John 16.4b-15: “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. 5 But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ 6 But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. 7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 about sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; 11 about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned. 12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
C. S. Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed:
“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of his presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.”
Lewis imagined that God looked curiously upon the images and soundbites we settle on, the worldviews that we cultivate and hold on to, and then purposely destroys these images, soundbites, and even our worldviews so that we can gravitate towards something larger. Lewis had in mind the concept of the Messiah, that Jesus came not by force but by gift and not to save one group from one another, but to save humanity from caustic competition. John goes a step beyond Lewis: Jesus tells the disciples that he needs to leave so that they can make room for the Advocate. They are clutching so tightly to the Jesus that they know that they are missing part of the Godhead. And how paradoxical, as Jesus is God! Can God get in the way of our understanding of God? Does Jesus ever occlude our receptivity to and vision of the Advocate?
I don’t do much praying to the Holy Spirit and have a hard time imagining what the spirit looks like. The Byzantines imagined a tornado when they made the Hagia Sophia. Spirit means “moving air” in Greek; hard to picture, easier to feel. And feeling seems a little too subjective and rife for misinterpretation. Christians have been a little uneasy about the Spirit since the late Second Century CE when Montanus declared himself the Incarnation of the Holy Spirit and led a movement, ultimately deemed heretical, that included charismatic mysticism, moral rigor, and the immanence of the second coming. Patriarchs, including Tertullian, were deeply embroiled in the Montanist/Cataphyrgianist Heresy for Centuries and charismatic expressions of Christianity have been mostly eschewed ever since.
Jesus does not mention the charisms of the Spirit, but the ministries. The world is wrong about Sin. Our tragic flaw is mis-calibrated judgment because we struggle to recognize the infestation of God Jesus pointed at and pointed out. The world is wrong about judgment. Slander and accusation can be based in fact but are not True. WWJD is an interesting start. To changing our worldview. But WWGAF might be the next step: Who Would God Advocate For? Would God advocate for those we condemn? For the condemnation we levy upon ourselves? Does the swarthy-looking Jesus on the cross ever lead us, as it did the Medieval church, to vengeance or anti-Semitism? We need new advocacy if so. St. Ignatius prescribed, as spiritual discipline, that one should hear others in the best possible light. Even if someone gives us the finger. How can that be taken well? By advocating for the Other.
Who needs advocacy in your life? What parts of you need advocacy from you? Do our images of Jesus ever get in the way of our envisioning grace? For William Young they did, which is why he imagined the Father as a large black woman and the Spirit as a slender Asian woman in The Shack. For Gandhi they did, which is why he (may have) said, “I like their Christ, I don’t like their Christians.” Maybe the Advocate is calling us to reimagine the guy in the huge truck that took up 2 parking places in the Costco lot when it was pouring rain, especially if that truck had a huge cross on it.
Wasn’t sure what to do with “The Shack” years ago…. But subsequent readings have shown me this is a brilliant way to see the Trinity. Enjoyed your blog and your Pentecost homily which I viewed online.