A Sermon Based Upon John 16: 12-15 NRSV
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Trinity Sunday, May 22th, 2016
"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now (Jn. 16:12 NRS).
Last year, just before Christmas, one of the ladies brought a “Christmas Quiz” for the Senior Adults. It had all kinds of questions about the original Christmas story, but to the amazement of some, much that is assumed about the Christmas story is not the story at all. For example, the very first question was about the ‘innkeeper’. But there was no ‘innkeeper’, just the mention of ‘no room in the inn’. Then, there was also a question about the ‘animals’ around the ‘manger’, but no animals are mentioned. The word ‘manager’ does mean a ‘feeding or watering trough’ but nothing else is said. Finally, in the story from Matthew, we are told that ‘wise men’ came from the east following his star, but no one knows how many wise men there were. We are told that ‘wise men’ brought ‘three gifts’ fit for a king, but there is no mention of their being three nor that they were kings.
The point of the quiz was well made: Even when we think we know something, we may not know as much as we think we do.
YOU CANNOT BEAR THEM NOW
Having awareness that we don’t, and can’t know everything is very important in matters of faith and life. Unfortunately, some wrongly think they already know everything they need to know, even when there’s so much more to learn. Sometimes this can have tragic consequences.
Not long ago I learned about the story of Sandra Chase. Sandra was a woman from Florida, who in the late 1990’s traveled to Ecuador on vacation, but when coming through the airport to fly home she was wrongly and falsely accused of drug smuggling. They found several bags of cocaine in her luggage, so without any investigation, they threw her and a friend in prison, without the possibility of bail or a trial; even though she tried to tell them that she did not know how it got there. Sandra already had health problems, and would have died in prison, were it not for the persistence of her daughter, a congresswoman, and the news reporting of 60 minutes, who put pressure on the Ecuadorian government to release her, on health reasons. This appeal took almost two years and Sandra’s health was on edge of total collapse when she was finally released. None of this should have happened, and would not have happened, were it not for the extreme, corrupt policy of Ecuadorian government to put people away without fair trials or allowing any more questions to be asked.
To be true to the nature of life and faith, we must always be as much about asking the right kinds of questions as about having all the right answers. Asking questions about truth is even important when the truth is right in front of us. Consider our text today. Jesus has spoken the truth to his disciples from day one, even declaring himself as ‘the truth, the way, and the life’ (Jn. 14:6). But just before leaving his disciples, Jesus informs them that he ‘still has many things to say,’ but they ‘cannot bear them now’ (v.12). The point is clear. Jesus affirms that when it comes to matters of faith, knowledge, and truth, there is always more to learn and more to discover.
When you think about it, this is a very intriguing statement. Jesus did not tell his disciples everything, nor could he, even if he wanted too. Even some of the most important spiritual lessons they needed to learn could not come all in one moment. Truth takes time, and God’s truth, because it belongs to God, should take even more time to understand. We cannot, as limited and finite humans ‘bear’ it all..
That humans learn and understand most everything gradually and partially, based upon age, maturity and experience is well-known among educators. The classic affirmation of what we all know about learning and truth comes from Scripture itself, as the apostle Paul wrote, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways (1 Cor. 13:11 NRS). So, when Jesus said he had ‘many things left to say’ to his disciples, it was not because they were slow learners, though they were at times, but as John's gospel concludes: ‘There were many other things that Jesus did; (but) if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. (Jn. 21:25 NRS).
The point here is both humbling and challenging. There is so much to learn and so much to understand about life and about faith, yet our human ability to acquire and contain this knowledge is mostly gradual and always limited. However, I did once hear about a pastor who told his congregation that there was ‘nothing in the Bible he did not understand’. He said he could interpret every nook and cranny of every chapter and verse. That pastor may have been a smart fellow, but I found it rather strange that man with an earned doctorate, but without any specialized training in Biblical interpretation or theology, would dare claim to understand ‘everything’ in the Bible. Most people I know, who master anything about most any topic, end up realizing how much they don’t know, how much there will always be to learn, rather than how they have learned everything. His statement told me a lot more of what he thought about himself, than how much he knew the Bible.
Knowledge is important, but there are many different kinds of knowledge. Even if you have mastered knowledge of the facts you still may not fully understand them, or know how to use that knowledge in real life. Think about the difference between completing the book work for driver’s training, having learned the basics facts of driving, and then actually learning how to drive. I remember the first time I got behind the wheel as a student driver. I pressed the accelerator but the car went slower. When I mentioned to the instructor that something was bad wrong, he informed me he was checking out his emergency brake. That’s what you do when you've got somebody behind the wheel who thinks he knows more than he actually knows. A driving instructor knows just how dangerous a driver is who thinks they know more than they really know.
Jesus taught his disciples many new things about faith. Some of those ‘teachings’ are remembered in the gospels of the New Testament. The disciples wanted to know and remember his truth, but still, they could only understand it gradually and partially. (Recall how hard it was for them to understand that ‘the Son of Man’ must suffer, Mark 8: 31-33). They had great faith in Jesus. They gained new knowledge from what he taught. They even had some exciting new experiences with him, but what they did not have was full knowledge of him nor experience outside of their small little group. This meant that they had to trust Jesus based on faith too. Even having Jesus with them, they could only understood him partially, because just like us, no one can grasp the truth all at once. Real truth, if it is ‘the truth’ remains larger than us and always stays out in front of and beyond us. As Paul humbly admitted, even about the gospel truth: ‘For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end” ( 1 cor. 13:9-10).
Do you realize how important it is, even for our faith, for our salvation and our full redemption in Christ that we understand Paul, when he says ‘the complete’ has not yet ‘come’. This is part of why it is important for us to realize just how much we still don't know? Recently I heard doctors admitting how much we still don't know about the most basic functions of the human body. Even as advanced as biological or medical science has become, we still don't know why people yawn. We can't even figure out why people blush or why we dream at night. We still can't cure the most common cold either; part of the reason being that every cold virus is different. Science also can't explain why placebos work as good as medicines 50-60 percent of the time for most people. And no matter how many great medicines we develop, science can’t always explain why or how a lot of them work either.
Even though we know more than ever, and have access to more knowledge than ever, and can also access that knowledge almost instantly, we still have many, many limitations. For example, in spite of all the ‘knowledge’ we have access to these days sometimes people still can't understand the simplest, most ordinary things. As we all know, in this age of ‘Smart phones’ people who have them don't always seem to be smarter. I’ve told you about the family gathered around the table at a restaurant, where the parents were on their phones, with heads down, not conversing with their two kids who were setting there with looks of boredom and loneliness. Last year, I saw a news report about how many people are having unnecessary and avoidable accidents while walking with cell phones. They showed a video of a woman with eyes focused on her phone as she fell over a wall into a water fountain. They also showed a man who was so focused on his phone that we walked off an elevated train platform. Another report stated how a man in NY City was run over by a truck backing up. It was believed that the sound of his ipod drowned out the truck’s warning signal. The report detailed many other reports around the world that avoidable pedestrian accidents are on the rise (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/deaths-on-the-rise-for-distracted-pedestrians/). Even in a world with increasing knowledge, we can be, as Paul wrote Timothy, “Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7, KJV). Sometimes the truth we are unable to observe is as evident as the truth of a truck backing up.
HE WILL GUIDE YOU INTO ALL THE TRUTH
Since Jesus knew that the disciples would need to have knowledge of the truth and not just ‘knowledge’, Jesus promised that ‘the Spirit of truth’ would ‘guide’ them ‘into all the truth’ (16:13). In other words, humans aren't just created to acquire knowledge, but humans need to be ‘guided’ to discover the most necessary ‘truth’ that comes from having the right kind of knowledge, which can give both life and faith.
In the Hebrew Bible, we are told ‘ wisdom’ is the most ‘necessary’ knowledge truth should bring to us. The author of Proverbs wrote that ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning’ of this kind of ‘wisdom…’ Here, we should not understand ‘fear’ as anxiety, as much as having reverence, respect, and humility before the eternal God who is our only source of truth and understanding beyond our selves. The writer of Proverbs continues to explain the way to this kind of wisdom: ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and all your mind, and lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will shall direct your paths’ (Prov. 3:14-15). Here we learn that we are not able to gain God’s wisdom until we stop ‘leaning on our own’. Ironically, the point is that the greatest wisdom starts when we realize what we don't know, not what we do. The discovery of our limitations, our shortcomings, and our weaknesses is where we begin to gain access to a wisdom that ‘acknowledges’ God and allows him to ‘direct’ our lives. In today’s text, Jesus explains that it is the Holy Spirit will lead, guide and direct his own willing disciples to the ‘truth’ they still need to learn.
When we begin to think about the Holy Spirit, we come to one of the most neglected topics in Christian biblical teaching . Some of our neglect to mention the Holy Spirit is understandable. Even Jesus told us that the Spirit would not come to ‘speak on his own’ (16:13) or about himself. He said it would be the work of the Spirit to ‘speak whatever he hears,’ (v. 13b) which means that he will come to remind and enlarge upon the things Jesus said and taught. As our spiritual guide, the Spirit is to guide us to live the same truth in the same spirit as Jesus lived and was. But what does this mean? How can we be led or guided into ‘all truth’ by the Holy Spirit?
Again, many Christians get nervous when the Holy Spirit is mentioned, and rightly so, as many strange things have been thought and taught to be the work of the Spirit by some well-meaning Christians. To help us understand what the Bible means when it speaks about the Spirit, or why orthodox Christians have named the Holy Spirit the third person of the Trinity, we need to consider the very practical teaching of Parker Palmer, an expert in field of education, and a great teacher of teachers, both secular and religious.
In the preface to his book about education and knowledge, To Know As We Are Known, Parker Palmer speaks about the crisis of education in America and then begins to share about some of the new and necessary discoveries among scholars in the education of learning. These scholars have come to realize that at the most fundamental level, learning is not so much about mastering cold, objective facts, but good learning is based upon developing strong relational ties between students and their teachers. In the most direct way, Palmer asserts that learning is communal and relational. In other words, without the support of communities, parents, and having a positive rapport between teachers and students, learning is at least hindered, or at most rendered impossible.
I find Palmer’s language astounding, because it is education research, based on secular and scientific principles, which point us to the source of all human life and knowledge; the communion that exists between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Learning must be communal and relational because all reality is based upon the divine reality of community that exists within the nature of God. It is this most basic spiritual reality, in which we guided by the Spirit, at the ground of all reality, that we can be led into the most necessary truth we need for life and living. This source of wisdom or truth comes from the Father who has revealed himself through the Son, and still speaks and reveals himself through the Spirit who is Holy, because God is Holy.
Again, this truth is basic, but it is never forced upon us. We must invite and allow this Holy Spirit to ‘guide us’ into the ‘truth’, because, in the confusion life and living, and because of our own selfish, misguided, or neglectful will, the most obvious truths may become less obvious to us, or be hidden from us, unless we focus, renew or open own hearts up to God’s loving, living, and life-giving spiritual truth. In other words, because of the way we are, because of the way life can be, and because of what can and will happen to us, we need God’s Spirit to guide us, or we can lose our perspective upon what is the most necessary and most obvious truths for the living of our lives..
We can miss the most important truths too, and this can be our undoing. In the documentary Film ‘The Day After Trinity’, the story is told of the American team who produced the first atomic bomb. Ironically, “Trinity” was the code name for that original explosion. The film is filled with images of horror as mushroom clouds appear in test after test until the greatest amount of destruction is mastered by the scientist and then released. As one of the lead scientists of creating ‘the bomb’, Robert Oppenheimer wrote: “To feel it’s there in your hands---to release the energy that fuels the stars. To let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles---to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles, I would say---this is what you might call technical arrogance that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.”
When you watch this film, and you relive the history, and you come to realize all this destructive power is still here, lying dormant, but just waiting on a sick mind, a rouge leader, or an evil empire that can harness its destructive possibilities; like an Iran, North Korea, or even a corrupt, western politician; when you see, as Parker Palmer suggested, how our own misguided knowledge can become ‘means’ which can take us towards ‘ ends’ we would all want to renounce----‘we would renounce this----Palmer wrote, ‘but the problem with what happened with the bomb named ‘Trinity’ is not a single one of those scientists realized the kind of massive, world-destroying power they were unleashing in the world, until ‘the day after’. When you are only ‘lead’ or ‘guided’ by what you learn or realize the day after, one day it can be the ‘day after’ too late. (From ‘To Know as We are Known’ by Parker Palmer, Harper Collins, 1993, p. 2-3)
WHAT IS MINE, HE WILL DECLARE TO YOU
We need God’s truth desperately, but how can we be sure that it is God’s Spirit that is speaking to us, and not the echo of our own ideas or opinions? Jesus finally tells us that the Spirit “will take what is mine and declare it to you” (16:15). How does this work? Can we be sure of this? How do we know that it is the Holy Spirit, not only just our human spirit?
Back in 1989 Dr. Francis Collins, who served as head of the Human Genome Project had an opportunity to serve in a missionary hospital in Nigeria. He became overwhelmed by the volume of illness and suffering and the lack of resources to treat them. "Tuberculosis, malaria, tetanus, and a wide variety of parasitic diseases all reflected an environment that was completely unregulated and a health care system that was completely broken." He grew more and more discouraged.
One afternoon a young farmer came into the clinic suffering from the accumulation of a large amount of fluid in the pericardial sac around his heart. A symptom of tuberculosis, this fluid was choking him to death. The only chance to save him was to carry out a highly risky procedure of drawing off the pericardial fluid with a large bore needle placed in his chest. In the developed world, such a procedure would be done only by a highly trained interventional cardiologist, guided by an ultrasound machine, in order to avoid lacerating the heart and causing immediate death.
No ultrasound was available. No other physician present in this small Nigerian hospital had ever undertaken this procedure. The only choice was to attempt a highly risky and invasive needle aspiration or watch the farmer die. Dr. Collins explained the situation to the young man, who was now fully aware of his own precarious state. He calmly urged the doctor to proceed. With a prayer on his lips, Dr. Collins inserted a large needle just under his sternum and aimed for his left shoulder, all the while fearing he might have made the wrong diagnosis, in which case he would almost certainly kill him.
The outcome would come quick. The rush of dark red fluid in the syringe initially made the doctor panic that he might have entered the heart chamber, but it soon became apparent that this was not normal heart’s blood. It was a massive amount of bloody tuberculous effusion from the sac around the heart. There was a feeling of relief, and then elation. But as Dr. Collins continued to think about the future for this young farmer, he recognized how unlikely it still was that the young man would survive much longer. The likelihood of his continuing the necessary treatment, the presence of so many other pathogens and germs, inadequate nutrition, the dangerous environment... The man’s chances were very poor.
With discouraging thoughts in his head, the doctor approached the man’s bedside the next morning, finding him reading his Bible. The patient looked at the doctor quizzically, and asked how long the doctor had worked at this hospital. Dr. Collins had to admit that he was new, admitted that I was new, feeling somewhat embarrassed and irritated that it had been so easy for him to figure that out. But then this young Nigerian farmer, just about as different in culture, experience, and ancestry as any two humans could be, spoke the these unforgettable words: "I get the sense you are wondering why you came here," he said. "I have an answer for you. You came here for one reason. You came here for me."
Dr. Collins was stunned. It was as if the farmer was looking straight into the doctor’s heart. The doctor wrote: “I had plunged a needle close to his heart; but now he had directly impaled mine. With a few simple words he had put my grandiose dreams of being the great white doctor, healing the African millions, to shame. (From Francis S. Collins, The Language of God, p. 213f.).
And Dr. Collins is right. We are never called to be great, but we are all called to love, to help, and to reach out to each other in times of need. On rare occasions that can happen on a grand scale. But most of the time being who we are supposed to be and doing what we are supposed to do, happens on the smallest of scales; in simple acts of kindness of one person to another. These are the events that really matter. Here, in this simple act of compassion and care, this doctor became a human being who was ‘guided’ by the Spirit, in harmony with God’s will, and bonded together with another human being in a most unlikely but marvelous way. Each of them had poured out themselves to the other, and they experienced the spiritual truth that unites them — that life is only remains possible when humans life are guided by God’s Holy Spirit who makes known the truth of God’s love known through Jesus Christ, the Son.
Do you see what is that ‘great truth’ the Holy Spirit has to ‘declare’ to us? Let me emphasized this once more. In his book Reaching Out, the popular professor, chaplain to the handicapped, and spiritual writer Henri Nouwen, tells a story about one of his former students who returned to visit with him. The student knocked at his door, entered his teacher’s presence and said: "I have no problems this time, no questions to ask you. I do not need counsel or advice, but I simply want to celebrate some time with you," the student said. Henri described their visit as one of the most remarkable of all his life. After they sat facing each other, talked a little about their lives, friends, and their hearts, they became silent. “They silence of that moment was not embarrassing”, but it was “warm, gentle, and vibrant.” Then, after hearing a few cars pass, the noise of someone emptying the trash in the distance, they suddenly became aware of an even ‘greater presence embracing’ them both. Breaking the silence, the student said, “It is good to be here.” “Yes it is,” came the answer. After another long silence, and peace filled the space between them, the student affirmed to his teacher, “When I look at you it’s as if I am in the presence of Christ.” Hearing these profound words of appreciation, the teacher looked straight into the eyes of his student and returned, “It is the Christ in you, who recognizes the Christ in me.” From that moment on, Nouwen said, he knew that the ground they shared together would be ‘holy ground’. (Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out, p. 45).
How do you know that the Holy Spirit is ‘declaring’ something to you? It’s really not that hard. You must realize that you don’t know everything. You must realize that there is always more to know. And most of all, you must realize that the greatest knowledge is spiritual, and by spiritual, you don’t mean invisible or spooky knowledge, but you mean the revelation of relationships, community, of compassion and of love. In our text today, Jesus says “All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” Do you know what is God’s that also belongs to Jesus as should be ‘declared’ to us? We belong to God and we belong to Jesus Christ. When we are being ‘guided’ by the Spirit, we are being ‘guided’ to understand, to care, and have compassion on each other and to have community with each other in this world.
Our Bible begins with the ‘Spirit’ hovering over the deep, as God creates and breaths life into the world and humans beings (Gen. 1:2; 2:7). Our Bible ends with the “Spirit” and ‘the bride’ saying ‘come’. “Let everyone who hears say, ‘Come’. And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift’…Come Lord Jesus!’ (Rev. 22: 17-20). All this means one thing and reduces the Bible to one truth: God invites us. We are his and we should, we must, let the Spirit guide us to ‘come’ and be ‘his’ together. It is the Holy Spirit, the breath of Trinity, who guides us to find ‘life’ in the community and in fellowship of ‘the Spirit and the bride’ who say ‘come’. Will you come? Amen.
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