Acts 17: 22-31 John 14: 15-21
The world will not fully know God either through Christ or the Spirit unless those of us who have faith tell them about him. We mustn’t leave the task to the clergy and every little helps.
I’m a great fan of Venn diagrams and the continuation of Jesus’s farewell discourse in today’s gospel reading from St John’s Gospel provides a good opportunity to draw one – albeit in our mind this morning. We might be naturally inclined to draw three circles – one for each person of the Holy Trinity intersecting at the centre with the word ‘God’. But we ought to add a fourth circle for us, the believing community.
Our faith in Jesus has provided us with a relationship with Jesus which will outlast his return to the Father because the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send to us at Jesus’s request is the guarantee that the relationship will survive. Jesus will dwell in the Father: we will dwell in Jesus: and Jesus will dwell in us.
Hence the four circles in my Venn diagram.
Now, as it happens, you can’t create a true Venn diagram with four circles – at least not according to AI – but as we faithful know: nothing is impossible with God and he isn’t artificial. So, I’m going to stick to my guns and hold onto my four-circled diagram.
Following the passage from St John’s Gospel which we heard this morning, Judas – the other Judas whom we tend to call Jude to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot – thinks it would be much more dramatic and straightforward if Jesus simply manifested himself to the whole world so that everyone would believe. Well, they might have done then and there in first century Palestine but Jesus had a greater sense of time and eternity than small town Jude. He knew that love of God and obedience to God’s plans and purposes for his people and the open offer of a relationship with God through Christ was a matter for the Holy Spirit across all time and eternity. He also knew that the world down the ages would only see the Holy Spirit and all that the Spirit promises if the company of God’s faithful people tell the world about him.
And that’s where we come in and that’s why it’s so important – in my opinion – that we believe in a four-circled Venn diagram, whatever AI tells us.
Unfortunately, we’ve got rather stuck with technical terms for what Jesus requires of us. Mission and evangelism have become buzz words that don’t sit very well with our weekly trips to Sainsbury’s, a day at the office, or even a round of golf. They’re things that people who wear their collars the wrong way round do on Sundays (they’re busiest day).
But, while Jesus could see the point of leadership and authority in the Church he came to build, he also saw the benefits of discipleship regardless of role descriptions and provided the fruits of the Spirit with which to equip us for the task.
And that’s why obedience is so important. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Now one of the reasons why Christian evangelists are inclined to make God seem rather unattractive to the man in the street is that we have come to believe that God’s commandments are all about preventing people from doing the things they enjoy. Whereas they’re principally about love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – and, yes, the last one might mean listening out for last orders. But it is the last one.
We don’t have to shout about them in the street with a placard – which is a pretty sure-fire way of making the world run for cover rather than run to church – but we do have to live them out and make it clear to the world that we live them out because we are followers of Jesus Christ.
I wonder how many of the people elected to office for the first time yesterday had all nine of the fruits of the Spirit in their manifestos: perhaps the description of detention centres meant that they ran out of room.
‘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 for ever. 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. 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.’