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Going Away and Return Arrangements

Easter 6 : 25 May 2014  : John 14: 15-21

In my last year at Theological College I moved into a row of terraced house that looked like something out of Coronation Street, where some of the married students were located. One of our near neighbours was an elderly woman who had lived all her life in this Yorkshire Mill town. Indeed, although she had lived in three different houses, they were never more than a few hundred yards from her present location. As for holidays, on the rare occasions she left Battyeford it was to go to the seaside not far away, where she stayed in a boarding house run by, and filled with, people from her home town.

Listening to her I came to understand that travel is something that most of us take for granted, but is in fact one of the biggest changes that has occurred in many lives since the war. Many people now routinely change cities because work requires it – indeed I have lived in four different cities in two different countries over the last 35 years. And for many people travel and holidays are synonymous with one another, which is why a large travel industry has grown up to meet the need. Perhaps because we live at the bottom of the world New Zealanders are very keen on overseas travel, and get rather excited if they think that others going away on junkets at the public expense, which is why our media often publish the details of MP’s overseas trips.

The trouble with travel is that the getting ready part often seems like so much work. Getting your papers in order, trying to guess how much luggage to take, packing it neatly and efficiently, booking accommodation ahead, it can become a huge exercise in logistics. How one longs to just put on a back back and go as you are.

We have just been listening to Jesus making some of his going away arrangements. His followers are being told how to live, and what to do, when he is not there – live by the commandments. There is a way of life that goes with being a follower of the way, and when you get in the flight path of that life pattern then you will be open to experience the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Nor will the disciples, and those who come after them, be left guessing about where God is, and what he expects from them. The Spirit as truth bringer will be sent to stand alongside them – that is what Advocate means. And the truth he comes to bring will become an internalised presence in the lives of those who are open to receive it.

In his earthly life Jesus could only touch the lives of a limited number of people he met and mixed with in a quite specific and limited geographical location, and even then not everyone he met recognised him for who he was, or were disposed to take him seriously. Now, through the operation of the Holy Spirit his message, his presence and the radiating life giving grace that were part and parcel of his earthly ministry, can extend into many lives in many different places in many different times.

He declares that the world can never receive the Spirit of truth. It is organised along attractions to other kinds of interests and pursuits. The Spirit has to find an entry point into people’s lives, and that requires either Christians provoking the kind of curiosity that might draw people to want to know about the love that makes the world go around, or some kind of ambush that God might put in the path of the indifferent or the oppositional, which is what happened to St Paul.

Jesus promises also that he will come back. He means that in two senses. The resurrection appearances, which will last for a comparatively brief time, and which will be almost exclusively to those who knew him before and can therefore recognise him in this new way, will give hope and inspiration to the small band who followed him. These appearances will also confirm the promises he made to them in his previous ministry. But they cannot provide the kind of permanent presence that the small band requires to grow into something much more. That is the Spirit’s job, the one who will watch over and guide the life of the emerging Church.

The second and most decisive return will be his coming back at the second coming to finish all that he began, to complete and perfect his way with the world, and to make the Church what it is meant to be in its fully developed form. The world will not just go on and on in much the same way. This is a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and Jesus will be there at the end to write the final chapter of that story, and to bring it to an end in a deeply satisfying way both to God, and to us.

"On that day you will understand that that I am in my Father, and you in me and I in you." Jesus will include his followers in his life, and so bring them to the Father, because he is the entry point into the love between the Father and the Son, that makes up the internal life of God. As we shall be reminded on the feast of the holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, life with God is life with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three different repetitions of the way God is God are who the true God is, this is his intimate secret of who he is, and this is the truth that the Spirit of truth communicates. The life of heaven is life within the Trinity.

When Jesus went away he went away in two senses. His death brought an end to his earthly life and ministry. That phase of his existence came to an end. The resurrection appearances were an interlude before his second going away at the Ascension, which we shall celebrate next Sunday. From then his followers would know him as we know him as we gather around the loaf and cup each Sunday morning.

In his going away he made generous and thoughtful provision for all of us who have been called into the way. We have not been left on our own to cope as best we can. The Spirit stands alongside us. Instructions have been left as to what we are to do and how we are to behave. And he has promised to return to us.

Meanwhile we are expected to show some independence of mind, some initiative and courage in our Christian witness, and some boldness of speech.

May the Spirit of truth lead us into all truth, give us grace to confess that Jesus is Lord, and to declare the word and works of God.