A Homily for the
Fourth Sunday after
Easter
I tell you the truth: it is expedient for you that I go away: for
if I go not away,
the Comforter will not
come unto you; but if I depart, I will
send him unto you.
—
From time immemorial, the Church has
appointed for the Gospel readings on the third, fourth, and fifth
Sundays after
Easter portions of Christ’s long discourse with his Apostles on Maundy
Thursday, just before his arrest, trial, passion, and crucifixion, as
recorded
in the Gospel according to
The topic of the Maundy Thursday
discourse is how the disciples are to carry on after Jesus has died,
risen, and
ascended to his Father in heaven. Up to
that point, what had kept them together, and kept them going, was the
presence
of Jesus among them. And now the time was
rapidly approaching when Jesus would not be physically present among
them
anymore. And so he promised that the
Holy Spirit would come to them and remind them of all that he had said
and
done.
Of course, the Holy Spirit had never
been altogether absent. We read in
Genesis that in the beginning, when the earth was without form and
void, the
Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep. In
the Creed we affirm that it was the Holy
Spirit who spoke through the prophets.
At Jesus’s baptism by John in
This morning, as always, the Gospel
lesson was read from the Authorized Version of Holy Scripture,
published in
1611, during the reign of King James I.
The “King James” translation is one of the great literary and
theological treasures of the world. But
that translation was made four
hundred years ago, and there are many English words that have changed
their
meaning over those four hundred years.
One word that has changed meaning is
“comforter.” To illustrate what that
word “comfort” means nowadays, we may turn to the songwriter, Paul
Simon, who
wrote:
When you’re down and
out,/ When you’re on the street,/ When
evening falls so hard,
I will comfort you./ I’ll take your
part. . . .
Like a bridge over
troubled water,/ I will ease your mind.
When
we in the twenty-first century hear the word “comforter, we are apt to
thing of
someone or something who “eases our mind,” whomakes
us feel better when we are sad, or ill, or hurting.
But in the seventeenth century, the word
“comforter” still had its original meaning of “strengthener.” While Jesus was among them, the disciples
drew their strength from him; when he tells them he is going away he
promises
to send them “another strengthener.”
Actually, the word “comforter” is
used in the King James version to translate
a Greek
word, “paraclete.”
In other English translations, we find “paraclete”
rendered as “helper” or “counselor”; in the Latin Bible, the word paraclete is
translated as “advocatus,” and some English
translations use the
corresponding word “advocate.” Each of
these words expresses something of what is meant by “paraclete,”
but it would sound a bit awkward to read that Jesus promised to send a
“strengthener-helper-counselor-advocate.”
The word “paraclete”
also had a technical meaning in Greek:
it was used to designate a trial attorney. Because
the ancient lawcourts
worked somewhat differently than those we have today, the legal paraclete could be
compared either
to a prosecutor or to a defense attorney; but either way it was his job
to
state the case, to marshal the evidence, to bring the truth to light,
to see
that justice was done.
What Jesus says about the Holy
Spirit in today’s Gospel lesson carries some of that technical, legal
meaning of
“parclete.”
Part of what the Paraclete will do,
he says,
is to “reprove the world.” “To reprove”
is another English word that has changed meaning somewhat over the last
four
hundred years, if it has not become virtually obsolete.
But here it us used to translate a Greek word
that means “to accuse,” “to call to account,” or “to set right,” and
it, too,
could be used in a technical, legal sense.
Speaking on Maundy Thursday, looking
forward to Pentecost, Jesus used the future tense. But
we live in the post-Pentecost era. Jesus
has ascended to the Father; and he has
sent the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete; and
the Holy
Spirit is doing those things that Jesus said he would do.
He is reproving the world. The Holy
Spirit is accusing the world of sin,
because the world does not believe in Jesus.
He is calling the world to account about righteousness. He his setting the world
right about judgment.
But the Holy Spirit is the Paraclete,
the “strengthener-helper-counselor-advocate,” in
a broader, non-technical sense. He is
leading the Church in all truth. As our
catechism tells us, “the Church is holy, because the Holy Spirit dwells
in it
and makes it holy.” It is the Holy
Spirit that makes the Church the Church—the mystical body of Christ and
the
blessed company of all faithful people—and not just an assemblage of
individuals, like a club, or a sports team, or a business.
On the evening of the first Easter
day, the whole church was crowded into a single room, and the door of
that room
was locked because of the disciples’ fear.
The church had no New Testament, no creed, no canon law; it did
not even
have the Book of Common Prayer. There
were just eleven guys who known Jesus
and walked with him during his earthly ministry. Seven
weeks later, the Holy Spirit entered
the room and filled each of the people there; and by the Holy Spirit,
those men
were transformed. Fear gave way
immediately to boldness; a handful of Galileans found themselves out in
the
street, preaching in all the languages of the known world about the
wonderful
works of God.
Under the guidance of the Holy
Spirit, the church spread from one small room all over Jerusalem, and
from
Jerusalem all over the middle east, and then to Greece and Rome, Africa
and
Asia, and eventually to the New World.
Strengthened by the Holy Spirit, the church grew from eleven
Galileans
to nearly two billion Christians alive today, in addition to all those
who have
gone before us and who will follow after us.
Jesus promised his disciples that he
would send them the Holy Spirit as their
strengthener-helper-counselor-advocate, and so he did; and he continues
to send
the Holy Spirit to all who profess and call themselves Christians. It is the gift of the Holy Spirit that
teaches us to love God and each other, that bids us to continue in the
holy
fellowship and to do all such good works as God has prepared for us to
walk in,
that draws us to God, that we may continue his forever.
For it is not just to the Church
corporately and collectively that God imparts his Holy Spirit, but also
to each
one of us, to strengthen and help us in our several callings. Less than two weeks ago, three young people
from this parish received the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of
confirmation,
consecrating them to life as Christian adults.
Our priests received the Holy Spirit in a special way at their
ordination, when the Bishop laid his hands on them and said, “Receive
the Holy
Spirit for the office and work of a priest.”
The work of the Holy Spirit is always the same, because it is
the work
of sanctification or “making holy”; but at the same time it is always
unique to
the needs of the particular person in whom the work is to be carried
out.
The
Holy Spirit is so far imparted to each person, as to make him
one who loves God and his neighbour. . . . Love,
therefore, which is of God and is God, is specially the
Holy Spirit, by whom the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, by
which
love the whole Trinity dwells in us.
And therefore most rightly is the Holy
Spirit,
although He is God, also called the gift of God. And by that gift what
else can
properly be understood except love, which brings us to God? . . . And
if there is no greater gift of God than the Holy Spirit, what follows
more
naturally than that He is Himself love, who is called both God and of
God? And
if the love by which the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the
Father,
ineffably demonstrates the communion of both, what is more suitable
than that
He should be specially called love, who is the Spirit common to both?
And
Breathe
in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy.
Act
in
me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy.
Draw
my
heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love only what is holy.
Strengthen
me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy.
Guard
me,
O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy.
14
May, 2006