I was 8 years old when my family moved to Brazil. Everything changed: language, food, customs, weather. And one of the things that I at least did not expect was the absence of school buses. If Dad couldn’t take us we had to take public transportation: a taxi, a tram, a bus. We usually took a city bus. And one day, I can’t remember why, my big sister didn’t go with us. And she was the one with her head screwed on straight. So my 6-year-old brother Nate and I boarded the bus as usual, got off at what I still think was the right stop, and proceeded to get thoroughly lost. Either we turned right when we should have turned left, or we turned one street too early, or too late, the fact remains that from where we were we couldn’t see the school. Fortunately Rio de Janeiro never gets really cold, and the poverty and street crime weren’t as bad 50 years ago as they are today, so we don’t appear to have been in any actual danger. But we sat there in a little park we came across - they had swings and slides - and waited. And waited. And waited. It rained. Nate fell off the swing into a huge mud puddle. We got hungry, and thirsty, and scared. Well, eventually a woman who lived in an apartment overlooking the square called the police and they came and picked us up and delivered us to our parents, who still thought we were at school. But it could have been a lot worse, couldn’t it? Especially with the terrifying stories we see in the news nowadays, with Amber Alerts and Jessica’s Law and all the other things that remind us what a scary place we live in.
Have you ever been lost? Not just taken a wrong turn. I’ve done that, more often than I care to admit. But I always have a map in my car, so all I have to do is figure out where I went wrong and then I can get to where I’m supposed to be. And since most places are kind enough to put up street signs, I can usually figure out where I am. But when you don’t have street signs, or a map, or a compass, and the sky is overcast so that you can’t see either the sun or the stars, you’re pretty well up a creek.
That’s why there’s a search-and-rescue team in every part of the country where people go out into the wilderness. It’s all too easy to get lost. Bushwhackers - people who go hiking in places without clearly marked trails - really have to know their stuff. And even they have topographical maps and compases. Sometimes I look out at the wilderness around us and wonder what Lewis and Clark and - and the trappers who came before them - felt when they saw it for the first time. Think about it. Even with a compass you don’t know the dead ends and short cuts, or where to get water, or how soon the winter is going to close down the passes. No wonder they hired Sacajawea. She had been there before. She could show them where to go. They wanted to get there. But they needed a guide.
And that’s one of the reasons the disciples were so panicked when Jesus told them, that long ago night in Jerusalem, that he was going away. They knew they were venturing into unknown territory, and they weren’t fully briefed. They didn't know what came next, and they certainly didn’t know the path. They didn’t have a clue how they were going to get wherever it was. As it turned out, after Jesus explained it to them, they really did know the destination, but they still didn’t know what it looked like any more than they knew the twists and turns in the road. They wouldn’t have recognized the unearthly kingdom Jesus was talking about any more than their oblivious contemporaries had recognized Jesus as the Messiah. They needed help.
Don’t think too badly of them. Yeah, yeah, I know, Jesus had told them time after time after time what was coming, and they didn’t get it. They couldn’t even see what was around the corner, much less grasp the total strangeness of the adventure Jesus was calling them into. How can you understand something you’ve never experienced? And besides, it’s one thing to follow someone you trust into the wilderness, it’s a whole nother thing to have him tell you he’ll meet you there but they’ll have to get there on their own. It’s hard enough for us, and we know what Jesus and his followers were heading toward.
And it’s not just that they needed him in a practical sense. They also loved him, and they would miss him. They would be lonely. And yet with all of these negatives Jesus still says that is to their advantage for him to go away. I don’t know about you, but when I hear, “This is for your own good,” I start to count the silverware.
But since Jesus always tells the truth, somehow the person he is going to send as his stand-in, his replacement, his alter ego, so to speak, will do even more for us than Jesus could while with them in the flesh. Who is this mysterious person? Who is this Holy Spirit, this Holy Ghost that we say we believe in every time we repeat the Apostles’ Creed?
Before we go any further, we need to accept that the Holy Spirit is just as much God as is the Creator Father and our Lord Jesus. This isn’t an easy concept to grasp; it took the church over 300 years to figure it out. But there’s really no other way to put together what the Bible says. Scripture never talks about the Trinity - but the three are always there together, working in creation as surely as in redemption. But one of the interesting things, even though we understand that each person is equally God, there’s a distinct hierarchy. Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise." [Jn 5:19] And later he says, “I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me.” [Jn 8:28]
Just as Jesus’s always points to and glorifies the father, so does the Holy Spirit point to and glorify the Son. “When he, the Spirit of true knowledge, has come, he will be your guide into all true knowledge: for his words will not come from himself, but whatever has come to his hearing, that he will say: and he will make clear to you the things to come. He will give me glory, because he will take of what is mine, and make it clear to you.” [V. 13, 14]
When the Spirit gets a chance to speak, it’s not about himself, but about Jesus Christ. And because he points always to Jesus Christ, who is the way, he also points us to God the Father, who with the Son and Holy Spirit is our ultimate destination, our journey’s end.
But how does he do it?
Some people think that the minute we start bringing attention to the Holy Spirit that we’re going to start talking about speaking in tongues and miraculous healings and other signs and wonders. And although I do not dismiss these phenomena, it is clear from what Jesus says that is not the Holy Spirit’s primary job.
Remember that even before the Holy Spirit came, the disciples, along with the crowds that followed Jesus around the countryside, had seen the miracles that Jesus performed. Yet every person Jesus healed physically eventually grew old and died. Even Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead, was destined to die again. Jesus was pointing to something greater than these material experiences, but they couldn’t understand it. Even though people believed in the miracles, few believed in Jesus.
But the Holy Spirit takes us beyond what we can see with our eyes. He shows us eternal truths about ourselves, helps us understand what Jesus did for us, and then on top of it actually makes it all work for us - and belong to us - by giving us faith. Jesus’ work on our behalf wasn’t just to set up a sort of spiritual bank account to draw on, but actually to do something for us. It’s the difference between food on the table and food in our bellies. It’s the faith from the Holy Spirit that “eats” that food, that turns what Jesus has done for us into something we can use.
In this passage Jesus talks about three supremely important things that the Spirit does for us. “When he comes, will make the world conscious of sin, and of righteousness, and of being judged.” [v. 8]
Sin, righteousness, and judgment. Why is being convicted - that is convinced - of these things this good for us?
Many commentators emphasis that Jesus says the Spirit will convict the world of sin and judgment, not the disciples, not those who follow him. But that’s only if you think of being “convicted” as having a sentence passed on you, of being found guilty. And of course that’s part of it. But even more important, conviction means understanding and acceptance. If we don’t accept that evil and sin exist, in us as well as in our neighbors, if we don't understand it and recognize it when we see it, we’ll spend our lives blundering off down blind alleys, winding up at dead ends, and never make it to our goal, which is union with God. This is why the Spirit is called the Comforter, as well as the Counselor, even when he talks about sin. Preacher and scholar Matthew Henry said: “One could think this were cold comfort, but it is the method the Spirit takes, first to convince, and then to comfort; first to lay open the wound, and then to apply healing medicines.”
Another way to understand this is that the Spirit shows us where we are, and then he takes us where we need to go.
The primary sin the Holy Spirit convicts us of is, to the surprise of many, not one of the ten commandments. It's more important than of all the laws about our behavior: murder, adultery, lying, etc. According to Jesus, who should know, the worst sin of all is failure to believe in him. But, I hear some people say, "How can lack of belief be a sin? I know a lot of really good people who don’t believe that Jesus is God." These are, of course, the same people who discount the first three commandments because they have to do with how we relate to God the Father rather than with one another. Here Jesus underlines that he deserves the same attention and respect that is owed to our creator.
The reason that lack of belief is a sin is that if you don't understand that reunion with God (which is attainable only through Christ) is the purpose of life, you will wind up lost. Literally. It's just like wilderness hiking: no matter how energetic and competent you are, if you don't know the terrain and the destination, you’re going to get lost in the foothills or passes and never make it home. It’s not about being a bad person. It’s about knowing what you were made for.
Now, unbelief is also a sin because in many cases failure to believe is rebellion - that is, an unwillingness to admit that we need a guide, a helper, a savior. It’s a sin to want to be our own God, our own guide to good and evil and the meaning of life.
Well, enough about sin. What about righteousness?
It doesn’t make any sense for us to understand sin if we aren’t at the same time pointed in the direction of “not sin” - that is, righteousness. You can only understand darkness when the light gets turned on. Or, to put it another way, it’s good to understand about sin because it keeps you from walking off spiritual and moral cliffs. It keeps you from looking for fruitless solutions to the probems of life, or from expecting human endeavor to create a paradise.
But it’s not enough to know where not to go. You also need to know the right path, to recognize the narrow gate as the entrance to life. The Holy Spirit helps us recognize the at Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Righteousness is Christlikeness. That’s the simplest explanation. The Holy Spirit also makes us understand that we have no righteousness of our own, even when we do all the good things Jesus asks us to do. When we understand and accept that Jesus died for us, and cling to that truth as the center of our lives, the Holy Spirit unites us to Jesus Christ, so that his righteousness becomes our own.
And finally, the Holy Spirit convicts us - convinces us - of judgment. What is the comfort in that? All the classic illustration of judgment day show horrible sights of demons, of pain and despair, of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. As the prophet Joel said, “Truly the day of the LORD is great; terrible indeed-- who can endure it?" [Joel 2:11b] If we know east from west, left from right, sin from righteousness, and follow the Way, we’ll get where we’re going without threats and intimidation, right? Why do we need to be thinking about judgment? Simply put, that’s a reminder that the end of the journey will come. Jesus is reminding us that our actions today have eternal consequences. Yes, we are to stop and smell the roses. God gives us roses as gifts to sweeten our journey. But we aren’t to confuse them with the ultimate meaning of life. The Holy Spirit has a purpose, and so do we.
Jesus said that “the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” [Lk 19:10] Well, the person who makes sure that we can see in the dark, read the map, and find our way home is the Holy Spirit. But none of it is any good at all unless that is where we want to be. Not only is the Holy Spirit the only one who can show us how to be reunited with God. It is also only the Holy Spirit who can make us want to.
