(The following is taken from Len Finn’s sermon on May 8, 2016)
“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.
I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you. “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. (John 15:26–16:4 ESV)
Eavesdropping
Do you remember when Dumbledore lets Harry Potter look into his memories in a pensieve? Well, similarly, John here is giving us a glimpse into one of his memories of Jesus. In a manner of speaking, we’re outsiders eavesdropping.
The problem is this: have you ever overheard a conversation and assumed they were talking about you? Whole sitcom episodes are based on that kind of misunderstanding. And this passage from John is a bit like that, because it’s very easy to hear Jesus talking and think He must be talking about you and me. However, Jesus is talking just to John and the other disciples that were in that room with Him.
If we look at things a bit more closely, this becomes clear.
“And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.” (John 15:27 ESV)
I haven’t been on team Jesus for all of my life, let alone since the beginning of His ministry. Or looking a little further on…
“They will put you out of the synagogues…” (John 16:2 ESV)
I’ve never even been in a synagogue. I think the closest was this fantastic Jewish deli on Second Avenue in New York City, and I most certainly didn’t get kicked out of there.
So, although John wants us to hear these words, he wants us to hear them in context. Jesus is giving his disciples a heads-up. They have been with Him since the beginning. They are all Jews, who will be kicked out of the synagogues. Once Jesus is risen and ascended to the Father, they are the ones who will be persecuted by the religious establishment.
The Persecuted and the Persecutors
Why am I making such a big deal out of this? Well, there’s a big stress in what Jesus is saying on the coming of the Spirit in the context of the coming persecution. The danger for us is that it is very easy to generalize what Jesus is saying specifically to His disciples and imagine Christians in general in the role of victims. That’s especially easy to do in our own current context, where it seems that the tide of the culture has shifted and turned against “Christian values.”
The hard reality to face, however, is that the history of the Church after that first generation hasn’t always been a history of being persecuted, but also of being persecutors. And that’s often the story of our lives as Christians, too.
To put it differently, we are sadly all too often on the wrong side of Jesus’s words:
“Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.” (John 16:2 ESV)
Within a few generations of the Church, Christians were fighting and killing each other (not to mention others).
Or think of all the inquisitions and wars that raged at the time of the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries: Christians torturing and slaughtering Christians.
And then there’s the long history of persecuting Jews, or of atrocities against indigenous inhabitants of the “New World.”
And all of this (and more) was done in the name of God.
When Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the architect of the Reformation in England, the founder of modern Anglicanism, was burned at the stake by Roman Catholics, the occasion was piously marked with a sermon. (And I’m sure there are negative Protestant examples, too.)
However, let’s look at today’s context: if you’re a Christian and you hold to certain Christian ethical values – you know, the hot potato topics of the day, such as abortion, euthanasia, marriage, etc. – you’d have to be oblivious not to feel just a wee bit persecuted in the media and in the culture.
And yet, if we reflect honestly on this cultural backlash against Christianity and Christians, we have to admit that a good portion of the resentment and disdain we are experiencing stems from seeds we have sown. There are groups in society (most prominently, those who identify as “gay” or within a spectrum of sexual identity outside of “heteronormativity”) who have experienced tremendous judgment and sometimes persecution by Christians and in the name of “God.” And there are other groups who have looked at this treatment and have been repulsed by “Christian” attitudes.
When I was a non-believer, I couldn’t stand Christians. I used to love this old bumper sticker that read, “Lord, save me from your followers.” One of the reasons I felt this way was that I had gay friends and the “Christianity” I encountered in the media, on the streets, and on the subway was a religion of bitter judgment, even sometimes a religion of hatred, towards people I knew and cared about.
And it was all done “in the service of God.”
And so that’s why we can’t just generalize this passage and think of Christians simply as persecuted victims. The Church is a place for redeemed sinners – redeemed, yes, but sinners still. The result is we can be both the persecuted and the persecutors.
Well, if that’s the case, what can we hear in what John is showing us?
1. The work of the Holy Spirit is to bear witness, to testify to Christ.
Now, that’s loaded legal language, and not just the “bearing witness” part. Some English translations, such as “Helper” in the ESV or “Comforter” elsewhere, can be misleading. The work of the Spirit being described here is not about helping you or even comforting you, like a “comfy pillow.” Instead, it’s more like an advocate or a counselor, that is, in a legal sense.
Imagine the Holy Spirit here being like a courtroom lawyer: a lawyer’s job is to convince a jury of the meaning of the facts of the case that they have just heard. Only, in this case, the jury is the human heart – your heart, my heart.
So, how does that work?
In their preaching when they were alive, and in the words of the New Testament today, the apostles lay out the facts of the case, the facts about Jesus’s life, death, resurrection and ascension.
The Holy Spirit, in His work, is who makes those facts have meaning for you or for me.
To make it personal, you or I could lay out a perfect presentation of the Gospel to someone. It could have all the facts and be a slam-dunk, open-and-shut case. However, only the Holy Spirit can make it meaningful to someone. Only the Holy Spirit can make all of those facts coalesce into life-changing Truth for someone.
And it is this work of the Holy Spirit that makes a “Christian” a Christian. And that’s the other point to take away.
2. The difference between the Church and the World is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Or to put it more pointedly, the difference between the Church, when it’s acting like the Church should, and the rest of the world, including the Church when it’s acting like the world does, is the Spirit’s work.
You see, the Church when it’s really being the Church, the Body of Christ on earth now – that Church simply can’t persecute others. It’s just not possible. It can be persecuted, but it isn’t capable of persecuting.
The reason here is simple: to persecute someone, you have to judge them. To judge them, you have to look down on them. And you can only judge someone from a place of assumed superiority: moral superiority, doctrinal superiority, intellectual superiority – you name it. Superiority is the precondition for judgment, condemnation and persecution.
Let me ask you: have you ever felt superior to someone, but held your tongue or not done anything about it? If so, you know just how soul-destroying that feeling is. Your insides burn with the sensation of judgment just bursting at the seams.
I’ll go ahead and confess first. I’m fairly opinionated about preaching: about how to interpret the text, how to connect it to people’s lives, how to be sensitive to where people might be hurting, etc., etc. I would beg of you: please, please, please never watch me listen to someone else preaching. I squirm, writhe, wring my hands, sigh, take deep breaths, grimace, and basically just look painfully constipated. (Of course, this never happens at St. George’s, only elsewhere!)
That’s what assumed superiority looks like. That’s what judgment looks like. It looks like something eating you alive from the inside.
It’s ugly.
Well, the next time you’re in that position, writhing in the pain of your superiority and judgment, I offer you a suggestion: just think how ridiculous you must look to God, who is perfectly holy, perfectly just, perfectly good…that is, just plain perfect.
I mean, think about it: any notion of my being superior to anything or anybody else must look utterly ridiculous to a God. I imagine it must be a bit like someone quibbling over a dollar or two when buying a $500k house. It’s silly.
The Work of the Spirit
However, let’s get back to the point: the difference that the work of the Spirit makes.
Most people can imagine how laughable human arrogance must look to an all-powerful deity. It runs much deeper though for Christians. “You see, if you actually know who this God is, what He is really like, because of what He has done for you, any notion of our ‘superiority’ is beyond absurd.”
“You see, if you actually know who this God is, what He is really like, because of what He has done for you, any notion of our ‘superiority’ is beyond absurd.”
Why do persecutors persecute? (Or to paraphrase Taylor Swift, why are haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate?) And keep in mind that Jesus is talking here about people who have the Scriptures in hand, our Old Testament. Why do they persecute? Here is His answer:
“And they will do these things [i.e., persecute the Apostles], because they have not known the Father, nor me.” (John 6:3 ESV)
That’s what separates the persecuting world from the persecuted Church: knowing the Father and the Son. For what it’s worth, that’s basically the same thing. If you know the Father, you must already know the Son; if you know the Son, you thereby know the Father (John 14:7–11). It’s a twofer deal.
Who makes you know the Son, though? Who makes you know Jesus?
The Holy Spirit.
And, as we have seen, that means we’re not just talking about empirical, Wikipedia knowledge. The truth is that anyone can know facts about Jesus, even the devil; however, the Spirit’s work is to make those facts meaningful to you.
So, Jesus is talking here about knowing the Father and the Son in terms of knowing who they are in what they have done for you, the salvation they have worked for you. “It’s about knowing God not in some abstract sense, but personally; it’s about knowing God as He is for you.”
“When the Spirit makes those facts of what Jesus did on the Cross for you meaningful to you, you simply can’t look down on anyone anymore.”
And that changes everything, because when the Spirit makes those facts of what Jesus did on the Cross for you meaningful to you, you simply can’t look down on anyone anymore.
The Cross
The Cross strips you of any notion of your own superiority. It relieves you of the burden of your self-righteousness – even when you are sure you’re right, even when you are sure someone else is wrong, even when you are sure God must agree with you.
You see, in our self-righteousness we are usurpers. We are pretenders to the seat of judgment that rightly belongs only to God. What the Spirit does is make us see that God’s judgment seat is the Cross, a seat we can never fill, and when we encounter God there in Christ, we find ourselves face-to-face with a God who has every right to look down on us, but instead has come down to us to die for us. With every right to judge and condemn us as rebels, He instead condemns Himself to save us, because He loves us even in the midst of that rebellion.
“With every right to judge and condemn us as rebels, He instead condemns Himself to save us, because He loves us even in the midst of that rebellion.”
He’s not even fair about it. If He was fair, He’d leave us to our own devices and let us see where all our superiority and judgment lands us. But He doesn’t. Instead, He sends the Spirit, the Advocate, to convict us, convince us, and draw us back to Him.
And truly knowing the Father and the Son like that through the Spirit is humbling. It’s humbling to face just how desperately far you fall short. “It’s humbling to face the fact, that where you think you are better than others may very well be where you are most broken.” And yet it’s also humbling to know that God loves you even there, even at your worst – humbling and at the same time supremely joyful to know that God’s love for you stops at nothing, not even the Cross, to show you all that and bring you back to Him.
