HARMONIZING US TO OUR HUMANITY
John 14: 15-24
15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17 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.
18 “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19 In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” 22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” 23 Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine but is from the Father who sent me.
Cosmically, creation requires new connections. Hydrogen and oxygen atoms float around the universe but it requires an infusion of energy to create the connections that give us water—or violent explosions. As early as Genesis 1 we have this phenomena described as: “When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos…a ‘ruach’ (translated as the Spirit of God or a mighty wind) from God swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be…”. While we have spent thousands of years describing such connections, it remains true that creation predates us and occurred without human agency.
The Holy Spirit is the source of our ‘aha’ moments and is the way in which the promises of God become the experience of God’s presence. Learning requires new connections. Learning requires seeing possibilities we had never considered. The ancient Greeks explained such experiences as inspiration from the Muses. Modern neurobiology and psychology describe ‘aha’ moments as a function of increased communication between the right brain and the left brain, or an increase in theta waves which lower our logical constraints to new connections. As with cosmic creation, we can observe that something new has to happen but none of the explanations remove the mystery.
In general, those of us who like predictability, order and control, do not like mystery. It reminds us of our human limitations. We have strived for centuries to explain the world but at least so far, our best thinking simply gets us closer to the edge of mystery. Religiously, that makes our world, our lives and our reason for being, a gift. The 12-Step Program says this very simply. “The only thing you need to know about your higher power is: You’re not her.” Such an awareness is the foundation of a spiritual life. It leads to humility and gratitude. It moves us from the center of the universe to seeing ourselves as a part of the universe. It turns out that all of us are interconnected and the needs of the whole must always be part of the equation of living. It turns out, it is not all about us. This is a religious value and stands in stark contrast to a value system that says, “ You’re going to die. Get all that you can.” For Christians, the meaning of life shifts from a life devoted to self to a life devoted to living in relationship—with each other, with creation and ultimately with God.
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.
If our lives are devoted to self, to power, prestige and acquisition it will be nearly impossible to see the ‘Spirit of truth’ which says we are important but we are not all important. It will be very hard to see that other human beings matter as much as we do. Our whole world changes when we realize our lives are a gift rather than something we can acquire—or something we must compete for.
You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
The Holy Spirit transforms the promises of the Gospel into experience. We are promised that God loves us. But the promises of love can only move us closer to the experience of love. Loving one another requires regard, deference and service. But such a life is not possible on our own. First we must find the security and safety of God’s love. That happens when we are touched by the Holy Spirit. But, just as creation itself occurs outside of human agency, so too the Holy Spirit. One writer describes how our spiritual disciplines—church attendance, keeping the commandments, a life of prayer etc—are like our jumping up and down to get closer to heaven. The best we can do is get closer to the edge of mystery. Then we must wait.
Another analogy I like is: experiencing the Holy Spirit is like trying to get butterflies to land on your shoulder. It turns out they are quite untrainable. The best we can do is to go to a butterfly house where the odds are much greater they will land on us. Chasing them doesn’t work. The experience of God’s abiding presence is a gift. It is outside of our control and comes as it comes—no matter how much we crave it. That said, if you have tasted the experience of God’s abiding love, you will experience the ‘peace that passes understanding.’
In our Faith and Real Life groups, people often simply describe the experience of God’s love. They often cannot explain it but it is evident that they have a confidence in God’s abiding presence. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus was unrecognizable until he broke bread with them. In that moment, the disciples recognized an ordinary travelling companion was Jesus. And in that same moment, the Jesus they had known in life, disappeared. But the ‘aha’ moment of realizing Jesus could be dead but stillbe present with them occurred. They recognized what Jesus meant when he had sought to assure them “I will not leave you orphaned; 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.”
Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” 23 Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.
It is certainly true that we cannot control visits from the Holy Spirit but such visits are revealed in the act of loving as Jesus loved. “Those that love me will keep my word” becomes the call of every Christian. Sometimes our love will be rejected. Just because we do right does not mean we will be treated well. But failing to love well will almost guarantee that we will fail to experience the presence of God. It is like the seeds in the parable of the sower. Most do not bear fruit. But those that do, produce thirty, sixty and a hundred fold. Which is another way to say, keep loving. It is like visiting the butterfly house.
Don’t look for love in the wrong places. The experience that love survives the most terrible of deaths is the treasure of heaven. It may be hard to see but it is a priceless gift.
I was asked this week how I worked with couples in intractable conflict. The first step is to identify why each party needs to be right—and to respect that position. When couples recognize what is driving them, they often can see the same hunger in their partner that they feel themselves. That is an ‘aha’ moment. Their shared hunger, even their indignation, become the basis of new connection. I call it the power of shared impotence. It may seem like an odd way to connect but that is what Jesus did when his actions said: “I know what it means to be helpless, to suffer and to die. I have walked in your shoes and lived in your skin.” It is an incredible demonstration that nothing can separate us from the love of God.
Of course it has to matter to each of them that the way they are coping is doing harm to their partner—but when that happens we have the seeds of regard. Those seeds can grow.
One last very unexpected butterfly landing that occurred just this week: I had a couple comment to me that I was good at ‘harmonizing them to their humanity’. I love this phrase. It is what I believe the Holy Spirit enables. When we live within who we are, we can become who we are created to be. The Incarnation says there is nothing about being human–even with our weaknesses, failings and sinfulness–that God cannot love. The Holy Spirit allows us to see that love extends from the beginning of time to all time.
We are not left orphaned. That is an ‘aha’ I would wish for everyone. Let it be so.
