Delivered by Rev Dr John Evans
on Sunday 23 May, 2010 – Pentecost
Acts 2:1-2
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Romans 8:14-17
John 14:8-17, (25-27)
In the interview of the week; perhaps of the year, the following was said on the 7.30 Report last Monday night (17 May, 2010)
Tony Abbott: “All of us Kerry when we are in the heat of verbal combat so to speak will sometimes say things that go a little bit further.”
Kerry O’Brien: “How are we to know when we’re hearing your true position and when you’re fudging the truth?”
Truth that can be fudged. Truth. So is a politician a better person because they truthfully tell you that sometimes what they tell you is not true; or is the fact that anything they tell you just may not be true overshadows such a burst of candour. And then perhaps, how would you know?
Truth.
What has this to do with today – Pentecost. Well, Jesus in discussion with his disciples says to them:
“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.”
The Holy Spirit is described as being the Spirit of truth.
On this day of celebration and rejoicing about the coming of the Holy Spirit, even the Spirit of truth, I wish however, to begin with a warning not to lock in the Holy Spirit to just this day, this particular event – to this moment in history all those years ago. This was Luke’s style and we have tended to look to his account in Acts to think about the Holy Spirit’s coming, but there are other ways of viewing the Holy Spirit coming.
The evangelist Luke wrote two books: the Gospel of Luke and then the Acts of the Apostles. Luke writes like a historian. As he himself says, he wants an orderly account. The first book, the gospel account of Jesus – is the gospel account that most closely approaches what we understand as a biography or history. It is different to the other gospels. It has a clear beginning, the birth narrative of Jesus and then a strange ending of the Ascension – if you like the historian’s solution to the practical detail of what to do with the earthly body of this Jesus. Between these bookends, the history of Jesus is divided out. So about half way through, Jesus sets his face to Jerusalem. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles is even more a history, and account of the early church. Like the gospel begins with the birth of Jesus, the church begins with this Pentecost account of the Holy Spirit, the church’s birth. Then he continues from what happened in Jerusalem, to what happened in Judea, and Samaria, then through to the ends of the earth. . . Rome itself.
Luke, in an orderly fashion, thus tries to tell, first the tumultuous story of Jesus; his life death and resurrection, and then in Acts, the continuing presence of Christ as the church is established without Jesus around. So when it comes to Pentecost, as one of my commentaries says all the stops on Luke’s great literary organ are employed: a heavenly sound like a rushing wind, descending fire, patterns of transformed speech (or at least preachers understood in their own languages) and the like. He even places this event of the birth of the church onto this important festival, the Feast of Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks. This festival marked the end of the celebration of the spring harvest, a liturgical cycle that began at Passover and during which devout Israelite families praised God for God’s grace and bounty. The Feast of Weeks was also a time of covenant renewal. All stops were used in Luke’s biblical style.
However, I believe this historicizing of the coming Holy Spirit has been a mixed blessing. So has the Holy Spirit’s coming just happened once? Is it like there was only one birth and death of Jesus himself. Sometimes this is given as a reason why there has been a tendency to downplay the Holy Spirit in doctrinal history. Well it happened way back then. And then there is the fact that for the Holy Spirit to come upon you – or your church - only happens with the sound of a mighty wind, or spectacularly with tongues of fire, or more significantly, only with the speaking in tongues. Indeed within Pentecostalism there is often a rigid locking in of the need to speak in tongues, if one wants to understand truly the Holy Spirit.
At this point a profound and amazing irony arises. We endeavour to constrain the Holy Spirit. And surely, the Holy Spirit is not capable of being constrained – certainly by our human frameworks and timelines. It blows where it wills. It is not confined to a day, and to a style.
Fortunately, this way of Luke is not the only way in the New Testament of describing this continuing presence of the Divine; a continuing sense of the presence of Christ; the coming of the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul has a go, indeed numerous goes, but today we have him in the great eighth chapter of Romans. And John the evangelist also has a go. Paul and John endeavours to get at what, almost by definition, must be impossible to define and limit to human language, a much more open and free understanding of the Holy Spirit.
Paul thus distinguishes between the human spirit, if you like your breath, and the Spirit (with a capital “S”) of God. Indeed he says to set the mind on the Spirit is “life and peace” (8:6) In fact this Spirit, the Holy Spirit leads us all into a new relationship with God
“For all who are lead by the Spirit of God are children of God”(8: 14)
He calls such a process, the spirit of adoption. We become partakers in extending and living out God’s will and God’s way.
In John – the gift of the Spirit is not the bells and whistles occasion as Luke makes it out to be in Acts. It happens simply in a locked room on Easter night, when Jesus “breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit””. Indeed the risen Christ has just said “peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” The Holy Spirit here offers comfort, but also a challenge – a missional challenge. The disciples are to be like Christ in the world. A very different tone and setting to Luke’s rather amazing occasion.
In other words the Holy Spirit in other accounts of the New Testament is not full of external manifestations – rather it is about the transformation of lives from within. And it is in this context that Jesus says the Holy Spirit will come as the Spirit of truth.
In the discussion about Tony Abbott’s admission in the media, the focus has been all on the implication that what he is saying (and by his own admission, not on what he writes) may be untrue. His various statements, commitments are, well, lies. They have no basis in fact. They cannot be in anyway intended to be acted upon. In the commentary that has subsequently appeared, unpacking what is true is focused on this rather narrow question of whether his various statements can or cannot be believed. This discussion soon morphs into whether he is honest, has integrity, can be trusted. . . and ultimately worthy to be Prime Minister.
This becomes a very narrow, limiting understanding of truth. Truth, I would like to suggest is a broad, expansive understanding of a reality - which as John says in our passage, the world does not comprehend. This new or different reality is not simply about whether the words said, or even the deeds done, or events that took place are correct, or happened in actuality. It is about whether the very best that there can be, the fullness of life, or living out God’s will, is real and present. In the writings of John, truth is about a deeper level of human existence, that hitherto because of sinful men and women, we have not been able to attain. And simply because of Christ we are now able to live like that. The Spirit of truth – presents this possibility of living to us.
So in the prologue to this gospel, God’s own self is disclosed, through the incarnate word, through Christ. He is full of grace and truth (1:14) Grace – yes, forgiveness, redemption and new start – but also truth. A new way of living in tune with God – and God’s purpose for our lives.
Then Jesus, just earlier in the farewell discourses, has noted that he is “the way, the truth and the life”(14:6 ). Jesus offers a way into God – such is truth. It is not just about right words, right doctrines, it also involves right actions. So again just before our passage he offers the new commandment that we love one another as he, Christ, has loved us. And in indeed he reminds his disciples “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”. Truth is about abiding in God; and then God will abide in you.
Little wonder when Jesus is confronted by Pilate at the end of John’s gospel, with the question in his trial whether he was a king, the king of the Jews, Jesus replies
“You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” (18:37)
Pilate was wanting a yes no answer whether this statement was correct. Jesus alludes to the fact that truth runs much deeper. His life was to reveal this truth. At this point, Pilate, who probably thought he knew truth from falsehood, famously utters the question “what is truth?”
Well it is indeed the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, the Spirit of Christ: God as revealed in Christ. It is as if this Jesus continues among us. Truth is not tied to a series of propositions, or particular fixed immutable positions, or just particular manifestations, like talking in tongues. Rather it is being open to God in Christ acting in and through us. It is dynamic, it can be disturbing, or it can be comforting and reassuring.
The Holy Spirit comes at surprising times and in surprising ways. Pentecost happens whenever. Are we open to its coming? Are we open to the Spirit of truth?
