A Homily for the Fourth Sunday after Easter
Today we continue our celebration of
Eastertide, as we shall do until the feast of Pentecost.
On the last four Sundays of Eastertide,
beginning last week, the Gospel lessons are drawn from Jesus’s
farewell discourse with his disciples, as recorded in the Gospel
according to
The occasion of the discourse was
the evening of Maundy Thursday, after the Last Supper and before Jesus’s agony in the
But he also begins to prepare his
disciples for all the time to come, after his ascension, when he will
have
returned to the Father’s throne, but the disciples will be left in the
world. Speaking before his passion and
death, Jesus talks about the time to come after his resurrection and
ascension. The disciples are somewhat
confused. Last week we heard how they
said among themselves, “What does he mean? We cannot tell what he means.”
But the Apostle John recalled and
wrote down this discourse long after that first Holy Week and Easter,
after the
resurrection and ascension, and after the coming of the Holy Spirit. He wrote it down, as he said, so that his
readers might believe. And he wrote it
down for us, who read it and hear it now, nearly two thousand years
after it
was first spoken.
Unlike those to whom this
discourse was first spoken,
we did not have a chance to meet Jesus during his earthly ministry, to
walk
with him and hear his voice and see him heal the sick or multiply the
loaves
and fishes. The disciples had done those
things, and when Jesus tells them that he is going away, they are sad
and
sorrowful. They want to keep Jesus with
them, but it cannot be. Not only must he
go home to the Father; but it is for the good of the disciples (and of
us all)
that he should go.
Jesus tells the disciples that after
he has gone away, the Holy Spirit will come to them.
He tells them that the Holy Spirit will be
their “comforter” or “paraclete.” The word “paraclete”
is a legal term, and it signifies an advocate; a person on trial would
be
assisted by a paraclete,
who
would speak up for him in court.
Last week, in explaining the passage
from the first letter of Saint Peter that begins, “Dearly beloved, I
beseech
you,” Father Wilcox explained the Greek word “parakalo”: he said
that that word, which is translated
“to beseech,” can also mean “to exhort,” or, especially, “to encourage.” The work “paraclete,”
which Jesus applies to the Holy Spirit, comes from that same verb: the Holy Spirit is our advocate, and our
helper, and our exhorter, and our encourager.
In the legal system of the classical
world, the paraclete
or
advocate, was a defense attorney. It was
when one was on trial that one needed the assistance of a paraclete.
Christians can expect to find themselves on trial, accused by
the world,
prosecuted by Satan; in his sermon on the mount, Jesus had said: “they will revile you, and persecute you, and
say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake,
. .
. just as they persecuted the prophets before you.”
And Jesus promises that in this trial the
Holy Spirit will be present as our advocate and defender.
But more than that, the Holy
Spirit will turn the
tables and become the prosecutor. He
will set things right; he will set the world right about sin, and
righteousness, and judgment. The world
presumed to judge Jesus, to convict him in its courts; the Sanhedrin
convicted
him of blasphemy, and Pilate convicted him of sedition.
And the world will presume to judge the
Church as well. But the Holy Spirit, who
is the Spirit of truth, puts the world on trial and convicts (or
“reproves”)
the world by exposing the false testimony of the world.
The Spirit puts the world to right
about sin, and righteousness, and judgment.
The world convicted Jesus; but Jesus was the one man who was
without
sin. Where, then, was the sin and where the righteousness?
The world adjudged Jesus to be worthy of
death on the cross; but Jesus rose again, destroying death by his own
death,
and bringing life to those in the grave.
Where, then, is judgment? Who,
then, has truly been judged and found guilty, and condemned?
Truth is not a matter of power or of
numbers: no council, no governor, no
court can change the truth. They may
deny it, they may ignore it, they may punish those who bear witness to
it; but
they cannot change it. And the Spirit
brings to light the truth about sin.
God the Son for our sake came down
from the heavens, and by the power of the
Holy Spirit
was conceived in the flesh and born of the Virgin Mary.
For our sake, also, he was judged and
convicted, suffered and died. In this
Easter season we celebrate his rising again from the dead and his
ascension
back into the heavens. For a season, the
Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us and we—that is
humankind—beheld his glory on this earth.
But the incarnation did not end with
the ascension. Jesus Christ, in the
fullness of his human body, is now seated at the right hand of God the
Father,
to make intercession for us at the throne of heaven.
But, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he is
present also in the Church, which is the mystical body of Christ.
The Church is holy because God
the Holy Spirit dwells
in the Church and makes it holy. And
the Spirit gives glory to the Son, even
as the Son gives glory to the Father, because the Holy Spirit speaks
what he
hears and leads the Church into all truth.
The disciples were sad and sorrowful
on Maundy Thursday, because Jesus was going away, and they thought that
they
would no longer hear him preach the good news and work miracles among
the
people. But the disciples were wrong, it was expedient for them that he should
go
away. Jesus told them, in his farewell
discourse, that although they were sorrowful, their sorrow would soon
be turned
to joy, and their joy would never be taken from them.
And on the feast of Pentecost, those
same disciples received the Holy Spirit and became apostles; and the
Church is
built on the foundation of the Apostles, Jesus Christ being the
cornerstone. Henceforth, the Church
would preach the good news and the Church would work miracles in Jesus’s name. The
Church is the continuation of the incarnation of the Word of God.
What was true in the first century
remains true today. If the good news is
to be preached, it must be preached by the Church.
If the sick are to be healed, they must be
healed by the Church. If the poor are to
be satisfied, they must be satisfied by the Church.
And the Church is not an institution or a
bureaucracy; it is not an organization headquartered in Constantinople,
or in
The Holy Spirit dwells in the
Church, but he dwells also in each of us, and in every Christian. We received the Holy Spirit at our baptism,
and the gift was renewed in our confirmation.
By the power of the same Spirit we are consecrated to God as the
very
limbs and organs of the Body of Christ.
When the world looks for Christ,
it sees us; and we
must therefore strive so to live that those around us see Christ in us. Saint James wrote to the first century
Church, and to us, that we must be a kind of firstfruit
of the creatures of God: swift to hear,
but slow to speak; slow to anger, for the anger of man worketh
not the righteousness of God. We are to
lay apart all filthiness and overflowing naughtiness, and humbly
receive the salvific word of God.
Above all, the Church is a
Eucharistic body. At this altar today,
as on every Sunday and holy day, and as at all the Christian altars in
all the
world, the Church shares in offering to God the Father the one eternal
sacrifice of God the Son. We offer our
oblation in the unity of God the Holy Spirit, to whom with God the
Father and
God the Son, be all honour and glory in
the Church,
world without end.
Christ is risen.
He is risen
indeed. Alleluia.