In my brief time as a hospital chaplain, I spoke to a man whose wife was nearing the end. This was an elderly couple, and the wife seemed relatively at peace with her prognosis. The husband, on the other hand, was distraught. He smiled ruefully, though not patronizingly, at the then 23-year-old, unattached, inexperienced student chaplain sitting next to him and said, “She may be ready, but I’m not.”
My last post contended that 1 John – especially when read in conjunction with chapters 13-17 of the Gospel of John, Jesus’s farewell to his disciples before his death – has something unique to tell us about that ever-elusive One who is compared to the wind that “blows where it wills” (John 3:8). The Holy Spirit is easily the least discussed person of the Trinity in the Western theological canon. Perhaps this is due to the relatively limited amount of scripture that speaks directly of the Spirit. Perhaps it is related to Jesus’s grim warning not to blaspheme against the Spirit (Matthew 12:31), and I pray to be spared from such a sin!
Yet, the scriptural witness we do have regarding the Spirit implies a special closeness between the Spirit and the human beings living, as we do, between Christ’s ascension and His return. Of course, God is not subject to the earthly rules of space, and the presence of the Spirit must be understood as the presence of the Father and the Son as well. Nevertheless, to accommodate the human mind that is subject to space and can only think one thing at a time, scripture describes the Spirit especially as remaining with us.
Scripture describes the Spirit as the One Who Abides.
Christ assures His disciples of the Spirit’s abiding quite forcefully in John, and nowhere more than the Farewell Discourse. This text, John 13-17, beckons us to sit among the disciples at Jesus’s last supper. It invites us to hear the gospel as Jesus imparted it, the night before his death, to his closest companions: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1b).
If you are familiar with death, you will know that it has a way of distilling reality. Like a flame refining gold, it blasts away all things inessential. This scripture hands us pure gold, the precious clarity preceding the world’s most consequential death.
And in this essential moment, Jesus does three things: he washes his followers’ feet, he preaches, and he prays. In all three of these actions, his unmistakable emphasis is love.
Hardly anyone is ready to experience death – whether their own or someone else’s – and the disciples no exception. They are not ready to see Jesus go. They have centered their lives on Him, as today’s Christians strive and hope to do. (Though easily mishandled, the metaphor of Christ being married to the church has its wisdom.) And yet, even these fortunate few who spent years with Jesus in the flesh, shared meals with him, and witnessed the wonders of his ministry hadn’t quite gotten the point. They certainly didn’t understand the importance of Jesus’s death; they didn’t even understand the importance of how he lived his life.
Jesus may be ready, but they’re not.
This unreadiness is apparent in their reaction to Jesus washing their feet. Haven’t they gotten it by now? Jesus has proclaimed Himself “the good shepherd” who “lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). How could they be shocked to see Him lay down a towel and a washbasin for them? Yet, they are. They are still working within the constructs of status and hierarchy.
It is this shocking action of foot washing, which seems so predictable to us with the privilege of hindsight, breaks open the space for Jesus to talk about what love really means. It is, indeed, patient and kind. Love never fails. It is also fiercer than death, stronger than the grave. Love never dies.
Christ gives his followers a “new commandment”: to love one another. Of course, this is not new – they have heard it before – but renewed – they will soon be enabled to understand it and enact it far more deeply. So often in scripture and life, God’s grace manifests in the commandment to do something and the gift of ability to do it. God provides a ram to be sacrificed in Isaac’s stead. God provides us an abundance of love so great as to drown out our false sense of scarcity, freeing us to love fully without fear that we will run dry.
In this passage, we find that the Spirit – also called the Advocate or the Paraclete – empowers Christians to love. Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.…You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you” (John 14:15-17).
The Spirit will not be foreign to the disciples; the Divine Breath has always been with them. Yet, this new giving of the Spirit that will follow Christ’s death and resurrection will enable them to love each other and follow Jesus’s teachings when His presence is no longer visible. This Advocate will ensure the persistence of the Truth, the gospel – “what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life” (1 John 1:1).
“I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus says; “I am coming to you” (John 14:18). Jesus knows that his disciples aren’t ready. They will feel abandoned, distraught, and even doubtful of the power and veracity of the gospel. Sometimes we will feel orphaned, too.
That sense of bereavement is real and powerful. There is no way to prepare. And yet, the Spirit, the very One who teaches us a love that makes loss unbearable, abides and bears it with us. The Spirit remains, insisting at bedside and graveside that death is no match for love.
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