When the Advocate Comes . . .
Pentecost
John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
To say that we don’t understand the work and role of the Holy Spirit in our lives would be a significant understatement. Baptists may be just a little less informed than some other denominations – I’m not sure why. As I watched and learned from ecclesiastical leaders through my youth and young adult years, I observed that my Baptist leaders were slightly less afraid of Pentecostals and other Charismatics than they were of Catholics. Some 20 years later, I am even more confounded by those fears that directed so very much of their teaching and leadership.
I’ll tell you why I’m confounded – 8 years ago when we began as a congregation, there was no small controversy surrounding our beginnings. There’s no less indicting way to say it – we were a split from another church. Splits are always suspicious, and we were no exception to that rule. To this day, it was the rare Baptist who stopped by to see how I was doing in our new venture. But that first week, and then at least once a month for the next two years, the pastor of one of the local Assembly of God churches would stop in just to check on me, and to have prayer. We became friends, and I came to trust his counsel and wisdom. Then, as our church began to get our legs under us, we determined that we wanted to have more of a social/benevolent/personal ministry in our community than in our previous church experiences. We began to look for examples and opportunities, and we discovered that the Episcopalians and Catholics in our community were doing more to help people with physical kinds of needs than many other groups, and so, through our relationships founded through Habitat for Humanity and Our Daily Bread, we became ministerial companions with the parishioners of St. Matthews and St. Francis. Twenty years ago, to put in the vernacular, “Who’d a thunk it???”
Today is Pentecost – the birthday of the church. This is the day that the church of Jesus Christ came out of hiding from the shadows and the upper rooms and began to accomplish her world-wide mission. This is the day that more than 3000 were saved in one place, igniting the beginning of Christianity. This is the day that the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, reigned down on the people of God and indwelt their lives, and subsequently, ours. This is that day.
The Holy Spirit has many names – we refer almost interchangeably to the Holy Spirit and to the Spirit of God. The Spirit is also known as our Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Teacher, and our Friend. In our gospel passage for today, John quotes Jesus, who refers to the Spirit as “the Advocate.” I want us to focus our attention this morning on that name, and on this role that the Spirit plays in our lives. And then I want us to look at our response to the Spirit of God.
Advocate. It is a legal term in origin. We refer to defense attorneys as Advocates. If we take that analogy to the Nth degree, we see the work of the Spirit in our lives as legal defense support – one who advocates on our behalf. But as I said before, the Holy Spirit is known by many names. Other translations of the word “paraclete” – the word which is translated in this case – include Helper, Friend, and Comforter. We really do an injustice to the work and personality of the Spirit when we attempt to use any one word to describe Him.
To get at the sense of the name, we have to look at concepts. The word “advocate” helps – we understand that concept of stepping up on someone’s behalf. But another way of looking at the work of the Spirit indicates that the Helper – the Comforter – “walks alongside” us as we learn and serve.
The more I thought about it, the more I started to think we need a more contemporary term to help us. Do you remember the Academy Award winning movie from 2004 – “Million Dollar Baby” was the story of Maggie Fitzgerald (played by Hilary Swank), who was a poor, thirty-one year old waitress coming out of a tremendously dysfunctional family. She decides to make her mark in the boxing ring. She convinces the experienced hardened boxing trainer Frankie Dunn (played by Clint Eastwood) to coach her and be her manager, with the support of his old partner Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupris (played by Morgan Freeman). Frankie has a problem in his estranged relationship with his daughter, and although he initially resists taking Maggie on as a project, he ultimately more or less adopts Maggie while he helps her along with her career[1]. When I think of the role of the Spirit of God in our lives, this idea of a boxing coach/trainer/manager comes to mind as a willing example.
You and I have seen coaches our entire lives. They serve multiple functions within that larger role. They are something of the teacher – the coach teaches the players. There is a line in “Million-Dollar Baby” where Morgan Freeman’s character is narrating, and he says, “To make a fighter you gotta strip them down to bare wood: you can't just tell 'em to forget everything they know; you gotta make 'em forget even to their bones... make 'em so tired they only listen to you, only hear your voice, only do what you say and nothing else... show 'em how to keep their balance and take it away from the other guy... how to generate momentum off their right toe and how to flex your knees when you fire a jab... how to fight backin' up so that the other guy doesn't want to come after you. Then you gotta show 'em all over again. Over and over and over... till they think they're born that way.”[2] That’s what a coach does in the teaching role – they teach, but they teach things the right way – or at least we hope.
I picked up a new pup yesterday. Amy is a lemon pointer (I may bring her to volleyball tonight), and over the coming months and years, I will be something of a coach to her. They tell me that most dog trainers teach their dogs as many bad habits as good habits. Most of these pointers do what they do instinctively, and we trainers/owners simply try to teach them a few things about how to find and retrieve the game. Most of my dogs I’ve taught a few bad habits along the way as well – not on purpose, mind you, but bad habits nonetheless.
The Advocate – our Coach – takes on something of the role of encourager – head cheerleader. The better coaches in our lives encourage us to do our best, to learn from our mistakes, and to give greater effort than we can summon from ourselves.
And then Coaches are something truly like an Advocate. I was watching the replay of one of the Astros games the other night, and their manager, Phil Garner, came out of the dugout to dispute a call (when they played it back on instant replay, it turns out that Garner had good cause to dispute the call). We’ve seen it a hundred times. The manager goes out and takes off his cap and scratches his head while he is shaking it. Then he puts his cap back on, and looks the umpire straight in the eye, and then starts pointing at the base where the disputed call took place. Then they get into a little heated argument, the manager kicks dirt on the umpire, and then the ump throws him out of the game. It happened to Phil Garner the other night. The Holy Spirit does something like that on our behalf – not getting thrown out of the game, but standing up for his “player.” He advocates on our behalf – states our case – carries the torch for us.
The more I think about it, it makes me wonder why we shy away from knowing more about the Holy Spirit.
I do know that, not only do we not understand the role of the Holy Spirit very well – what we do know, much of it we have wrong. I’ll give you one prime example. In this country, and rather pointedly in this part of the country, we take that American spirit of individuality, and when we translate it toward our spiritual lives, we actually tend to believe that as we age, we ought to “have to rely” on the Holy Spirit less. We feel that “Christian maturity” is an expression that insists on a greater independence from the Spirit of God as we gracefully age. To continue with the sports analogy, we move from being “player” into the role of “player/coach.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. In the world of sports, the role of “player/coach” is quite rare – mainly because it’s so hard to pull it off. Nearly every example of someone becoming a “player/coach” has been short lived – either the player retires, or they move full time into coaching.
In our relationship with this indwelling Spirit of God, we never “graduate” into the role of coach. We never sever the relationship. True Christian maturity, rather than moving toward independence, moves toward an ever increasing practice of greater dependence. We don’t become less dependent on the Holy Spirit – we become more dependent. We learn better how to listen. We learn better how to obey. We learn to incline ourselves toward the Spirit. We learn to trust with greater confidence. We learn to rely – every increasingly, we learn to rely more and more on the influence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
I want to comment on one other portion of the Romans passage from today. Paul said, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” Paul makes that point that one of our greatest weaknesses comes at the point of prayer. I resonate with that statement. I do not know how to pray as I would like, and I suspect that may be the reason that my life lacks the breadth and depth of prayer that I should desire. When we think of our congregation, I think all of us would agree that prayer is a weakness in our collective experience. We pray, but sometimes we pray almost as though we feel that we don’t know what we’re doing. I have a word for us in this – if this is truly the case in our corporate experience, we must not lessen or abandon our efforts at prayer - rather we must intensify them, while we trust the Spirit of Truth to enunciate our thoughts in a manner that proves wholly effective.
Jesus did not leave us alone. When He ascended to His Father, and our Father, He did not leave us as players on a team without a coach. He sent the Holy Spirit. This Spirit of God came into our lives at Pentecost, and you and I know Him. We know Him, and as we mature, we do well to listen ever more intently to the promptings of the Spirit in our lives.
Richard W. Dunn, PhD.
posted by the sojourning pilgrim | 8:18 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home