Everybody Needs the Advocate – 23 May, 2021

John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

This reading identifies sin as failure to believe in Jesus. It associates unrighteousness with the inability to see (understand, believe in) Jesus after he returns to the Father, and with condemnation because Satan, the ruler of the world, will be condemned and overcome during Christ’s “hour” of death and resurrection. Scholars note some confusion in this text concerning the issue of who sends the Paraclete: Jesus (16:7) or the Father (15:26)? John’s Jesus will claim that he and the Father are one. . .

. . . Jesus continues saying that there many things to tell his disciples but at that moment in time they were not able to ‘‘bear’’ it (16:12). Could they not bear their failure to stay with Jesus? The rejection they would face from many of their fellow Jews? That they too would die as martyrs to God’s Gospel? Jesus tells them that it is the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, who will guide them to truth and will tell them what flows from the “hour” of Jesus’ glorification. –– Regina A. Boisclair

Romans 8:22-27

Romans 8 reminds us of Paul’s provocative language regarding the nature of the Spirit’s gift of hope, which sustains us through the most difficult times imaginable. Paul puts our struggles in cosmic context, describing how “the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now” but not only the creation but also “we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit.”

What could be more consoling than to know that God’s Spirit groans with us not unlike how we Lamaze coaches were taught to breathe and groan alongside our partners, painfully but hopefully struggling to give birth to the God-given gift of new life pregnant within us? –– John Rollefson

Acts 2:1-21

Henry Nouwen in one of his earlier books helped me see new meaning in our Gospel text. This text recounts Jesus’ extended farewell discourse to his disciples and explains how “it is to your advantage that I go away” (v 7) in order that the Advocate=Spirit might come. Nouwen recounts the healing truth of how sometimes physical absence nurtures spiritual intimacy—a religious spin, I suppose, on the old saw of how “absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

The young Henri, as he recalls, often found it difficult when face-to-face with his father to have the kind of deeply personal conversation he so longed for . . . Only when he had left home and was physically removed from his father, he remembers, was he able to communicate in writing the deepest concerns and thoughts of his heart with the kind of intimacy he so craved.

Sometimes, therefore, Nouwen concludes, physical absence makes spiritual presence more possible and profound. . . . As much as I admire Jesus’ story-telling prowess and the vivid counter-cultural character of his ethical instruction, the Gospels do not give much evidence of the positive effect of his teaching on his closest followers— which sometimes, I’ll admit, offers a little consolation after a particularly tough confirmation class! . . . It is a small but significant point that Jesus’ physical absence opened the way for the Spirit’s making Jesus more presently powerful to the apostles than during days of their discipleship with their Master. –– John Rollefson

Regina Boisclair, a Roman Catholic biblical scholar, teaches at Alaska Pacific University, Anchorage, Alaska.

John Rollefson, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, has served congregations in Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, Milwaukee, and San Francisco.

Homily Service 42, no. 3 (2009): 4-16.