John
16:12-15
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.
Have you ever taken the time to go outside at night and
just look up at the stars? If you haven’t, do yourself a favor tonight and do
it. I don’t do it as much as I used to, but every once in a while, after
everyone in the house is asleep, I’ll let the dog out the back door and stand on
our deck and just look up. I used to do this for hours: I would stand in my
dad’s backyard after getting off from work and just stare up at the sky until
my neck hurt. I love looking at the stars; in many ways it helps to keep me
humble, to know my place in the universe. You see, if it’s a clear night, and
the lights from town aren’t so bright, you can stare into the sky and before
long you’ll see more stars than you ever thought possible. Places which were
once black begin to sparkle with the faint flicker of far off stars, and if you
stare long enough, you’ll begin to notice the sky moving as the earth spins on
its axis.
I stare up at those stars and think about how far away
they all are, how none of them are really anywhere close to a lightyear away, how
some of them are probably even gone now, with their light just now beginning to
reach my eyes on this planet. I like to think about how each of those stars
likely has planets revolving around them, how some of them aren’t simply stars,
but far off galaxies whose mass is only visible to me as a tiny dot of light. I
like to stand there in the yard, on the deck, craning my neck, my eyes darting
from one constellation to the next, unable to take the whole dome of sky in at
once, contemplating the vastness of the universe and how beautiful and glorious
it all must be, but then I begin to feel overwhelmed. Maybe it’s thankfulness
in the recognition that the planet on which we live is such a random act of
creation that there’s no way it’s random at all. Maybe I get overwhelmed with
the possibilities that exist in a universe that seems so great that it will
never be fully understood, or perhaps I am simply overwhelmed with the beauty
and splendor of countless stars against a backdrop of nothingness. Whatever it is,
it doesn’t take long for that feeling to subside when my dog begins to bark or
when the heat pump pops to life, shaking me back to reality on this planet,
back to the rhythms and realities of life. To tell the truth, as much as I like
to gaze up at them, I don’t know much about those stars: I don’t know their
names, locations, or classifications, but they still intrigue me. Their mystery
still enthralls me, and perhaps it’s that overwhelming mystery that causes
something within me to look up on a clear night, to not take for granted the
beauty of a night sky. Perhaps it’s the mystery that calls my eyes upward.
If I’m honest with you, it’s a similar sense of mystery
that continues to drive me on this journey called faith. To me, faith really requires
mystery—blurred edges, unanswered questions, doubt, paradox, thin places, and the
unknown and unknowable. To me, it seems the very nature of God is found in the
inexplicable mystery of one God in three persons, in the reality of God as
Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). It’s an elusive mystery, this
Trinitarian reality of God. If we try to explain it, we almost always get it
wrong; it’s like trying to catch a handful of smoke, yet theologians have tried
to put God into words for centuries—we
have tried to put God into words, into boxes, into images for centuries in
various attempts to resolve the tension, to solve the mystery that is God. Yet
God always stays ahead of us; the Holy Spirit blazes on in front of us, calling
us with those words of Jesus to“come and follow.”
I think that may have been at least
part of what Jesus is getting at in the words from John’s gospel before us this
morning. This is part of Jesus’ “Farewell Sermon” to his disciples prior to his
crucifixion, resurrection, and eventual ascension. Jesus tells them, "I
still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” Jesus
hasn’t told them everything. Jesus hasn’t had time to tell them everything, to
explain it all, to lay it all out in graphs, charts, maps, and theological
dissertations with multi-syllabic words and annotated footnotes. Jesus hasn’t
given them all the answers, all the right words to say, all the right doctrines
to believe. There are still many things they don’t know—and many things they
don’t know they don’t know—but Jesus tells them, “you cannot bear them now.”
Does he not have faith in his
disciples? Does Jesus think that they can’t cope with the whole truth? Does he think they’ll be so overwhelmed that
they’ll just throw their hands up and forget the whole thing? That happens, you
know? You try your hand at something, maybe you build a birdhouse for the
backyard, and it turns out so nice, you decide you can build a dining room
table, but a few hours into measuring, cutting, gluing, and screwing, you realize
you’re in way over your head and you don’t even have the right tools it takes
to build a table, so you just give it up and throw the wood on the burn pile!
Some people are the same way with their faith: they give church a try,
pick up a Bible and start reading, but before long they’re told they have to do
this and not do that, or they’re told that they have to believe this and rebuke
that, or someone tells them that their way of thinking is the only “right” way
and all other ways are heresy. It doesn’t take long before they’re overwhelmed,
swamped with all these opinions and directions until they decide to throw the
whole thing out the window and carry on where they left off before anyone ever
talked to them about Jesus. They just can’t bear it all.
Maybe that’s why Jesus tells his
disciples he’s got more to tell them but they just can’t bear it now. Maybe he
knows there’s only so much a mind can manage; only so much one can digest at a
time, only so much fuel a fire can burn without being drowned out. It’s
important to point out, however, that Jesus doesn’t just leave his disciples
with what he has taught them thus far. No, there is still more to learn, more
to do, more to be, and when the time comes—“When the Spirit of truth comes,” they’ll continue on, continue
to grow, because the Spirit “will guide [them] into all the truth.”
Notice how Jesus doesn’t say, “When I’m gone, you’ll know everything, have it
all figured out, and you’ll be able to tell those who have it right from those
who have it wrong.” Notice Jesus doesn’t say, “When the Spirit of truth comes,
he will tell you everything you need to know, so memorize it, make sure you get
it all down right and don’t deviate from it.” Notice Jesus says instead, that
when the Spirit of truth comes it will “guide them…” The Spirit is
an active force in the life of a disciple of Christ, always guiding us, showing
us what it is Christ would have us to do, who God would have us to be. This is
why the fourth gospel relays these words from Christ about the Triune
relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in these verses: it is
through that mysterious relationship that the Spirit guides us in the truth
that can only be found in God.
Notice what I said there: “the truth that can only be
found in God.” I think we can get too bogged down in thinking
that “the truth” is found only in a certain way of reading the Bible, or a
specific way of doing worship, or a precise method of baptism, or a particular
way of praying. We can convince ourselves that our way of understanding is the
right way—the only way—and then God is only a part of our way, the Spirit is
simply a card we play when we want to prove a point, to justify our way of
understanding the truth. We’ll say things like “I was led by the Spirit,” when
it seems the Spirit always leads us to where we wanted to go in the first
place!
Jesus tells his disciples then and us now that there are
still
many things we don’t know—a lot of things we don’t know—but the Spirit
will guide us to what we need to know, because the Spirit reveals that which is
from God. There are still many things Jesus has for us to learn. To think we’ve
got it all figured out, that we know it all, or that we somehow hold the key to
understanding everything is nothing short of a lie! We are only fooling ourselves if we believe that. Of
course, the good news in that is found in the reality that we don’t have to
have it all figured out! We don’t have to understand the detailed intricacies
of an orthodox doctrine of the Trinity; we don’t have to try to fill in the
historical gaps in Scripture, or have an answer to every difficult question in
this life. If we are being led by the Spirit of God, there will be times when
the Spirit is still a ways ahead of us and the only answer we may have to the
questions we face in this world will be “I don’t know”—and that’s alright!
Living in the tension of mystery is a part of follow Jesus on this journey to
bring about God’s Kingdom.
Listen, if you’re afraid you don’t know it all, that you
don’t know enough, well, you aren’t alone. Honestly, for me, I tend to feel
most connected, most “plugged-in,” most in tune with God’s Spirit when I
realize that I don’t know it all, that I’m not supposed to know it all, and
that maybe my sense of certainty is actually keeping me from more fully
experiencing God. When I let go of my self-assuredness, when I come to grips
with the fact that I don’t know, that I’m not sure, that I just don’t have it
all figured out, that’s most often when God moves in my life, when the
Spirit’s guidance and direction becomes most evident.
I think that may be a piece of the mystery of God as
Trinity. I think that God’s reality is expressed in this indescribable
“three-in-one” relationship in part to remind us that ultimately God can only
be known in relationship, in a mysterious, trusting, self-giving relationship. We
are invited into that relationship, to experience the fullness of God’s love in
relationship with God. Now, are there things we ought to know? Of course. Are
there things we still don’t know? Of course! Jesus still says to us, “I still
have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” We
cannot bear them now, but in
time, with the Spirit’s guidance, we will come to understand the things of God,
the ways of the kingdom. Until that day, however, be faithful in what you do know, in the ways of God and
God’s kingdom of which we do know. Be faithful in seeking the Spirit’s guidance.
Be faithful in admitting you don’t know what you really don’t know. Be faithful
in following Jesus on the journey wherever you may be along the way, for as the
Apostle Paul says, “now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to
face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have
been fully known.”[1]
Amen.
[1]
1 Corinthians 13:12
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