JOHN 16.4-15 is a harder Pentecost Gospel, I believe, than those set by the lectionary for years A and C (A, John 20.19-23; C, John 14.8-17). It is a moment of hysteria, sorrow. The disciples are (as we sometimes are) scared of the unknown, and — understandably — are reluctant to let Jesus go. He exposes the negative thoughts underpinning their silence: “None of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’” (v.5).
They probably respect him an excessive amount of to argue with him. But he perceives the considering that they dare not speak. What he offers them they don’t understand and, subsequently, don’t need. Plainly, they might slightly not let him go.
This air of reluctance compounds my annual difficulty: I find it hard to place my thoughts on Pentecost into words (oh, the irony!). But one other preacher is out there to assist — not that he can take my place within the pulpit: he has been dead for nearly 400 years. In the centuries that lie between us, preaching fashions have modified. In place of his two-hour-long addresses, I often have 12 minutes. But his sermons contain a depth of detail that’s imaginative and intuitive slightly than a boring compilation of facts and cross-references; so I benefit from them. I hope he would approve.
On Whit Sunday, 12 May 1611, Lancelot Andrewes preached before the King at Windsor. The start of his Pentecost sermon captures the festival with perfect simplicity: that is the day when the “promise of the sending” turns into the “sending of the promise”.
Andrewes spends his entire sermon on v.7, interpreting the exchange that Jesus insists on on this sentence. Something that’s familiar (our Lord in his earthly being) must give approach to something that’s unfamiliar (the indwelling Spirit). Andrewes knows that attempting to keep things as they’re doesn’t prevent change. Earthly existence is nothing but change. It is fear slightly than love which drives their sorrow. Jam tomorrow (the Holy Spirit) is an insufficient inducement for giving up jam today (Jesus).
Jesus persuades the disciples that it is healthier for them that he go away, in order that the Paraclete can come. Yet, this shouldn’t be a matter by which he might have been dissuaded from fulfilling the divine plan. We have all been in situations by which we want to persuade someone that initial pain will give approach to something higher. It is usually a hard sell, especially to those that — like children — live perpetually in the current than calculating rationally. Andrewes imagines the disciples’ response: “The Comforter won’t come? Be it so; let Him not come. We desire no other Comforter [than you, Jesus]”. Then he suggests one other step of their attempts at persuasion:
“Why may not Christ send for Him, in addition to send Him? Or, if He go, come againe with Him? . . . Are they like two buckets; one cannot go downe, unlesse the opposite go up?”
Christ’s work was truly finished on the cross, as he himself confirmed (John 19.30). But salvation is the Holy Trinity’s business, not Christ’s alone. Andrewes uses one other striking image, this time a will, to make his point. Christ is the Word, the written substance of the document. But the Spirit is the seal. Paul confirms this, referring to “the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4.30).
Trust is at stake here, as much as obedience. Jesus is making his disciples a promise. Every promise calls on the religion of those to whom it’s made: do they trust the one doing the promising? If someone owes me money and guarantees to go away now, fetch it, and return to pay me, how confident am I that I’ll see her, and my money, again?
If the disciples had held on to the Jesus that they knew, rejecting the Spirit that that they had yet to recognise, would Jesus persist on earth like a creature out of time? That must not — couldn’t — be. They did trust, and accept, what they may not yet understand, in order that we, their successors, would understand, and so find our everlasting Advocate.
Never again, from the moment of that first Pentecost, will Christians be without their Lord. True, he shouldn’t be before our eyes. But only because (Andrewes again) he’s now in our hearts.
