The Promise

John 16:12-15
Trinity Sunday
June 10, 2022
William G. Carter

Jesus says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

It is a scene familiar to so many of you. You come into a room like this and take a familiar seat. Around you, there are people you know. The preacher is at the front of the room. You know him. You’ve heard him speak. You are familiar with his voice.

For some reason, he’s going on for a while. He’s moving beyond the ritual expectation of a sermon. No, he’s going on and on and on.

Perhaps the circumstances warrant this, a crisis that must be addressed. Or it’s a topic dear to the preacher’s heart, and he feels compelled to share something he knows all too well. Or the long sermon is prompted by the preacher getting too much sleep or drinking too much coffee. Whatever!

Imagine the relief when the preacher says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear to hear them now.” Everybody takes a breath, for they recognize there’s a fine line between a long sermon and a hostage situation. They know that preacher has so many more things to say to them. And they are relieved to know the preacher recognizes the listeners can only absorb so much. They can’t bear to hear much more.

And the preacher’s dangling expectation is that he will have more to say to them in the days and months ahead.

Lots more, in fact.

Can any of you identify with this? If so, you can identify with the disciples of Jesus. Of all the long speeches in the Gospel of John, this is the longest. Jesus has been speaking for three and a half chapters, and will go on for another half chapter, followed by a chapter-long prayer. That is a lot of red ink in your red-letter Bible.

The Gospel of John portrays Jesus as an imaginative preacher and thoughtful teacher. When he’s not speaking, he’s doing something, and then he follows it by a long description of what he just did. This is how he reveals God – by what he does and what he says. And in this section, he’s been going on a while.

The setting for this long speech is the Last Supper. The storm clouds have formed against him, and Jesus knows the time is short before he leaves this life and returns to God. So these are his last-minute instructions; well, ok, maybe not last minute – more like last hour. He wants to instruct his followers on how to make their way though the world without him.

The evening begins with the washing of feet, and then the lesson: “As I have washed your feet, so you must wash one another’s feet.” After this, a series of lessons:

• Love another as I have loved you.
• Where I am going, you cannot go, but I will come again to take you there.
• If you love me, you will do more than I can do.
• Even though I go, stay with me by staying in my love.
• Don’t be surprised when the world hates you because the world hated me first.
• Stay with me by staying in my love.
• It is to your advantage that I go away because God will send the Spirit – My Spirit.

And then, “I have many more things to say to you, but you can’t bear to hear them now…” No doubt, the air is thick with confusion and fear. What will it mean to live without the physical presence of Jesus? He says it’s time for him to go. What now? How are we going to make our way forward?

Then comes the promise: the Spirit will come. In the Greek language of our text, “Spirit” is a feminine noun. So, the Spirit will come. She will keep teaching. She will keep speaking. She will now work through all of you. She will lead you into the Truth, which is the Truth about me as well as the Truth about yourselves. She will glorify me.

It is a powerful promise, for it opens to us a functional understanding of the Trinity. The Father sends Jesus on a mission to the world, to reveal truth and grace. As Jesus returns to the Father, Jesus and the Father send the Spirit, to continue revealing truth and grace. As Father, Son, and Spirit, God has a continuing relationship with the world. Jesus who has said so much to us will keep speaking through the Presence of the Spirit. Faith has a future. The words recorded in the Bible will keep opening up to reveal God. Heaven is not closed but available here on earth.

Now, this is a risky thing for Jesus to say. Because after he’s gone, what’s to keep his followers from veering off course? There has been no shortage of crazy ideas popping up for the two thousand years. Often, it’s come from some new charismatic leader convincing his followers of a “new revelation.” As a result, there has been a proliferation of Christian denominations.

Some sell all their possessions, gather on a mountaintop, and start the countdown for the Lord’s return. Others insist on pulling back from society, living in chastity, and then wondering forty years later why their group is dying out. Some argue over big theological words which they have elevated over all else. Others take the risky step of declaring God loves more people, and includes more people, than their old church did.

And then some – this includes the Presbyterians – will make a big statement that becomes enshrined and frozen in time, while others believe that God is perfectly capable of continuing to speak in a language we can understand.

I remember taking part in a ministers’ retreat at Camp Lackawanna, back when we had a lot of ministers. We were reviewing a new confirmation curriculum. It was a friendly conversation. One of the ministers sat over on the couch. He always had a smile, and he was an old duffer, the kind who slept in a coat and tie. Pretty soon, he made it clear that he enjoyed being with the rest of the clergy but had no intention of changing his approach to confirmation, or anything else.

We asked, What do you do? He said, “I require my confirmation class to memorize the Westminster Catechism.”

But that document was approved in 1648! “Yes, but it contains all we need to know about the Christian faith.”

One of the younger ministers said, “But haven’t Christians had any new thoughts since 1648?” And he looked astonished. Didn’t know what to say.

Later when a few of us went for a walk, somebody joked, “I don’t think Harry had a new thought since 1648.”

Now, we can laugh about that, or argue about that, or stay frozen in our convictions. I prefer to simply quote Jesus: “I have many things more to say to you, but you cannot bear to hear them. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into all the truth about myself.” He was speaking not only to frightened disciples at the Last Supper. He was speaking to the church.

Scholars believe the Gospel of John was written down about sixty years after the words and events described. Sixty years is a long time to remember what someone said and did, even if he was the Savior o the world. Not only was this document written in the name of John, but it was also supported by the community of Christians around John. This is a community document, a church document.

And the experience of the church is that Jesus Christ kept speaking. Sixty years later, probably up in the city of Ephesus, a group of Christian people heard Jesus speak through the weekly sermons, the sharing of stories, the reflection on what they heard Christ say. Their experience was that Christ is alive – crucified and risen decades before, yet now vitally alive. And they heard him through the experience of the Spirit.

Let see if a favorite analogy will work. This text has become so important to me. I call it “memory verse of a jazz musician.” Let me explain. Years ago, I took a week of vacation and took my jazz quartet on tour. The first night we played a concert at Wayside Presbyterian Church, in Erie, Pennsylvania. The best part of the concert is that my grandmother was there. She lived two miles from that church. This was my mother’s mother, who corrupted me as a teenage by giving two recordings by Dave Brubeck. Deep into advanced age, this was the first time she heard me play the piano in twenty-five years.

The concert was over. She wheeled up on her walker, waited patiently as we talked with other concertgoers. While she waited, she picked up a piece of sheet music from the piano, looked at it intently, looked inside the piano, looked back at the sheet music. When I turned to her, she said, “How did you play for seven minutes on one page of music?” I smiled and said, “Grandma, they ask me that at home. I read three verses of scripture and then talk for eighteen minutes.”

She said, “How do they know you’re not just making up stuff?” And I replied, “Grandma, they still have the text.” The band may create a conversation, but they still have the tune. The preacher may generate a conversation, but at the center of it all, there’s Jesus. For the assumption is that the text doesn’t only a past (who wrote it, what were the circumstances); the text also has a future. It has a generative potential that moves forward in time – and this is the promise of the Spirit.

There are a lot of things that the Bible doesn’t talk about. You may have noticed that. And there are a lot of things that the Bible does talk about – but the circumstances were different, or the writers spoke from the assumptions of their culture, never dreaming that other cultures would hear the text. The Bible says, “Slaves, obey your masters,” to which I say, “Yikes!” Or as one of my teachers once observed, “The Bible says women should keep silence in church, but I never knew any women who believed that verse.” Praise God for that. Women founded this church!

The gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, is to bring the Bible alive. To connect then and there to here and now. To animate our faith, not put it to sleep. To remind us of what we have conveniently forgotten. To convict us of the Truth we too readily dismissed. To guide us in all our conversations to the Center of it all, which is the grace and truth of Jesus Christ.

Living faith has a living God at the heart of it, and the Spirit of God continues the word and work of Jesus among us. I guess that what I want to say today.

And there’s so much more to say about this… but you cannot bear to hear it now. So, I will see you next week.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.