Sermon for Easter 6 2020St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
[The sermon can be heard on St. Paul's Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/StPaulsSacramento/videos/240192093877057/ The sermon begins at about minute 24]
Jesus said, ”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
Today our Gospel lesson is a continuation of what we call Jesus Farewell Discourse in the Gospel of John. Jesus is talking to the disciples on the last night he will be present on that side of resurrection. He knows that the coming days will be tough. He knows that the disciples will feel abandoned by God. He knows that they will need someone to walk with them. Someone who can open up the events that will happen during Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter. Jesus promises the disciples - and us – that he will send another advocate – the Holy Spirit – to walk with us through our journey.
In John’s Gospel the word that is used for the Holy Spirit is Paraclete –which translates advocate. Jesus says he will send another advocate – because Jesus was the advocate to the disciples before the crucifixion. Jesus physically walked with them opened their eyes to God’s dream.
What do you think of when you hear the word “Advocate”?
When I think of an advocate I think of someone interceding for another. A friend of mine has served as a court appointed advocate for foster children. She has helped get them into college, taught them to drive (she is a brave women!), and worked the system to help them succeed as they age out of the foster care system. I have been a health advocate for both a dear friend and for my parents. I worked to intercede with doctors and the health systems to make sure that they are acting for the patients benefit – especially when they have been unable to advocate for themselves.
It is easy then to see the Advocate – paraclete – the Holy Spirit as one who will intercede on our behalf with God the Father. But that is not the kind of Advocate that Jesus was for the disciples and that is not the kind of Advocate that the Holy Spirit is for us. Jesus was the kind of Advocate that opened the eyes of the disciples to see God’s dream for the world.
David Lose – a preacher I follow said: “At various times across church history, and in various traditions of Christianity today, it may be tempting to imagine that, defined this way, the Spirit’s role is to intercede for us before God. The Spirit, from this point of view, is one who pleads our case that, though we have fallen short, yet because of Jesus and his sacrifice we deserve to be forgiven. But the picture of God this implies – God as needing to be persuaded to love and forgive us – feels so foreign to John’s confession that “God so loved the world that God gave the only Son…” (3:16).
So perhaps it’s actually the other way around. Perhaps it is the Spirit who intercedes on God’s behalf before us. That is, perhaps the Spirit is the one who comes to remind us of our identity as children of God, as sheep who recognize the voice of our shepherd, those for whom the good shepherd lays down his life. Because, Lord knows, that can be a hard identity to hold onto, a hard identity to believe is really ours, especially when we are stressed or frightened, unsure about our future and it feels like everything has been turned upside down.”[1]
My encounters with the Holy Spirit have absolutely been the kind that opens my eyes and heart to see God in our world. The Holy Spirit is walking by our sides and helping us see things differently – not as our world sees them but as God sees. I like the word John uses – the advocate because the Spirit certainly can push us to see more clearly the Way of Love. She can push us out of our comfort zones to get us to recognize how to keep Jesus’ commandment – the one he said we need to keep for the Spirit to enter into our lives – If we Love God and Love our Neighbors and ourselves we will find the Holy Spirit is with us. Opening our eyes to the scriptures, opening our eyes to the truth of the Love that God has for all of God’s creation.
During this strange time when we are worshiping apart we can feel like we have been orphaned – we can feel like we are not only physically isolated but socially isolated. It is times like this that we can wonder where our God is in all of this sickness and death. I see it on the news – the people who are clamoring to “return to normal”. And on the other side the people who tell us that we need to get used to a new normal as the COVID-19 virus is going to be around for awhile.
During times like this the Holy Spirit is clamoring to get our attention. She is there trying to get us to see what God’s love looks like during this time. As we look forward to a time when we can worship together She is telling us that Love looks like being apart for a time. Love looks like taking actions that protect the vulnerable among us instead of writing off the sick and elderly as collateral damage to our economy. The holy spirit is opening our hearts to see that while we may be physically distant that we can still be socially cohesive. She is leading us to connect in new ways that show our love for each other. She is reminding us to reach out using the technology that we have to make sure our friends are ok. To make sure our families are ok.
We need to be careful how we reopen our churches to worship together. It has been documented that several church functions have been “Super Spreader Events” – In Sacramento County one church was a hotspot and a two members died from the virus before the Shelter in Place order was put into effect. On the news last night, and in the paper today, I heard of a church in Butte County that held mother’s day services and now 180 people have to self isolate because one of the congregation tested positive the next day. So how we open matters. How we do things will be different. And we are still figuring out what that will look like. We need to figure out things like how to we disinfect the church between uses – is there a way to clean the pew chairs between uses? Is there a way to set up the sanctuary so that family groups can sit together and be six feet away from other groups? How do we welcome the stranger and the hungry into this place? What will feeding the hungry look like?
I have many questions and few answers. I feel the pull of the Holy Spirit advocating for me to see all of this through the eyes of God’s Love. The Holy Spirit is calling us to think about how we can share communion again – in a way that expresses Love of God and Love of neighbor. God the Holy Spirit is calling us to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd who calls our names, leads us to good pastures and warns us of danger – dangers that are both visible and invisible.
What does God’s love look like right now for our churches? It is not prematurely opening up our sanctuaries and inadvertently becoming a super spreading event. God’s Love right now is calling us to continue to gather for worship on YouTube and Facebook live. God’s love is calling us to social cohesion though the use of zoom coffee hours, and other zoom events as well as phone calls, text messages, and facetime. God’s love for us is calling us to love our neighbors by taking prudent actions to keep infections low. To plan good risk management.
I spent a good deal of my career in the business of looking at risk management in water quality. I know that it is impossible to have zero risk. In a regulatory setting I looked at balancing the risk of various chemicals versus the need for good sanitation and disposal of waste water. We looked at protection for vulnerable populations- both people and wildlife. I manage my risk right now by doing things like checking my temperature, staying at home – except for essential travel – which includes helping stream the Sunday services from St. Paul’s.
There will come a time when we can return to church that looks more like what we were used to. But Love means that we wait for that until it is safe. Love is telling us that in the immediate future we will continue to be streaming services – and in the intermediate time we may come to a point where we can have small groups worship – with physical distancing – no hymn singing and other precautions while still streaming the services.
The Holy Spirit has certainly shown our church that we have been called to use technology to stream our services for those who can’t gather – She has shown that we can reach people who are unable to attend in person, either due to physical ailments, inability to travel, or due to scheduling conflicts in meaningful ways. I see a time when we show our love by streaming our services to those who cannot join us along with sending Eucharistic Visitors to bring communion in the form of bread and wine. I am confident that we will meet again in person – just as I am confident that we have discovered – out of necessity a new way to reach out when we cannot gather in person.
I rejoice that the Holy Spirit has pulled our worship out of a model that was rooted in past centuries of in person gathering to see that God’s Love can be in the form of the Facebook live or YouTube stream.
In these difficult times, times we feel isolated and alone we long for an advocate to walk along side of us. In a time when so many people are unemployed and worried about when the economy will come back we look for an advocate who can open our hearts to God’s dream of love. A time when we need to wear masks when we cannot stay physically distanced from others– not for our protection as much as protecting others in the event that we become asymptomatic carriers we need the Holy Spirit to remind us that Love looks different right now.
The good news is that we have that advocate. When we open our eyes, heart and soul to look through God’s lens of love then we will find that we are not alone. The Holy Spirit will be there opening our hearts to see God in our world. And as we will remember in two weeks, at the feast of Pentecost we will find that the Holy Spirit will drive us out of our locked rooms so that we can find new ways to celebrate the way of Love.
