by CCW | 29 April 2018 15:00
Another birthing image, another image of new life in Christ. Eastertide grounds us in the life of the risen Christ. That is not something static but dynamic. We are set in motion, caught up in the motions of God towards us and with us, drawn into the motions of the Son to the Father. And all through the Spirit of truth whom Christ and the Father send to us. “He will guide you into all truth,” Jesus says. The Spirit of truth is also known as the Paraclete, the Comforter, the one who strengthens us in our life with God.
The Easter season abounds with this sense of an orientation and a direction. “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.” And in the last three Sundays of the Easter Season, everything that belongs to human experience and human hopes and expectations is gathered into the motion of the Son to the Father captured in the phrase “because I go to my Father.” Again, it is entirely dynamic.
We live in the motions of the Son’s love for the Father through the Spirit, the bond of their love and power. What is being opened out to us is the reality of the life of the Spirit. The resurrection appearances are not just some sort of show and tell. They reveal the greater and more radical truth of our humanity as found in and with God. That is captured for us in the image of the Son’s going to the Father. In today’s Gospel, that fundamental sense of orientation and direction is understood in terms of righteousness.
The Spirit, Christ says, “reprove[s] the world of righteousness.” What does that mean? It signals the contrast between the world of human sin and folly, our unrighteousness, on the one hand, and God’s absolute justice, the divine righteousness, on the other hand. That is found in the Son’s relation to the Father in the Spirit. True justice or righteousness is not found in ourselves but in our relation to God. In these lessons from John’s Gospel, Jesus is teaching us about the Holy Spirit, about the nature of the divine life of God as Trinity. The Resurrection points us to the Ascension, to the homeland of the Spirit. It is all about a kind of orientation of our hearts and minds in the going forth and return of the Son to the Father.
This does not mean a flight from or an ignoring of our lives here and now. Quite the opposite. The Spirit of truth ”will guide you into all truth.” And as James indicates in the Epistle, God has “brought us to birth by the word of truth.” The word of truth and the spirit of truth are intimately connected. They belong to the nature of our life with God in mind and heart because of the meaning of Christ’s Resurrection in the body of our humanity. “Because I go to my Father” here signals the way in which all things are gathered to God, the way in which we are gathered to God in Christ. That is something now and not just by and by. “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.”
This is traditional and classical advice that belongs now to this new orientation and direction that we have in our lives because of Christ’s going to the Father, his relation to the Father in the Spirit of their mutual love. That becomes our life, our life in the Spirit.
But only through the double mystery of Christ’s going from us. It is “expedient,” good for us, Jesus says here “for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.” The double mystery is his going from the disciples and us into death and his going from them and us to the Father in his Ascension which is the culmination of the Resurrection. These spatial images of the comings and goings of God are profound. God is not found simply in our comings and goings as if our experiences were the measure of God and of his truth in our lives. No. It is the other way around. Our lives find their truth and meaning in God’s engagement with our humanity through the Son and in the Spirit. We are gathered into the comings and goings of God with God in God, the motions of the divine life itself.
We participate in the very life of God himself. This is the great wonder. To be open to this mystery and wonder is the great joy of the Resurrection and lies at the heart of the teaching of this Gospel. The Spirit “reprove[s] the world,” corrects the world, Christ says, of three things: “of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.” This is a way of recalling the victory of Christ over human sin and wickedness and over “the prince of this world,” the devil; in short, over everything that belongs to the untruth of our humanity in our denial of God. It is all about our being gathered into the truth of God whose truth is the truth of our lives. The truth of our humanity is found in the truth of God and we are held in that truth by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth. There is no truth that lies outside of God.
Our challenge is to let the Holy Spirit “guide [us] into all truth.” In an age which is sceptical and uncertain about ourselves and about truth itself, we need these readings to recall us to God and so to ourselves. It is all about our being grounded in the Word and Spirit of God, and all “because I go to the Father.” We have been “brought to birth by the word of truth” and we live in that word of truth by the Spirit of truth. Such is the wonder and the mystery of the Resurrection in us. We are freed to live to God and for one another. It is all about new birth and new life.
Fr. David Curry
Easter 4, 2018
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2018/04/29/sermon-for-the-fourth-sunday-after-easter-9/
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