, his disciples have seen the signs and wonders that Jesus has performed. They have seen him feed the five thousand, walk on water, debate Jewish opponents, heal the blind man and raise Lazarus from the dead. But now, he has many more words for them, words that are unsettling, to a group that has put a lot of faith in him. They have heard how to continue to live in faith, and that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. 　

Yet Jesus, must sense the urgency to tell the disciples more before he is arrested, but he knows that they "cannot bear them now." In time, the Spirit will return and guide them in the truth. The Spirit that returns will only speak what the Spirit hears, and will make it known to the disciples. You can imagine the disbelief from the disciples about what would come to teach them about what Jesus said.

The Holy Spirit is mentioned only five times in the Gospel of John, and three of them are in today’s passage. Three of them are found in this passage for Trinity Sunday. What is the Good News to the disciples and the community that is listening to the farewell speech from Jesus? What are the words that the Spirit could give to individual disciples and to the grieving community? The words are an assurance. An assurance that all God has, Jesus has, and all that Jesus has will be declared to them through the Holy Spirit. The disciples will continue to know Christ-and thus God’s presence just as they did when Jesus himself was with them.

Sharon Ringe suggests that for the disciples-"this promise of the Spirit of Truth, transitions them from being the band of Jesus’ followers to being a community with its own responsibility to witness to all that Jesus has been. That was not easy."

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I guess that the reality for the disciples is also not easy for us either. Firmly in the 2^nd millennium since the time of Jesus, how is it that we, as a community of faith-as the Body of Christ, understand our responsibility to witness to all that Jesus was? We might feel so far removed-so detached from the scriptures, so influenced by our culture to believe that we can go it alone. Work for our own glory, instead of the glory of God. Do we spread the Good News in all that we do? Or only on Sunday? Or only when people come into our church

Jesus led in the way that pointed his disciples to God, he led in a way that spoke the truth about who God was. Jesus pointed those who would listen and follow him. Often Jesus would guide the disciples, through word and deed, to the truth that was not of this world. The verb "to guide" comes from the roots for "the way" and "to lead", thus to guide was in this sense was to "lead in the way." The same verb is used in the Psalms to point to the instructional role of God, who leads the community into right and faithful behavior.

³ The Spirit has the teaching role for us in the future life of a faith community-of this faith community. For us.

Eugene H. Peterson paraphrases this passage in The Message like this,

"the Spirit of Truth, will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won’t draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen, indeed, out of all that I have done and said. He will honor me; he will take from me and deliver it to you. Everything the Father has is also mine. That is why I’ve said, ‘He takes from me and delivers to you.’"

Can you picture it? This Spirit of Truth which will now come-takes you by the hand and guides you though life, into the truth? The Spirit, leads us in the way to follow Jesus. How might you have experienced the way the Holy Spirit moves in each of us? Has there been someone who has been a teacher or guide? Someone who has come up alongside us in our journey of faith and guided us? Might we have been that guide for someone else?

Because Jesus Christ fulfills the promise of God through his life, death and resurrection, we are assured that the work of God continues through the work of the Spirit which is rooted Christ. God reveals Godself in Christ, and through the work and life of Christ we come to see more clearly the work of God in the world. We see this through the movement of the Spirit. After we celebrated the birthing of the church at Pentecost, we look to the sustaining nature and power of the Spirit. This is Good News. The Paraclete-this advocate as the Holy Spirit, bears witness to Christ (15:26), and communicates only what he hears (16:13)- so that we all have access to the truth. The truth that is in Jesus Christ.

In the Presbyterian Book of Confessions, the Brief Statement of Faith puts in common language the gift of the Spirit. It explores how we in 2010 come to recognize the movement of the Holy Spirit and understand its significance as it continues to be our guide.

On Wednesday the session read through and studied the passage on the Holy Spirit from a Brief Statement of Faith

⁴ as part of its devotional time together. We talked about the way that the Spirit binds us together as the body of Christ, and the way that Spirit gives us courage. Here are a few words from the Brief Statement of Faith. What resonates for you as you think of our life together? What ways does this speak to how God is God, and how we get caught in the way of God being God?

God the Holy Spirit, is the giver and renew of life. It sets us free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor, it binds us together as the body of Christ. This same Spirit, rules our faith and life in Christ. It claims us in the waters of baptism, it feeds us with the bread of life and the cup of salvation and calls women and men to all ministries of the Church.

The Spirit, working, breathing and moving among us gives us courage, and sustains us in a broken and fearful world.

The Spirit give us courage

to pray without ceasing,

to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior,

to unmask the idolatries of peoples long silenced,

and to work with others for justice, freedom and peace.

And maybe for us today, the sending of the Spirit, to teach, to guide and to lead us in the way of the one who was and is, and will be isn’t so hard for us to figure out. If we are open to it. Open to the Holy Spirit who can point us in the direction of faithful living. Then again, maybe the Holy Spirit works best when we don’t get in its way, when we don’t criticize too soon, or squelch opportunities that stretch our thinking about God. Our passage echoes Jesus statement of "I am the way and the truth, and the life." The Spirit is always moving and always at work, whether we recognize it or not.

Dorothy McRae-McMahon writes a Litany of the Spirit

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In Mystery and grandeur

We see the face of God

In earthiness and the ordinary

We know the love of Christ.

In heights and depths.

And life and death:

The spirit of God

Is moving among us.

Let us Praise God.

I will light a light

In the name of God.

Who lit the world

And breathed the breath of life into me

I will light a light

In the name of the Son

Who saved the world

And stretched out his hand to me.

I will light a light

In the name of the Spirit

Who encompasses the world

And blesses my sound with yearning.

We will light three lights

For the trinity of love:

God above us,

God beside us,

God beneath us;

The beginning,

The end,

The everlasting one.

Thanks Be to God.

Amen.