The promise of the Holy Spirit — the beauty of obedience

A sermon preached at All Hallows by Bernie Hegarty on 27 April 2008
(Sixth Sunday of Easter)

• Audio (listen to this sermon online)

Readings:

Acts 17:22—31, Psalm 66:8—20, 1 Peter 3:13—22, John 14:15—21

May the love of our Lord Jesus Christ guide the words that rise up in my heart and leave through my lips!

The Promise of the Holy Spirit — That is how this section is headed in my version of the Bible. And as I read the heading I wondered about the Holy Spirit. Unlike some of you, the charismatic renewal movement passed me by from an organised religious perspective. In fact, if it weren’t for two recent experiences I would have said that the Holy Spirit hadn’t figured in my life much at all. It was these two experiences and the title of this passage that got me thinking consciously about the Holy Spirit. And as I did so, my initial thoughts were: how do you recognise the Holy Spirit? how do you know when the Holy Spirit is at work, in the individual, in the community, in the Church, in the world? These thoughts eventually merged into three themes which provide the focus of today’s sermon — the nature of love, the presence of the Holy Spirit and the gift of obedience.

Let us start with love, as it begins and ends this passage, while obedience runs right through it.

‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments.’

‘They who have kept 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.’

In our culture we usually associate love with emotion and with physical affection. However, in this passage Jesus frames it in the context of obedience. Obedience is not the first thing that we think of when it comes to love. In fact I looked up the Concise Oxford Dictionary to find out how they defined obedience — ‘complying with a request/order’. Today we often respond to obedience as an order, i.e. something that belongs to a bygone era, or to the military, or to children in relation to their parents, but not to the fully functioning, reasoning autonomous individuals that we are in the 21st century.

However, for those of us that have been studying St Benedict’s Toolbox, we know that the Latin for obedience comes from the root ob-audire ‘to listen thoroughly’, not just with our minds but with our heart as well. For John, there is only one test of love: and that is obedience. It was by his obedience that Jesus showed his love of God and it is by our obedience that we must show our love of Jesus.

So what is Jesus saying to his disciples both then and today? He is saying, if you love me, show it by doing what I have told you, show it by remaining faithful to what I have taught you, show it by complying with my request, show it by keeping my commandments.

Now what are these commandments that Jesus refers to? Earlier in Chapter 13, John tells us that Jesus gives a new commandment: ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you.’ The other three gospel writers tell us that when asked which the greatest commandment was, Jesus responded

‘You shall love the Lord our God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ (Matthew 22:37—40; Mark 12:29—31; Luke 10:27)

Jesus knew then what lay ahead. He knew that ‘real love’, i.e. love in action, love as action, would involve some very hard lessons for those who followed him. Later that very night, Peter would learn about real love as he sat around a fire and denied knowing Jesus three times.

Jesus connects love with keeping his commandments — commandments which are about love. Jesus connects obedience with love. Now as we all know, loving as Jesus commands us is no easy task, because Jesus commands us to love what the world despises, he commands us to love the weak, the vulnerable, the outcasts, he commands us to love those who would harm us and those who would betray us. He commands us to love those whom we fear and those whom we reject. Last but not least he commands us to love ourselves.

So no wonder we need help.

‘And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you for ever. 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.’

In the passage, Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Advocate and later as the ‘Spirit of Truth’. He does not leave us to struggle with the Christian life alone. The word that is interpreted as Advocate is parakletos, which is really untranslatable, and in different Bible translations this word is also interpreted as ‘the Comforter’, the Helper. But whichever word we use, Jesus is saying ‘I know I’m setting you a hard task and I am sending you out on a very difficult engagement, but I am going to send you someone, the parakletos, the Advocate, the Comforter, the Helper, who will guide you as to what to do and enable you to do it.’

What is Jesus telling us about the Holy Spirit in this context, in the context of obedient love? I believe Jesus is telling us that the primary task of the Holy Spirit is to remind us of the truth, to jog our memories about all his commandments so that we can keep them in and with love. It may surprise us to think of the Holy Spirit in these terms — as a quiet whispering teacher of Jesus’ commandments. Often the Spirit is advertised in much flasher terms: the Spirit gives ecstasy, evokes speaking in tongues, and if you watch God TV, prompts dramatic and miraculous healing. Whilst the Holy Spirit does perform such deeds, all stem from the one primary purpose — to remind us about everything that Jesus taught and commanded, to remind us of the love that is Jesus.

And if we could summarise all that Jesus commanded into one statement, it would be ‘go as we have been sent, just as Jesus came as he was sent, to make the Father known’. It is about sharing a message of love that is God.

‘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 will also live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you.’

In this passage Jesus offers us three of the most precious promises in all eternity. First he promises us that we will never have to face any trial alone: he will not leave us as lost children, at risk in a dangerous world.

Then Jesus promises to claims us as his own, to claim us as his family. As he prepares for his death, he offers us this wonderful gift: because of my death and resurrection you too will be resurrected. ‘Because I live you will live also.’

Finally he promises us that we will not be onlookers to a love we can never possess. We will never know the loneliness of an orphan staring through a window at a family gathered in celebration. ‘Come in,’ Jesus calls, ‘my family is gathered and your place is reserved.’ In Christ we are in the Father and in the Father we are home.

‘They who have kept 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.’

It is keeping the commandments that will lead us to the fullness of Christ.

So what is the message for us today? When I think about where we are at, entering into the 6th week of Easter, with Pentecost just around the corner, I believe this passage is about preparing us to be sent … and I mean all of us. The gift of the Holy Spirit is poured out upon all the community. Not just the select few but on all of us. Whilst it is important to hear this passage on a personal level, it is critical that we hear it on a community level. For us Christians, spirituality is never just a personal matter, because the commandments of Jesus call us into relationship with each other, they call us into relationship with the world and all that God has created in it, they call us into community. The Holy Spirit never gives all the gifts to one person, some of us can care for others, some of us can preach, some of us can teach, some of us can pray, some of us can administrate and some of us can listen, some of us can counsel, some of us can comfort — it is as if God is saying that the purpose of God is that none of us can be self-reliant. God is saying we need each other to be church, to be a community of loving obedience to the way of Jesus.

So how is the Spirit being poured out in our community today? — I believe the Spirit is being poured out in how we show our love for each other and those that we consider the other, by working through our own issues and acting from a position of love that we know is Christ-centred. I believe it is in how we reach out with love to those from outside the gates that are starting to come inside to our community café. I believe it is about love in action.

And what about the two experiences I mentioned earlier that got me thinking about the Holy Spirit? Well the first was the section I did on Good Friday — it took someone else to point out to me that what I did was Spirit-led — I would not have articulated it in that way, I would have said I was doing what God wanted me to do and my focus would have been on the Father or on the Son, but as soon as someone — David — said ‘Spirit’ everything fell into place in a way that made sense of my experience as I understood on some deep level the nature of the triune God who loves me and cherishes me.

This led to the second experience. Now most of you know that I am in the process of exploring ordained ministry. As part of this process I meet with Peter Clements, who is the Director of Ordinands, roughly every six weeks and in between I have tasks to do. After my first meeting, Peter asked me to redo my faith journey using a time line. My Good Friday experience led me to reflect on all the other times ‘I felt I was just doing what God wanted’ as Spirit-led events, and in doing so I realised that the Holy Spirit has been very active in my life over the years. Before preparing this sermon, I would have said that I have not experienced either the gift of tongues or the gift of ecstasy, as they are traditionally described in write-up about charismatic renewal. However, now I would say whilst I may not have experienced the ‘gift of tongues’ I can say that I have experienced the ‘gift of ecstasy’ — an overwhelming feeling of great joy and happiness — because I have experienced this many times in my life. I have experienced so many other gifts of the Holy Spirit. It was through a somewhat reluctant obedience to the Holy Spirit that what started out as a six-month commitment to help lead a Community Alcohol Support Group led to a 20-year vocation in health and social care. More recently it was through listening to the Holy Spirit that I eventually openly and honestly offered myself to God and found myself answering a call that I had avoided for so long — to explore ordained ministry.

How do we know that it is the Holy Spirit that we are responding to? — by the fruits — by witnessing a love that grows bigger and bigger.

‘And those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.’

The Holy Spirit gatecrashes no-one’s heart. She waits to be received, so let us sing together: Come Holy Spirit, Come Holy Spirit, Maranatha, Come Lord come!

Copyright © 2008 Bernie Hegarty

Audio

This sermon was recorded. If you wish, you can listen to the sermon online. Just click on the appropriate link below:

*Notes on the audio formats

• MP4 format
  MP4 format is a multimedia container format standard. Audio MP4 files can combine high compression with very high quality. Many media players can play MP4 files, including RealPlayer, QuickTime, iTunes, and recent versions of Windows Media Player (you may need to download a codec from www.free-codecs.com/download/3ivx.htm).
• Windows Media Player format
  Windows Media Player is installed as part of Windows. If you have an earlier version, you can download version 9 (for Windows 98SE, Millennium and 2000) or version 10 or later (for Windows XP and Vista) from www.microsoft.com/downloads/Browse.aspx?categoryid=4. These are quite large downloads [~ 10 MB or larger], so if you have a dial-up connection you may prefer to ask Phil for a copy of the installation program on CD.
• RealAudio format
  This requires RealPlayer (or the older RealOne Player) to be installed. A free version of RealPlayer can be downloaded from http://uk.real.com/player/ (choose the free player on the left of the page) — but again it’s a large download [~ 13 MB], so if you have a dial-up connection you may prefer to ask Phil for a copy of the installation program on CD.
  
  Alternatively, you can install Real Alternative, which will allow you to play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer/RealOne Player. Real Alternative is free, and works well with all major browsers; it is also a much smaller download (5.7 MB). Get it from http://www.free-codecs.com/Real_Alternative_download.htm.

This page was last updated on Sunday, 27 April 2008

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