Like Paul and Peter

https://youtu.be/o3XEHIrkQlk

Psalm 23:3-4 Abba God revives my soul and guides me along right pathways for their Name’s sake. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Introduction

My favorite thing about the book of Acts, is the way the narrative camera focuses on the human beings left behind to participate in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation without Jesus by their side. As human as the Gospels can be, they still feel—to me—just outside of my experience in the world. As far as I know, I’ve not been—literally—summoned by Jesus to come follow him and leave my—literal—net behind. I’ve not witnessed with my own eyes the healing miracles and the awesome casting out of demons. I did not run and hide with fear on Good Friday, nor feel the warmth burn in my heart as Jesus taught me on the way in his resurrected state. I didn’t witness the ascension or suddenly speak in a foreign language (no matter how much my charismatic evangelical background wants to think I have). I am just an audience member from 2025, listening to these ancient stories mixed up with a healthy amount of faith and doubt, skeptical and hungry.

So, this is why I love acts. Watching Paul get knocked off his donkey and onto his donkey through the proclamation of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit—having his misdirection redirected—brings the story home. I too have needed to be knocked down a peg or two, put in my place, reminded of my creaturely status before the Creator. I have thought myself to be so right and on point that I was completely misdirected toward what God was doing and celebrated the tendency of the kingdom of humanity to perform acts of violence and needed to be redirected. Witnessing Peter’s rapid exposure to the new movements and actions of God made known first in Christ and made real in Peter’s heart through the power of the Holy Spirit, is something I can confess to, too. I, too, have been graciously, generously, and patiently reinstructed that all are in and none are out, relearned God’s merciful divine activity that extends beyond skin, sex, and superficial boundaries, (re)experienced (manifold times) the pathos of God for the Beloved, and have stumbled about while desperately trying to walk in this new way, talk with new words, love with a new heart, think with a new mind, and see through new lenses all crafted and created by a God who so loves the cosmos that God won’t spare Gods self to save it.

I read something somewhere that said the best way to explain the book of acts is to see it as the movement and activity of the Holy Spirit rather than of the disciples. Are they central to this story building in the book of Acts? Yes, they are. But they are not the only performers on the stage. The Holy Spirit takes up their role and whisks and moves these human forms, destroying notions of autonomy and free-will, taking them hither and tither, bringing them into contact with those whom they would never ever be in contact with, reducing them through exposure, and building them up through love and liberation into new life defined by the reign of God. Last week we received the story of Saul and his “conversion”; this week, we are exposed to Peter walking in the way of Jesus, doing the initial things that will become some of the hallmarks of what it means not only to be Christian, but also Church.

Acts 9:36-43

We jump quite a bit forward in Acts 9. We move from Paul’s conversion to the beginning of Peter’s radical exposure to the law of God which is the law of love for all God’s beloved, transcending national and religious boundaries rather than creating them. Starting a bit earlier in the chapter than our lectionary suggests, we find Peter in Lydda, having been brought there by the Holy Spirit to the those who are called “living saints”.[1] By using the word “Saints” Luke highlights that the divide between the secular and the sacred is diminishing; every day regular people are indwelled with divine holiness, a holiness that will not fade away and creates a new way of being in the world as God’s vessels bringing divine life, love and liberation to others like themselves.[2] (This is very good news for regular people like you and me!) So, Peter is with these everyday saints, and he is there to heal a man who was paralyzed for 8 years. Through Peter, the Holy Spirit heals this man, and the story of his healing becomes a source for those in Lydda and the surrounding area (Sharon) to praise God and turn to Christ in faith (vv. 32-35).[3] In Lydda, Peter is doing as Jesus did: healing and liberating the oppressed and bringing glory to God.[4]

While Peter is in Lydda, over in Joppa there was a certain disciple by [the] name Tabitha, which [in Greek] is translated as Dorcas, she was full of good works, and she was doing acts of mercy. But it happened in those days she [became] sick and died; when she died, they washed her body, writes Luke, and they placed her body in an upper room (vv. 36-37). The saints of Joppa are grieved over this loss. Rightly so. Tabitha was a woman and a representative of Christ[5] in spaces too often neglected by both human and divine presence (read the prophets!). Not only is Luke elevating the role of women in the work of the gospel and in his narrative about the movement of the Holy Spirit (which should expose us in our own context),[6] he is also highlighting that losing this one who brings well-being to her neighbors and glory to God, leaves a massive gap in bringing God’s presence to those who need God’s presence the most: the widows…whom God cares about very much! So, the disciples having heard that Peter was in Lydda, and Lydda being close to Joppa, they sent two men [to Joppa] beseeching Peter, “Do not hesitate and pass through [and] come to us immediately!” (v. 38).

Peter’s response? Now, after rising Peter went to them (v.39a). Peter doesn’t waste a moment to help these saints over in Joppa who lost a beloved representative of Christ. Luke tells us more, After he arrived, they brought him up into the upper-room, and the widows stood by him weeping and showing [him] tunics and many cloaks Dorcas was making being with them (v.39b-c). These poor and too often neglected widows lose the one who cares for them, the one who made them feel seen and heard and loved; this is what Peter enters when he arrives.[7] But it’s more than comfort Peter is bringing. For Luke (and Peter) in this moment a massive (divinely inspired) statement is occuring: women matter, their works matter, their bodies matter.[8] Luke tells us, Now, after Peter cast everyone out [of the room], he also placed [his] knees [on the ground] and prayed, and turning to the body, he said, “Tabitha, rise!” And she does. Now her eyes opened, and after seeing Peter she sat up. Peter acts like Christ and commands the dead woman to rise. Those held captive to death (both Tabitha and the widows) are not held captive anymore; they’re liberated, by this regular person through the power of the Holy Spirit who works in them and through them to overturne the kingdom of humanity and establish the reign of God.[9] Just as the women were the first to hear of the resurrection of Christ from death, so too did a woman first experience the life out of death that is characteristic of the reign of God wrought by the Holy Spirit moving through regions bringing God glory![10] Luke tells us, Now, after giving her his hand he raised her, and after calling out [to] the saints and the widows, he presented her [to them] living. Now it became known throughout all of Joppa, and the many believed in the Lord. And the Holy Spirit is not only moving through acceptable regions but is breaking down false boundaries[11] originally demarcating clean and unclean: the glory of God and God’s divine mission to liberate the captives know no walls and barriers. Luke concludes, Now it happened [Peter] stayed a sufficient number of days in Joppa with a certain Simon the Tanner. Just like Paul, Peter is in the clutches of a God on the move, caught up in the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation.[12]

Conclusion

Peter and Paul present to us the two best examples of regular, human beings—like you and me—who are caught up in the transcending and unyielding resurrection life that starts with Christ and continues with his disciples by the power of the Holy Spirit. I think Peter and Paul are intimidating to us. I think it’s easier to ask WWJD rather than WWPD because their recorded actions bring the divine pathos down to our level. It’s safe when Jesus does something because we can kind of dismiss it: well…he’s like the Son of God…so… But when it’s the former know-it-all and the former fisherman, the flames of those actions burn close to our skin. Because, as it turns out, like Paul and Peter, we have skin in this game and this game participates in the divine passion for the cosmos. Peter, a regular guy, calls Tabitha into (new) life from death and liberates Aeneas from the captivity of being paralyzed; this puts us on the hook as we begin (again) to walk in the way of the ascended Jesus and the Spirit that is to come. Both Peter and Paul ask us to think about what it means to be Christian and to do Church. Beloved, like Peter and Paul, we, too, by and in Christ, get to bring love where there is indifference, liberation where there is captivity, and life where there is death.

[1] Willie James Jennings, Acts, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2017), 99. “He is on the road and comes to Lydda to be among the living saints.”

[2] Jennings, Acts, 99. “Jesus is God drawing the everyday into holiness, into God’s own life. Everyday people are made holy in Christ. Everyday people are made holy by Christ, and this is a holiness that will last, not be episodic, and constitute a new space for living life and knowing ourselves.”

[3] Jennings, Acts, 99-100. “Once again a marvelous act, a touchable miracle, will turn people to the Lord (v. 35). This is repetition that illumines the inexhaustible riches of Gods love for the fragile creature and Gods desire to constantly touch us, hold us, and announce the victory over death. There is yet more for Peter in this journey as he is approached by two disciples form another city (Joppa) for the sake of one disciple who has died.”

[4] Jennings, Acts,99. “Peter returns to center stage and engages in a bit of wayfaring life, echoing again his history of following Jesus and doing as his savior had done.”

[5] Jennings, Acts, 100. “Tabitha’s life even in the fragments we gain in this story, hangs together beautifully as someone devoted to helping people, especially widows.”

[6] Jennings, Acts, 100. “Tabitha, the disciples of Jesus—Luke opens her story inside of Peter’s journey and in so doing makes a point more powerful for us in our time than probably for him in his time. Tabitha, a woman, is a disciple of Jesus. Whether this vignette is evidence of Luke’s positive view of women or not he has certainly gives us a plateau from which to view a new future in which men and women in Christ have a different way of seeing themselves—as disciples.”

[7] Jennings, Acts, 100. “Widows, that group of people vulnerable in ancient and current time, made vulnerable by death’s sting, have always been a special concern for God and here for Tabitha as well. …So the widows weep. They weep for her and maybe for themselves. We do not know if Tabitha was in fact one of them, but we do know that they claimed her as one of whare for them. Here glory joins strong grief because to lose someone who cares for the weak and vulnerable, whose life is turned toward making a difference in the world and who is making a difference, is a bitter loss. The widows have lost Tabitha and a disciple is gone. This is what Peter steps into in Joppa.”

[8] Jennings, Acts, 100. “Peter’s presence declares an unmistakable truth: women matter. This woman matters, and the works she does for widows matters to God. It matters so much that God will not allow death the last word. Others had been raised form the dead in the Gospels and in Luke’s Gospel…but this is different. This not a little girl or the brother of a friend of Jesus; this is a disciple raised from the dead. Tabitha is not finished in life or service.”

[9] Jennings, Acts, 100-101. “‘Tabitha, get up.’ Peter repeats Jesus. Tabitha is an activist who lives again in resurrection power. Her body has been quickened by the Spirit, and her eyes are opened again to see a new day. She has work to do and joy to give to the widows: you have not been abandoned, dear widows, God has heard your weeping and returned her to you.”

[10] Jennings, Acts, 101. “It is not accident that the first disciple to have this little tase of the resurrection isa woman, because it was a woman who gave birth to the resurrection. And Peter is there once again to see a miraculous sign point to faith’s direction—many who found out about this believe in the Lord (v. 42).”

[11] Jennings, Acts, 101. “The story, however, does not end there with Tabitha, because Peter stays in Joppa, and who he stays with points to an earth-shattering future.”

[12] Jennings, Acts, 101. “He stays with Simon, a tanner. Tanners worked with death flesh—the skin of animals and tanners were, theologically speaking, unclean. Few if any pious Jews would normally or easily stay with a tanner, but here was Peter with Somin the tanner. Peter is indeed moving from saints to saints, and soon he will find out just how far the generosity and mercy of a holy God reaches. Soon he will see just how far God will extend holy place and holy people. Peter is with a man who touches the unclean, and soon he will see God do the same.”

#Beloved #DeathToLife #DivineLove #Encounter #Jesus #Liberation #Life #Love #NewCreation #Paul #Peter #PeterAndPaul #Tabitha #TheBookOfActs #TheHolySpirit #WillieJamesJennings #WWJD #WWPD

三位一体(The Trinity):神様、御子様そして聖霊様のうち、神様と御子様については何となく知ってはいたけれど、「聖霊様」については何も知りませんでした。
ラプトブログにて、神様が父、御子様は子、そして聖霊様は「母なる女性の神」であることが明らかにされました。
おおよそ母親は、我が子をとても大事に思い、いつも見守り、助けてあげたいし、励ましてあげたいし、危険を回避してあげたいし、幸せにしてあげたいと思います。人間の母親と同じように、母なる神様である聖霊様もこのような思いで人間に愛を注ぎたいのではないかと考えます。
自分の子供が母親(自分)の愛を求めてきたら嬉しく思うのと同じように、私達人間が母なる神様の愛を求めることを嬉しく思ってくださるし、そうなることを待っていらっしゃるのだと思います。 #god #theholyspirit #love
https://rapt-neo.com/?p=26065

言いようのない心の重みを「讃美歌」でふき飛ばす！

神様を信じる人は、神様に祈りや讃美歌を捧げたりします。そうすると、聖霊が近くに来てくれるようになるそうです。
実は私も、今日は心が重くなり「これはマズイ」と神様にまずは祈り求めました。でも、それよりも讃美歌を歌ったほうが良いような気がして、歌い始めたところ、スーッと心の重みがなくなっていったのを感じました。
正直、歌は上手くありませんが、それでも讃美のパワーを実感できました。
聖霊(the Holy Spirit)は神様を信じて生きる人を導き助けてくれます。その導きを受けることで、全ての面で恵まれ、際限ない能力を発揮できると「ラプトブログ」にてその方法を学ぶことができます！誰でも可能性を秘めているので、ぜひ開花させるべきです！
#god #hymn #theholyspirit
https://rapt-neo.com/

日本人にとってはバカげていると思われる「霊界」についてですが、人は誰しも自覚なくとも、見えない世界、見えない力に多大なる影響を受けて生きています。「霊」といったら怖いとか不気味とか悪いイメージがあるかもしれません。サタンといった悪い霊もいますが、反対に聖霊といった良い霊もいます。私達は、悪い霊(サタン)か良い霊(聖霊)か、どちらと近くして生きるかで、運命が大きく変わります。私たちの運命ははじめから定まっているわけでなき、自分がどちらの霊に似た性質を持つかによっていかようにも変わっていくのです。→神秘的な霊界について詳しくは「ラプトブログ」を検索してみてください…
#god #satan #theholyspirit #霊界
https://rapt-neo.com/

Psalm 24:1-2 The earth is Abba God’s and all that is in it, the world and all who dwell therein. For it is God who founded it upon the seas and made it firm upon the rivers of the deep.

Introduction

Throughout our study of 2 Corinthians, we juggled the twin questions: “What now?” and “Will they?” What do we do now that we are in the world but not of the world, breakable creatures carrying God’s Spirit and message, charged with carrying on the mission of God in the world: the advancement of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation made incarnate in Christ and the wellbeing and benefit of the neighbor to the glory of God. Without Christ to guide the disciples, the disciples are left to figure it out by the leading of the Spirit.

We saw that Paul, in 2 Corinthians, gave us ample direction to discover that the “What now?” and “Will they?” is never answered once for all, but brought to the disciples of Christ anew every season, and that in each season the disciples of Christ must depend fully on God, cling to God’s word made known in Christ, and to follow—eyes wide open—the leading of God’s Spirit residing in their hearts and guiding their minds toward God’s wisdom and discernment in the world, impassioned with God’s passion to bring love, life, and liberation to the whole world—participation in the mission of God by faith working itself out in freedom and responsibility.

Paul seemed to leave us, though, with the reality that the Christian journey and Christian life is as hard as easy, as sorrowful as joyous, as thorn-filled as rose-filled. It is certain that as Christians who follow God, God’s Word, and God’s Spirit, we will have great existential anguish as much as we will have great existential excitement; both states are part of the Christian life in the world that is not of the world. Paul left us in the world dependent on God as we walk.

If Paul left us on earth in 2 Corinthians 12; Ephesians launches us into that third heaven Paul referenced. It is through remembrance, hope, and prayer that we, those dependent on God, continue to move through the world bringing God’s love to our neighbor and our neighbor to a loving God.

Ephesians 1:3-14

Bless God, the parent of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who blesses us in Christ in every kind of spiritual blessing in the heavenly sphere, just as God selected us in Christ before the conception of the cosmos to live holy and righteous before God in love, foreordaining us to adoption through Jesus Christ toward God according to the favorable favor of the will of God … (Eph. 1:3-6)[1]

Verses three to fourteen form one long sentence packed full of adoration, gratitude, praise, prayer, and doctrine. One of the most striking things, though, is the way this passage starts with humans blessing God. While some may feel compelled to shun this idea—preferring that it is God who blesses us so to keep God active and not passive[2]—the idea that we can bless God isn’t that foreign to our theology and prayer life. Take for example “The Lord’s Prayer” and the petition, let your name be made sacred. Isn’t God’s name already sacred? Yet the petition implies a capacity on our part to act in such a way that God’s name is praised and made holy. Thus, the idea that we bless God isn’t farfetched but makes sense: we have been made by God to be in the world and to bring God the glory God deserves through our love of God which is love of our neighbor. In other words, we are the “free otherness” from God who can return the blessing and bless God who blesses us.[3] The relationship with God by faith in Christ and the power of the Spirit is one where both the Lover and the Beloved are mutually dependent and mutually responsible.[4] God loves us, and we love God; God keeps us warm, and we keep God warm; God protects us, and we protect God.[5]

The author then moves to speak of our being blessed in every kind of spiritual blessing in the heavenly sphere, and of our selection in Christ from the laying-down of the cosmos. All of it oriented toward holy and blameless living before God that is characterized by love. This living is at once in the temporal realm and in the spiritual realm.[6] Human being and human love, according to Ephesians, is born of God’s love to go farther into the world to bring light where there is darkness, life where there is death, liberation where there is captivity, and love where there is indifference.[7] The believer is caught up into the cosmic battle between the creation that is of the reign of God and the destruction that is of the kingdom of humanity; it is the believer who is “enlisted” to be the epicenter of spiritual and temporal activity, at once the one who is adopted through Christ toward God, according to the good pleasure of the will of God and the breakable vessel, summoned out of the mud and dust.

It is these adopted of God and summoned from the dust and mud who are also endowed with God’s grace, the ones who have been loved, the recipients of liberation and forgiveness of false-steps, and,thus, recipientsof divine wisdom working out in human prudence.[8] It is these who are enlisted to act in the world to the glory of God by God’s will and leading (by the Holy Spirit), those who are charged to carry forward God’s Word (incarnated in Christ), and to participate in the continuation of God’s mission in the world to gather up all things in Christ, the things upon the heavens and the things upon the earth, those who were given a share foreordained according to the purpose of the one who is operative in all things according to the will of God. It is these identity markers of the beloved of God in Christ who are given a reason to hope because what we see in the world isn’t all there is. As the forces of the kingdom of humanity threaten death and destruction in the temporal realm, those who believe know that there is another realm—the spiritual realm—surging alongside, eager to make itself known through those who walk with the Spirit in Christ before God, who have heard the word of truth, the good news of salvation, and those who have eyes to see that there is more here than meets the eye because they have been sealed to the Holy Spirit of promise who is the security of our inheritance of liberation to praise of the glory of God.[9]

Conclusion

The author of the letter of Ephesians wants the community to remember. Remembering is key because it is in remembering together where we hold the presence of one absent among us as if they are still present. Though Christ is gone from us, Christ is present among us and among us with those who suffer as we remember him through proclamation and through remembering that the gift of the Holy Spirit to us (individually and corporately) is “security” that what has been started by God in Christ is not yet finished and that God will show up because God has promised to do so and God’s promises do not fall flat. God is not done with God’s world because God’s people still remember, and by remembering they (re)turn their gaze to God in the present thus to the future. Herein is the good hope of something different that will bring the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation farther into the world, and, ultimately, to is consummation in Christ’s return.[10]

And we do all of it through our dependence on God realized through our prayers—corporate[11] and individual. We do not go it alone. This letter to the Ephesians is an invitation to pray, to pray with our whole selves.[12] Prayer is the groundwork of the union with God that leads to the outpouring of divine love, liberation, and life for the neighbor in the world. Prayer solicits a self-awareness needed by God and the self-needing God and needing God to speak. It is in prayer where the believer is not only reoriented to God and thus to themself, but also where they are brought close to their neighbor. Prayer also participates in new language for the believer in the world where the believer represents the neighbor to God in words articulating the septic, antiquatedness of the kingdom of humanity. But prayer does not resign the believer to non-activity as if it is the final act in the face of trouble; it is the starting point. Prayer is how the believer unites with God and God’s passion for life, love, and liberation.[13] It is the bold request for God to enter in, to act; in prayer God is spoken to and from, in prayer God is remembered, so, too, the neighbor.[14]

[1] Translation mine.

[2] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Ephesians, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2011), 43. Blessing God “…seems to make God the recipient of blessing rather than the source of all blessing It seems to render God passive.”

[3] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 43. “But this mysterious ‘passivity’ of God is precisely the nuance we should not neglect. By a powerful and creative word God created the universe and all that is in it, by God’s constant care God sustains it, and by God’s grace God redeems it. God is agent, active. But God creates, sustains and redeems the creation into a fertile and free otherness from God. God gives God’s creatures their own distinctive powers and upholds those powers, concurring in their own works not rendering the creation passive but active in God’s own project.”

[4] Cf Dorothee Sölle, Christ the Representative.

[5] Dorothee Sölle, “Laudation from Dorothee Sölle for Carola Moosbach, June 2, 2000, “When it is related to the children: God loves you, God protects you, God warms you, I completely agree with it. But just as important is it to say to them: God is in need of you, you can warm God. Sometimes, it is also cold here to God.

[6] Barth, Ephesians, 102. “‘Spiritual blessing,’…does not mean a timeless, otherworldly, abstract blessing. Rather it describes changes effected upon and among people of flesh and blood. It means a history, that is, decisions, actions, testimonies, suffering which have been set in motion and are as yet unfinished.”

[7] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 45. Heavenlies “It is the mysterious and unseen realm above and behind this world. It is not another world, a different world, unconnected with this one. It is the realm at once of God, who creates and sustains this world, and of the ‘spiritual forces of evil’ (6:12), who are at work in this world to destroy it. It is the realm of a cosmic conflict. On the one side are God and his Christ; on the other are the principalities and powers who would usurp God’s rule. That cosmic conflict is that battle for sovereignty in this world, not some other one. It is the very cosmic conflict in which Christians find themselves enlisted (6:12).”

[8] Barth, Markus, Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on Chapters 1-3, The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971), 85. “The wise man knows how and when to speak; he gives good counsel; he lives up to his gifts; his actions make sense and are successful. For this reason the conjunction ‘and’ between ‘wisdom’ and ‘prudence’ is to be understood as expository. Paul speaks of that wisdom which is operating in prudence.”

[9] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 45. “The decisive battle has been fought and won in this conflict, fought and won in this world, when God raise Jesus form the dead. The powers of death and doom had done their damnedest, but God raised Jesus up and set him at his right hand ‘in the heavenly places’ (1:20).”

[10] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 47. “Remembrance has brought us to this point. It is because this community remembers Christ that it also hopes. It hopes for the good future of God, which is the good future for God’s creation, for ‘all things.’ This good future is our ‘inheritance’ in Christ (1:11), and the Spirit is the ‘pledge,’ the earnest, of that inheritance (1:14), the firstfruits of God’s good pleasure.”

[11] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 49. “Ephesians sets its talk of God and its instructions concerning the common life in the context of prayer.”

[12] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 49. “Ephesians invites us to pray. Much of the first three chapters is prayer.”

[13] See Sölle, Choosing Life, pp. 92-93

[14] This paragraph is taken from, Lauren R.E. Larkin, “Leaving Heaven Behind: Paradoxical Identity as the Anchor of Dorothee Sölle’s Theology of Political Resistance,” PhD Dissertation (University of Aberdeen, 2024), 202.

https://laurenrelarkin.com/2024/07/14/a-community-that-remembers/

#Beloved #Blessing #BlessingGod #ChoosingLife #ChristTheRepresentative #DivineLove #DorotheeSölle #Ephesians #GodSMission #GodSRevolution #HolySpirit #Hope #Jesus #Love #MarkusBarth #Prayer #Remembering #TheHolySpirit

Psalm 104:34-37a 34 I will sing to Abba God as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being. May these words of mine please God; I will rejoice in Abba God. Bless God, O my soul!

Introduction

Last week, Jesus prayed for his disciples to have the fortitude to remain in the Word of God. Being not of the world but remaining in the world means that this fledgling community belonging to Christ needed to remember that their creation as this fledgling community was solely based and sustained on God’s Word proclaimed in and through Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, this one who is God. As Jesus prepares to leave his disciples, he knew that the hatred of the world toward this new community of God would try to eclipse the joy and confidence of these faithful. So, he prayed. He prayed that they would remain one as Jesus and God are one, because they are stronger together as a group, and the world loves to divide and conquer. He prayed for the sustaining of their identity, that they remember whose they are, because the world will do whatever it can to make the forget. He prayed for them to be protected in their new creation (new eyes, new ears, new words), because the world will try to steal from their new creation, forcing them to relinquish new eyes and ears, holding their proclamation hostage, demanding they forsake their divinely gifted life, love, and liberation.

Jesus knew they needed help. This little community—barely a smoldering wick—was about to be launched into the world to fend for themselves. They would be assaulted on every side because of who they were and what they said: they, like their Christ, were to become the locus of God’s revolutionary activity in the world; their message would echo Jesus’s, calling into question the kingdom of humanity, exposing the upside-down world, and proclaiming the words of the divine revolution in the world for the oppressed. Jesus knew they were sitting ducks and without God, they would not make it far because this community was not a community created by human strength so it could not be sustained by human strength. So, this community needed something bigger and stronger, something that is of the same substance as the word that not only called this community into being but also the entire cosmos.

Jesus prayed on behalf of the community, asking for God to show up. And God did.

Enter the Paraclete!

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

“But I, I say to you the truth, it is profitable to you that I, I go away. For if I do not go away, the paraclete cannot come to you. But, if I go, I will send them to you. And coming, that one will convict the cosmos concerning sin and concerning justice and concerning judgment…I still have many things to say to you, but you are not able to bear them just now. But, whenever this one comes, the Spirit of Truth, they will guide you in every kind of truth, for they will not speak from themself, but as much as you listen they will bring back word to you. (Jn 16:7-8, 12-13)

The lectionary loops us back into John 15 after bringing us to John 17 last week. Thus, according to the logic of the lectionary, Jesus’s promise of the Spirit is the fulfillment of the prayer to God to protect, guide, and strengthen the disciples who will be left in the world. But the advent of the Spirit, the Paraclete, is more than just a helper for those who will be left by Jesus; they are the very foundation of the church, as we say in our creed every Sunday: the Spirit is the “life-giving breath of the church.” For it is through, with, and by the Spirit that the work and word of Christ started in the body of Jesus will transition to the work and word of the fledgling community, who is now transfigured into the body of Christ in the world in Christ’s absence.[1] It is by the Spirit of God, the Paraclete, that God’s will and mission in the world will continue to be made known to the beloved in and through the new community of God.

Jesus—the Reconciler—must leave the disciples and return to God the Creator so that the Spirit of God—the Redeemer—can be sent into the world, specifically into the hearts of the disciples, to continue the work of God in the world. The work of the Spirit is to continue to reveal God in the world by means of the light of truth that is the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ.[2] In this way, God’s self-revelation and mission in the world is not cut short by Jesus’s bodily absence; through the Spirit rather than the incarnate Word, Jesus the Christ, does the Word and mission of God begin to transcend not only geographical boundaries (Acts 10 fulfilling Acts 1:8) but will also transcend chronological boundaries. By the sending of the Spirit, the Word of God will continue in the world, the light of truth will continue to illuminate hearts and minds from one era to another, in one context to a completely different one, through decades, centuries, and millennia.[3] It is through the witness of the Spirit in the lives of the disciples that witnesses back to Christ and thus forward to God[4] that is the continual fuel for the fire of divine revolution setting human hearts ablaze like match sticks—one by one.[5]

It is for this reason that Jesus both addresses the disciples’ impending grief (being left alone in the world in distress)[6] and exhorts them toward joy: even though they will grieve Jesus’s absence, feel fear and anxiety, they will be comforted by God’s Spirit, the Paraclete, who will usher them further into God’s truth and into God’s reality thus farther and deeper into God.[7] This is why Jesus turns the conversation toward what the Paraclete will do when they show up, because it is through the disciples (and through the church that will be born through their bodies and the Word of God) that the Paraclete will expose the world’s misconceptions of sin, justice, and judgment.[8] In this way and to quote Rudolf Bultmann, “The world is accused, and the Paraclete is the prosecutor.”[9] With the Paraclete set loose in the world through the disciples, human sin is exposed by divine righteousness,[10] human justice is brought to trial by divine justice, [11] and human judgment is found guilty by divine judgment.[12] Thus, God’s truth continues to be the light of the world from one era to another, within one context and then in another, living in one heart and at the same time in a completely different heart. The one word of God is always new in every moment as a word of revelation; it is not static doctrine, archaic dogma, suffocating fundamentalism, and deadly legalism. Rather, it is always a new living-word summoning the dead in their tombs into life in the world.[13]

Thus, Jesus can assure the disciples that even though he has much more to teach them, he will leave that to the Paraclete who will guide them (teach/lead) into every kind of truth further revealing Christ into the world, further instigating God’s divine revolution of life, love, and liberation in the world in pursuit of the God’s beloved. The Paraclete will not lead the disciples (those then and those now) to a static conception of God or into a conception of God so different there must be a break with this history set out through Christ, but into God’s self-disclosure made known in the revelation of God incarnate, Jesus.[14] In other words, divine truth will be revealed in every moment as the present moment—whatever/wherever—is revealed by the divine word and ushered into divine comfort by the Paraclete, who is the Spirit of Truth.[15] Starting first with the community—whatever/wherever—and billowing outward into the world.

Conclusion

Those first disciples lost their main, they lost Jesus whom they loved dearly—they staked their lives on this love of Christ, and then he left them. The distress they felt was real; it’s a distress that we feel today, feeling left/abandoned by God without Jesus to be here with us bodily. But the Paraclete remains in the world and always with the disciples of Christ, those who are thrust by faith into God and are dependent on God’s word. Our God is Triune, three persons one God; personal and close, at all times, in all eras. God is not dead, dear ones; God is alive, God is here, God is with us, and God is within us. Martin Luther writes about this portion of the Gospel of John, “Therefore God has been gracious to us and has given us a Comforter to counteract this spirit of terror—a Comforter, who, as God Himself, is much stronger with His comfort than the devil is with his terror.”[16] The one who lives in us and through us is the one who can bend space and time to become one spot and moment so that all time and all space is in this God of presence, revelation, and comfort.

Yet comfort only comes when God’s truth exposes and reveals us, the way we miss the mark, our decrepit ideas, broken systems, and violent ideologies. By the presence of the spirit—it’s conviction—we cannot pretend not to see what we see, hear what we hear, feel what we feel. We do not have the luxury of undoing God’s summoning of us out from our tombs back at Easter. By the Spirit, the Paraclete, this humble community, bends its knees, confesses, and finds absolution by faith in Christ and union with God. Through the conviction and exposure of the Paraclete, divine comfort becomes true comfort—not the comfort of the world that is fleeting, comfort that lasts through thick and thin because it’s built out of the stuff of the infinite and not finite, of the eternal and not terminal, out of the substance of God and not the substance of humanity.

God’s Spirit of Truth, the Paraclete, the Prosecutor comes to bring God close to us through the light of truth to live with us and among us and in us, to work in and through us the divine revolution of God’s love, life, and liberation in the world. Today we rejoice because Christ’s joy is made complete in us through the sending of the Paraclete who binds us to God through Christ. We can let go of the rope and fall into God because God will show up because God never left us.

[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 552. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966). “After Jesus’ departure, the situation on earth will remain unchanged in as much as the offence which Jesus’ work offered the world will not disappear. The witness, which till now he had borne to himself, will be taken over by the Paraclete, the Helper, whom he will send from the Father.”

[2] Bultmann, John, 553. “The ἀλθείας is for him the self-revelatory divine reality, and the function of the Spirit consists in bestowing revelation by continuing Jesus’ revelatory work, as is stated by the words μαρτυρήσει περὶ ἐμοῦ…”

[3] Bultmann, John, 553. “Jesus will send this Spirit from the Father, and from the Father he will come forth. This two-fold designation makes the reference to the idea of revelation certain’ even after Jesus’ departure, God’s revelation will be mediated through him: he it is, who sends the Spirit…who bears witness to him; but he does so in his unity with the Gather, who has made him Revealer; he sends the Spirit from the Father; the Spirit proceeds from the Father, just as it is said in 14.16 that the Father sends the Spirit at the son’s request, or in 14.26 that he sends him ‘in the name’ of the Son. All these expressions say the same thing.”

[4] Bultmann, John, 554. “Thus their being with him ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς has not come to an end with his farewell, but continues further; and this is the only basis on which their witness is possible. Their witness is not , therefore, a historical account of that which was, but—however much it is based on that which was—it is ‘repetition,’ ‘a calling to mind,’ in the light of their present relationship with. Him. In that case it is perfectly clear that their witness and that of the Spirit are identical.”

[5] Bultmann, John, 553-554. “The word μαρτυρήσει indicates that the Spirit is the power of the proclamation in the community, and this is made fully clear by the juxtaposition of the disciples’ witness and that of the Spirit: καὶ ὑμεῖς δὲ μαρτυρεῖτε (v. 27). For the witness borne by the disciples is not something secondary, running alongside the witness of the spirit.” And “Their preaching is to be a ‘repetition’ of his preaching, or a ‘calling to mind,’…” (554)

[6] Bultmann, John, 558. “They are not asking where he is going to—the answer would be: to the father, and that would solve their difficulty—but they are in λύπη because they are about to be left in their distress.”

[7] Bultmann, John, 558.

[8] Bultmann, John, 560-561. “Only in the word was Jesus the Revealer, and only in the word will he continue to be it; for the Paraclete, who is take his place, is the word. The word is very far from being a closed doctrine, or complex of statements, not on the other hand is it the historical account of Jesus’s life. It is the living word; that is, paradoxically, the word which is spoken by the community itself, for the Paraclete is the Spirt that is at work in the community.”

[9] Bultmann, John, 562.

[10] Bultmann, John, 563. “The world understands sin as revolt against its own standards an ideals, the things which give it security. But to shut oneself off from the revelation that calls all worldly security in question and opens up another security—that is real sin, in contrast to which all that used to be sinful was only temporary and passing.”

[11] Bultmann, John, 565. ‘For the world , this victory is just as much a κρυπτόν (7.4) as is the real nature of ἁμαρτία; as the world sees things, to suffer the wreckage of death means condemnation by God; the world can only see victory in what is visible. But the significance of the victory lies precisely in the overcoming of the visible by the invisible; this is why the world does not know that it is condemned, or that it is conquered. But this is what the Paraclete will show.”

[12] Bultmann, John, 565. “In each case the world thinks it possesses the criteria for this judgment in its concepts of ἁμαρτία and δικαιοσύνη. But as it deceived itself over the meaning of A and D, so too it fails to see that the χρίσις is already ensuing, that the prince of this world is already judged; i.e. it fails to see that it is itself already judged—condemned for holding on to itself, to it s own standards and ideals, to what can be seen.”

[13] Bultmann, John, 561. “For the word is at the same time spoken into a situation; i.e. it is spoken as the word of revelation against it. If therefore the community has any understanding of the word of revelation that brings it into being, it can and must know that it has always to interpret the word afresh and to speak it into its own present as the word that is always the same—that word that is the same because it is always new.”

[14] Bultmann, John, 575. “This means that the Spirits’ word is not something new, to be contrasted with what Jesus said, but that the Spirit only states the latter afresh. The Spirit will not bring new illumination, or disclose new mysteries; on the contrary, in the proclamation effected by him, the word that Jesus spoke continues to be efficacious.”

[15] Bultmann, John, 574. “If the Spirit is at work in the word that is proclaimed in the community, then this word gives faith the power to step out into the darkness of the future, because the future is always illumined afresh by the word. Faith will see the ‘truth’ in each case, i.e., it will always be certain of the God who is manifest in the word, precisely because it understands the present in the light of this word.”

[16] Martin Luther, “Sermons on the Gospel of St. John Chapters 14-16,” Luther’s Works, vol. 24, ed., Jaroslav Pelikan (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1961), 291.

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