By the Power of God the Father, Jesus has Never left the Faithful, by the Power of Spirit. So How Do We Kill That Beautiful Understanding?

Our passage this week is John 14: 15-21.  We continue in the time after Jesus’ Resurrection, yet before His Ascension.  The disciples will begin a new phase of their lives of Acting on their faith in the world.  It begins with them and is a faith community that continues with us.

So, the Father, who is calling the Son home-the Son who will return again, will not leave the disciples 'in the lurch'.  Another will come, the Holy Spirit, to dwell in their hearts.  This is no less that Jesus coming to reside in their hearts.  The rest of the world won’t get it, but we will understand.  It is how the love of God will continue into this new phase of God’s plan.  So, Jesus no longer in our lives, but, in our hearts, the power of God up close and personal.

This is the framework for understanding how we will act as Christians in the world:

John 14: ¹⁵ “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. ¹⁷ 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.

¹⁸ “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. ¹⁹ In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹ 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.”

So, how then will the Devil get into the system to undermine what God does for us?  How about making it more important to believe the right thing than to do the right thing?  

According to the Google, ‘doctrine’ “is a codification of beliefs, principles, or instructions held by a group (in this case Christians) acting as a framework for understanding and acting in the world.”  As a framework for understanding and acting in the world, I hope those verses are clear.

We understand God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as a framework of understanding how God has chosen to act in the world.  In this case, we are speaking of the Doctrine of the Trinity.

 HOWEVER-and if you are NOT a fan of rabbit hole diving, stop reading here.  HOWEVER, because this is so important, how will the Devil seek to undermine it?

It could start with a close reading of the passage that ends up with something like this:  ”So we have God who is forever and all-powerful above us and surrounding us, invisible yet all-embracing who is ALSO AT THE SAME TIME a human being who came to live among us, tempted in every way and yet without sin who is ALSO AT THE SAME TIME a Spirit, well, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, God inhabiting our hearts.”

Some may consider that seriously cool.  Others may consider that seriously confusing. 

This was so cool and confusing that the Whole church (of the time) got together in Nicaea in 325 and in Constantinople in 381 and codified (made a Doctrine) that God is Three in One.  God is in three ‘persons’ (Divine Persons, not human persons except…Jesus…) and it has been labeled in history as the Doctrine of the Trinity. 

 Now, there’s the key word, not Trinity, but Doctrine. 

Something the church likes to do is to borrow ideas and concepts from the rest of the world to illustrate what we are trying to say.  But we often use those ideas and concepts poorly.  What I have in mind here is that we do not just have a Doctrine of the Trinity, we have a Trinitarian Formula (borrowing and messing up a basic principle of mathematics or maybe chemistry-but for Jesus).  We use this at baptism, “In the name of the…1… Father, and of the…2… Son, and of the…3… Holy Spirit”.

This is how the numbers break out for our Scripture passage for Sunday:

Jesus is speaking here: ¹⁵ “If you love Me(2), you will keep My(2) commandments. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father(1), and He(1) will give you another Advocate(3), to be with you forever. ¹⁷ This is the Spirit(3) of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him(3) nor knows Him(3). You know Him(3) because He(3) abides with you, and (3)He will be in you.

¹⁸ “I(2) will not leave you orphaned; I(2) am coming to you. ¹⁹ In a little while the world will no longer see Me(2), but you will see me(2); because I(2) live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will know that I(2) am in my Father(1), and you in Me(2), and I(2) in you. ²¹ They who have My(2) commandments and keep them are those who love Me(2), and those who love Me(2) will be loved by my Father(1), and I(2) will love them and reveal Myself(2) to them.”

SO…see how easily this can draw the joy and power of these words of Christ?  Like a freshman lecturer in college starting , "Allow me to bore you as we contemplate the Godhead" (yes, Godhead is another name for the Trinity). 

If we get stuck here, the Devil wins.  We lose out on the deeper knowledge and understanding of how God acts in the world and how WE are to follow. 

But if we choose to STOP here, the Devil wins even more.  We believe that God is in Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and you better get that down pat or else you aren’t doing your faith right.  Few people would say that explicitly, but it is laced implicitly across our faith.  Get this right or you don’t move on.

 This is when a Doctrine, an important piece of defining our faith, becomes an Idol, when it takes on a life of its own, when its purpose is “getting it right” and does NOT continue to its Real purpose, "doing it right", as a framework for acting in the world. 

When the Bible, or some part of it, some set of verses, some proof text, when these become how we understand Jesus' words to “keep my commandments”, when we start somewhere else than Jesus' commandments to sum up the law, to Love God and Love Neighbor, then we’ve been derailed from our faith.

Thus endeth the trip down the Rabbit Hole.

Pastor Pete