“THE HELPER”
Saint John 15.26 -16.4
Exaudi - The Sixth Sunday after Easter: 28 May Anno Domini 2006
Fr Watson
It is demeaning to need a helper. This is why little children resent doting parents who meddle in the child’s tying of his own shoes, or pouring of his own milk; it is why being in a rest home is so difficult. The "need" for a helper says something about one’s own innate incompetence, inability, lack, and hopeless brokenness. The old "Adam" doesn’t want to be "helped." What makes it even worse in America is our own cherished national myth (which is heretical you know) of the rugged individualist; the "John Wayne" lone-maverick taking his own destiny into his own super-competent hands. Adam would have loved the "Duke."
Get over it. You need a helper. The Lord said it; it’s true.
But, says the protestor, I have Jesus in my heart. No you don’t. You have all sorts of evil lusts, concupiscence’s, and idolatries in your four-chambered muscle. The Lord isn’t from you, what "golden calf" horrors that would produce, the Lord is rather for you. He is "out there," no, not far away "out there," but "out there" in His Word, Washing, Forgiving, and Supper.
As you heard this Thursday past, and, as you’ve been hearing for the past several Sunday’s, The Lord Jesus is no longer visibly apparent to you. He no longer manifests His physical locality the way He did during His 33 year long "local" mode of presence captured so richly by the Evangelists. Maybe that doesn’t suit your wants. Maybe you covet the special experiences that Peter and James had.
Get over it. The Lord knows best how to care for His sheep. Sheep need a helper. That helper is called a Shepherd. Jesus is that Shepherd. And today you learn again that the Helper is that Shepherd as well. The Helper is God the Third Person; the Holy Ghost.
Jesus sends the Spirit. Jesus is God, of the same substance as the Father. The Persons of the Godhead work within their own inter-Trinitarian community to be sure, but they also interact, manifest, and appear to the flock in time and space. Yes the Father spoke the Word to the void at the beginning. Yes the Spirit hovered over the face of the deep, even as He would later hover over the heads of 12" Galileans before their ordination sermons to a crowd of thousands. Even as the same Spirit once hovered and then descended upon the Fullness of the Trinity as He stood in body in the Jordan River. God is God yes; and the Father and the Paraclete are Spirits, yes. But Jesus is God in the flesh. Jesus is the perfect image or icon of the Father. "He who has seen Me," Jesus told Philip, "has seen the Father." And in Him, writes Paul, the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. It is this God/Man from Nazareth, this carpenter’s son Who obeyed the Torah without exception---so you would receive the credit; Who stepped into Adam’s place, into your place, and did everything meet, right, and salutary for His Father---so you would receive the credit. It is this Rabbi Who taught with "authority," and Who with His mighty miracles began reversing the curse of the "Fall," and began driving the demonic hordes back from the sheepfold. It is this Suffering Servant Who with His bitter sufferings and death, yea even death on the Cross, sends you the Helper.
The Helper, The Holy Ghost, is the Spirit of Truth. He is a Person, He is God, but He is appropriately referred to as spirit, or wind, or breath. He is a holy breath which inflates your otherwise dead and lifeless lungs with Life, i.e. with Christ Himself. The Holy Ghost does this by testifying, bearing witness, and speaking truth of Jesus the Truth incarnate. How so? How so when this invisible Helper has no lips, larynx or tongue; since He is after all spirit? When does Jesus give the Holy Ghost? He gives Him to the "12" His first, His proto-Pastors, when He breathes on them on Easter Eve. He gives them His Holy Wind. He gives them a holy kind of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Now they have His breath, His life, His words, His Body and Blood. Now the Apostles are ready, willing, and able to handle that special dispensation of "power" (the power of speaking in foreign languages) which is given them on Whitsunday. Now the "12" and their successors, on behalf of the Lord’s whole Bride, His whole flock, will icon/image Him. Now the "12" will speak, will testify, and will witness Jesus. Now the Helper will help the Church, by helping the called & ordained stewards of the mysteries, proclaim those mysteries. The Church is not some platonic thought or mental construct. The Church is as real, as fleshly as her pastors and people; she is as solid and incarnate as Her dear Groom. Now Christ speaks and is present through the Helper. Now the Helper speaks and is present through the Word and the Word added to human elements. Now the Means of Grace are real and present thorough the men administering those gifts of Grace. You have "Gospeled" to you the mystery of God in the Flesh; the mystery of the Incarnation, perfect life of obedience, and all-atoning sacrificial death at Calvary. Now the Spirit operates and is effective through the preaching and teaching of under-shepherds; through the application of water in holy washing when the Word comes upon the simple water; and in the reception of Jesus' actual Body and real Blood under the species of Bread and Wine.
Got Jesus? Got the Helper? Yes!
Hear Him in His Word: "your sins are forgiven in My Body nailed to wood; your trespasses are washed clean in My Blood gushing from My wounds of love; love for you." Hear Him in your Baptisms: "you are my child, Jesus is your brother, in the Name of the Father and of The Son + and of the Holy Ghost." Hear Him in His Sacrament: "the Body of Christ for you, the Blood of Christ for you."
Where you hear Him and where you receive Him, you have Him, you have the Helper, and you have your Heavenly Father, who art in heaven.
In the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost"