The Spirit of Truth

Today’s Gospel tells us that God’s Spirit abides with those who keep the commandments.  “If you love me you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate…. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.  You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”

Recognition of God's Spirit requires faith and action.  The Spirit does not come to those who are passive, who sit by the roadside and watch the parade go by, but the Spirit comes to those who are active, those who do to others as Jesus did in his life and ministry.  Faith demands a particular quality of life.  It is more than belief.  The point is that loving God and keeping God’s commandments involve motivation to act in ways the world might not fully understand.

We live in a global culture of tremendous diversity.  There are more ethnic, racial, national, social, economic, and spiritual differences than we could ever have imagined a few years ago.  With all this diversity and pluralism there seems to be a greater emphasis on special interest groups that claim to have the Truth (capital T), or answers to the complex issues of our lives.  The first and second century Christians also lived in a world filled with competing communities and factions that claimed to know the truth.  Today we live in a time that has been referred to as a “post-Christian” era.

Given this reality of diversity and pluralism, especially among so many different faith traditions, we who are people of Christian faith are challenged in new ways.  In the midst of all our diversity there is more than one path to God.  God, in the wisdom of creation, must have a purpose in devising so many differences, so many languages and faith traditions, and so many ways of being and doing.

The Bible and Christian faith present a vision and a worldview that challenges the prevailing culture.  A former chaplain colleague from Missouri once said that we Christians “stand as a subversive community in our own time.  We are a community that celebrates and lives out a New Life – the Resurrected Life – in a world that is obsessed by…destruction and death.  We stand as an alternative that looks to the future with hope in the promise of God who gives New Life and calls us to the New Life.  This is what it means to be the resurrected community.  In the life of a community there are decisive questions that must be confronted: How are we called?  What sort of people and community are we called to be?  Will we follow the call?  These are the questions we face as the community of those who celebrate the Resurrected Life that God has given us through the power of Christ.”

One clear response to these questions is that we are called to love God and our neighbor.  At the center of the biblical command to love is the call to live the resurrected life, a life transformed and rooted in God’s relationship and intention for all creation.  Jesus proclaimed this in his ministry of preaching and teaching, in his healing and feeding, in his forgiving and loving.

Jesus told his disciples, “I am coming to you.  In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.  On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me.”  Keeping the commandments, what we do as a result of loving God, is what matters.

There is a wonderful book titled The God We Never Knew, by Marcus Borg.  In it the author offers insightful ideas about how Christians today can come to love God and faithfully keep God’s commandments. 

Borg writes, "[Our] images of God...affect how we think of the Christian life.  Rather than God being a distant being with whom we might spend eternity, Spirit -- the sacred -- is right here.  Rather than God being the lawgiver and judge whose requirements must be met and whose justice must be satisfied, God is the lover who yearns to be in relationship to us.  Rather than sin and guilt being the central dynamic of the Christian life, the central dynamic becomes relationship -- with God, the world, and each other.  The Christian life is about turning toward and entering into relationship with the one who is already in relationship with us -- with the one who gave us life, who has loved us from the beginning, and who loves us whether we know that or not, who journeys with us whether we know that or not."

Marcus Borg reflects the passage in the Gospel of John, Jesus said, “I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you.”  In other words, "God is all around us" and "we live within God."  "Whatever opens our hearts to the reality of the sacred is what we should be engaged in....  The Christian life is not about pleasing God the finger-shaker and judge.  It is not about believing now or being good now for the sake of heaven later.  It is about entering a relationship in the present that begins to change everything now.  Spirituality is about this process:  the opening of the heart to the God who is already here."

"The fruit of this process is compassion..... God's will for us...is to become more compassionate beings..... If spirituality -- a life of relationship with the Spirit of God -- does not lead to compassion, then either it is life in relationship to a different spirit or there is a lot of static in the relationship.  The absence or presence of compassion is the central test for discerning whether something is 'of God.'  As the primary gift of the Spirit, compassion is the primary sign of spiritual growth."

As we continue through these final weeks of the Easter season we do well to recall the meaning of Christ’s resurrection and the anticipated coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  God through Christ is in relationship with us as we are in relationship with God and one another.  Our lives are within a community of celebration, a community of life transformed and rooted in God’s relationship and intention for all creation.  It is a community of compassion that actively lives out the command to love God and to serve others according to their need.  Amen.