“Speaker of Truth: Not Alone”
St. John 14:15-21
Sixth Sunday of Easter – April 27, 2008
Pastor Chip Winter

            Grace to you and Peace, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon is the Gospel lesson appointed for the day and already read for us from St. John’s 14th chapter.
            My dear family in Christ, living in Norfolk, Nebraska, provides us with a unique understanding of the word “orphan.”  In our state we have Boys and Girls Town, long known as a haven for troubled children but also a place where those who have no mother or father can be taken in and cared for in the best approximation institutionally possible.  In our home town we have a relief service which helps and has helped people around the globe for over a decade, now, and its name reveals how it all started; with relief supplies for homeless, parentless children in the former soviet block.  We probably let “Orphan Grain Train” roll of the tongue so easily, nowadays, we hardly think of the context anymore.
            But the context of orphan is brought to the forefront in this morning’s Gospel.  Jesus is preparing His closest followers for what is to come: His suffering for the sins of the world, His death in substitution for ours, and His triumphant resurrection, which is without a doubt a high note.  But this victory will be followed by His ascension to rule from on high.  He will be leaving the scene: at least, He will no longer be available in the ways they’re known Him before, physically, visibly walking, eating and talking beside them.
            The comfort that the Lord promises is “another counselor” to come from the Father.  This will be a social worker, a coach, an attorney and a therapist all rolled into one; the best of each one at any given moment, as the Lord knows we need.  This Holy Spirit will be one to walk beside the followers of Jesus Christ, helping them to find their way, reminding them of what Jesus had said and done, comforting, encouraging, redirecting and empowering them. 
            And this is the Holy Spirit Who abides with us, even now.  This is the Spirit of the Living God who speaks through the Word of God, Who inhabits the sage counsel and advice of our brothers and sisters, Who feeds the Faith He started in us at our baptism with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus, given for our redemption on Calvary’s cross.
            It may seem like an awfully tall order that Peter foists on us in the epistle, today.  “Always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” (I Peter 3:15)  But we have been given the Spirit of Jesus Christ, Who promised the Spirit, the Counselor given us would plant in us a faith, even though it seem as small and insignificant as a mustard seed, “that can move mountains.” (Matthew 17 and 21).
            Look at the work this Spirit has done through people.  He took people as diverse as an IRS agent, a young man subject to panic attacks, a physician (no doubt, a gifted intellect), and another young man with a vocabulary that might lead you to mark him down as precocious and through them He told the life story of Christ Jesus.  He used the talents of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to reach out to all sorts of people with differing sensitivities so that the details of Jesus’ teaching, miracles, suffering, death and resurrection might be told in meaningful, reaching ways for all of us.
            Don’t be misled into thinking that these gifts all just dropped down from the heavens in biblical times and that you, who lack such fantastic talents, don’t have much of anything to contribute to the church’s witness now because you’re nothing special.  Many of these are special talents, no doubt.  But there is also training involved in being able to give a reason for the hope we have in our forgiveness and adoption as God’s children. 
            Let me remind you of the way the nimble mind of Paul worked with the people of Athens in our first lesson this morning.  After he got their attention with the remark about the unknown God, a statute to cover all the bases, he reveals that he was paying attention in his high school Grecian Lit class by quoting 3 different poets to them, as he would quote to the Corinthians and in his letter to Titus.  Being prepared calls for some work in us (studying the scriptures, paying attention to the news of the world and our daily education), but that, too, will be motivated and aided by the Holy Spirit.
            He will provide us with what to say and how to say it – Jesus promised as much in Matthew’s 10th chapter. 18 On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles.  19 But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say,  20 for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
            Granted, the world will not always welcome this witness, because it doesn’t naturally understand the matters of God’s Spirit.  We may be arrested, ignored, or belittled because naturally, mankind is depraved and indifferent (at best) or hostile (at worst).  But even then the Holy Spirit provides us comfort in banding us, together.  There are few bonds stronger than those formed in military units that have seen combat or navy shipmates who have braved the conflict side-by-side.  Such is the unity that the Spirit brings about in the body of Christ as, together, we bear witness to the world in our words and our deeds: hearts ABLAZE and sharing the spark of the Gospel’s good news.
            Why are we compelled to bring the message of salvation to all?  Why does Paul risk ridicule and Peter counsel preparedness?  Because we are the conduits of God’s work in the world.  Those people next door are our kin in creation, how can we let them perish in ignorance?  We are a bunch of beggars, simply telling other beggars where we were given bread.
            Jerry Seinfeld once pointed out that the average person’s greatest fear is public speaking.  The average person’s second greatest fear is of death.  This makes for the odd observation that if you are attending a funeral, this means you’d rather be the person in the casket than the one giving the eulogy.  The thing is, people fear public speaking more because they think that, on any given day, they are more likely to be asked to speak than they are likely to die.  But that is simply denial.  So far, mortality is batting 1,000.  Death will come to all, and for our brothers and sisters to be prepared through faith in Jesus Christ, we need to speak – by the Holy Spirit.
            Paul Rusesabagina was the assistant manager of the Sabina Hotel de Mille Colline when, in an emergency he was given responsibility to manage the Hotel Des Diplomates.  The emergency was the prevailing power, the Hutus of Rwanda, getting revenge on the previous privileged class of the Tutsis.  Bands of marauding Hutus were “chopping” the Tutsis they would find; wielding machetes to dismember and to kill.
            Paul, being a Hutu, himself, kept open the Belgium owned hotel he managed, through bribes and connections and everything at his disposal, because he knew he had to provide for, he was obligated to comfort and protect the helpless minority from such destruction.  His story, of providing refuge for 1268 people, is told in the motion picture, Hotel Rwanda, and for his valor he was awarded the 2005 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
            We are called to such valor, to such action, in our faith.  People all around the world, all around your block, are suffering the ravages of sin and the threat of eternal condemnation.  We know, by the Holy Spirit, the victory Christ has won for all through His passion, death and resurrection.  They are our kin in creation.  We must see them to refuge in the cross bought gift of forgiveness and life.  We must speak the truth, in love.
         The spirit of this world is a powerful contender.  We need to be prepared for our role as witnesses to Jesus, the Christ.  But the wonderful assurance we have is, that by the Counselor Who has been given to us, by the Holy Spirit Who resides with us, this is how St. John describes the coming conflict in his first epistle “…many false prophets have gone out into the world... every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. 4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.   I John 4:4-6  Amen.