“The Spirit of Truth” Psalm 8; John 16: 4b-15 The Reverend Joanna M. Adams Morningside Presbyterian Church Atlanta, GA June 3, 2007

“The Spirit of Truth”
Psalm 8; John 16: 4b-15
The Reverend Joanna M. Adams
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Atlanta, GA
June 3, 2007

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. John 16:13

It is a fact that the nature of God is a mystery to our finite human minds, and yet the mysteriousness of God does not stop us from wanting to understand God. For the past two thousand years, one of the most important means by which the church has understood God has been through the doctrine of the Trinity: the God who creates and rules the world in sovereign love, the God who draws near to us in Jesus of Nazareth, the God who is everywhere the giver and renewer of life; God the Creator, God the Redeemer, God the Sustainer; God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Of the three persons of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is undoubtedly the most elusive. I particularly like the images in the Book of Acts, from the second chapter which was read last Sunday, on Pentecost: the flames – the tongues – of fire and the rush of a mighty wind. They connote light and energy. A more contemporary way to think of the Holy Spirit is to say that when the gift of the Holy Spirit is given to the church, the community of faith becomes wired to carry the current of life. That is not to say that the church has a monopoly on the Holy Spirit. As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses. You hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going.” (John 3:8)

In his farewell address in John’s gospel, Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit. We have spent several Sundays now in a most eloquent passage in the gospel of John, the Farewell Discourse, where Jesus prepares his followers to cope with his absence. He acknowledges that just as there has been a conflict between him and the world, there will be conflict between his followers and the world. He goes on to assure them that they will not be left with only their own resources to rely on. He is going to send someone else, who he calls the Advocate. “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the spirit of truth who comes from the Father, will testify on my behalf. (John 15:26) What a striking metaphor for the Spirit of God! We are accustomed to think of the Spirit as being like wind and energy, but God the Holy Spirit, who is the Advocate, the one who testifies to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Is there anything more elusive in our world today than truth?

I read recently that the American Dialect Society chooses a new word each year as the favorite newly invented word in the English vocabulary. This past year, guess what it was? Maybe David Wingert, our astronomer, would know. It is “plutoed”, meaning to be demoted or devalued, as poor old planet Pluto was. Remember how it got kicked off the planet list? The year before, the word was “truthiness”, as in what one wants to be the truth, regardless of the facts. “Truthiness” is when you say whatever you have to say, not because it is so, but because you need for it to be true. Can we think of a recent illustration just this past week? How about the fellow with tuberculosis who flew to a Greek isle for his wedding? Who is telling the truth , the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in that situation?

The Lord God lamented to Jeremiah in the seventh century B.C.E., “The truth has perished; it has been cut from the peoples’ lips.” We are loaded with information in our day, but truth is in short supply. Jesus said, “When the Spirit of truth comes he will guide you in all truth.” God will be your Advocate, God will be the defender of the truth. God will be your Counselor, who will argue your case, stand beside you in every trial of life, and give you the gift of discernment between that which is real and that which is false.

Do you remember Lee Atwater, who died in 1991? He was a prominent political operative. Not long before he died, he said, as quoted in Life, “My illness helped me perceive what is missing in our society, and…what was missing in our society was missing in me. A little heart, a lot of brotherhood. We’re about acquiring in our society. Acquiring wealth, power, prestige. But you can acquire all you want and still be empty. . . It took a deadly illness to bring me eye to eye with that truth. But it is a truth that a country caught up in ruthless ambition and moral decay can learn in my dying. [Whoever will lead us into the future] must be made to speak to the spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society.” This is the truth he learned.

I believe that the Holy Spirit is alive and well in the world, teaching people of every political persuasion, at some point or another, the value of truth. If the Christian church has any role in contemporary American society, surely it is to be stewards of the truth. We must let the power of the truth come through us. We must testify to the truth, not only for our own sakes, but for the sake of the larger society of which we are a part and to whom we are called to be light and salt.

If the doctrine of the Holy Spirit has anything to teach us, it is that the God who spoke through the prophets and the apostles long ago is acting and speaking here and now in the present tense. The question is: what do you think the Spirit is saying to the church and through the church? What is the testimony that we are to make? What is the word that the Spirit wants to put into our ear? Whose case is God pleading?

One of my favorite novels is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. A small-town southern lawyer, Atticus Finch, comes to the defense of a black man accused of raping a white woman. One night before the trial begins, Atticus sits in his rocking chair, reading the evening paper, the Mobile Press. He puts it on the floor and reaches out his arms to his daughter Scout, who comes to sit on his lap. They talk quietly, the father’s arms around the daughter. He knew there would be trouble for her ahead, that her classmates would taunt her. He knew the community hated what he was doing, and he tried to help her understand why he simply had to do what he was about to do – testifying to the truth. “Scout, when summer comes, you’ll have to keep your head. It’s not fair for you and Jim, but you have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down – well, all I can say is that maybe when you are grown, you will look back at this with some compassion and [see that I tried] not to let you down. Tom Robinson’s case goes to the essence of a man’s conscience. . . I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help this man.”
Scout answers, “Everybody in town thinks you are wrong.”

“They’re…entitled to think whatever they want, but…I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is the person’s conscience.” (1)

When the Holy Spirit, when the Advocate comes, the Advocate will lead you in the truth. Atticus went on to try the case, and, he lost, but his character remained intact, and the conscience of the town was never the same again.

Then, there was the day that Atticus, the advocate, talked with his son about the proper use of the air rifle Jim had been given as a gift. “Son, I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’re going to go after the birds. [Just remember, Jim,] it’s a sin to kill a mocking bird. . . They don’t eat people’s gardens; don’t nest in the corn cribs; they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.” (2)
Advocacy for the innocent. Is that not something that should be on the job description of the church of Jesus Christ? The church that is filled with the current of life and with the Spirit of truth? Advocacy for the innocent is as much a part of our Christian calling as anything I know.
I was grateful that the Session of Morningside Presbyterian Church formed an Advocacy Committee two months ago, chaired by one of our Elders. I was grateful that our Session endorsed a resolution that had come from Trinity Presbyterian Church to speak out against genocide in Darfur in the Sudan. I am grateful when I look out at you – visitors and members alike – I know what you do in the world to look out for the innocent, to speak up for the little ones and the excluded ones, and the unjustly treated ones in our society.

I believe in a simple test to determine whether or not a faith community is Spirit-filled, in the sense that the Gospels understand. It is not whether we speak in tongues and wave our hands in the air, but whom are we standing up for? What are we saying no to? What are we saying yes to? In what ways do the values of the Christian gospel challenge the values of American society – the society of which we are a part – that is marked by so much greed, ambition and lust for power?

When it comes to individuals, there is another test, one Frederick Buechner suggests. An individual can use it to determine if he or she is alive, or just going through the motions of being alive. There are three questions in this test.

1. Have you wept at anything in the past year [that did not affect you personally]?
2. More often than not, do you really listen when people are talking, instead of just waiting for your turn to speak?
3. Is there anyone that you know, in whose place, if one of you had to suffer…[or even to die], you would offer yourself instead?
If your answer to any of those questions is No, Frederick Buechner suggests the chances are that you are dead already and you just don’t know it. (3)
4. Our Presbyterian “Brief Statement of Faith” has this beautiful line in it: “We trust in God, the Holy Spirit, everywhere the giver of life.” And in the Gospel of John, there is the wonderful association of the Spirit of life with the Spirit of truth. I trust that the current of life is pulsating through this community and through your heart and mind and the hearts and minds of people of good will everywhere, lifting up a new generation that will want to make it a part of their calling of faith to plead the case of the powerless.

Many of you know that I’ve been worried about homeless children, women and men for a long time. Twenty-five years ago I began working on this issue. I learned last week at a meeting at United Way that in the 3-county area of metro Atlanta there are 17,000 school age children who are homeless. They haven’t counted the children who are from 1 week to 6 years old, but the United Way spokesperson said it would be appropriately conservative simply to double the number. So there are 34,000 children between 1 week and six years old. Add it up! That’s a lot of children. What in the world is the matter with this community that we tolerate those kinds of numbers? Why don’t we see the children and help them?

Today is a good day for us to ask ourselves what we stand for. What brave work might God be calling us to do now? Whatever it is, let us take comfort in the assurance that God is with us in power, and in truth, as much with us – no, even with us more – than when Jesus himself walked the earth. Listen to what Jesus said, “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” (John 16:7) And so he did. Thanks be to God for the gift of the Holy Spirit who is wind, who is fire, who is truth, whose “bright wings are never still.” (4)

(1) Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1960, p.113-114.
(2) Ibid, p. 98.
(3) Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, Harper & Row, 1973, p.51.
(4) A Beuchner phrase.