rouault_christhis-disciples“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

I can remember my grandmother talking about the first time she saw an automobile. When she was a young child, every time they heard a car coming down the road, she and her three sisters would all run to the front porch to watch the horseless carriage drive by. My grandparents’ generation saw tremendous change in their lifetimes, more change than any other generation in history. The 20th century experienced unprecedented change in a relatively short period of time.

Over the last 150 years, major transportation corridors progressed from rivers to railroad tracks, from railroad tracks to cross-country interstates, from interstates to worldwide flight patterns. Do you know why the State of Georgia has more counties per square mile than most other states? So an agent could ride a horse a day’s journey from the county seat to the edge of the county in one day, no more than 15 miles. Our county seat government is an 18th century model in a 21st century world! Today, we can take a 20 minute drive down to Hartsfield Atlanta airport, hop on a plane, and land in Australia within a day.

Some of you are old enough to remember when local kids would tie metal cans on the opposite ends of a long string, then talk back and forth from one neighboring house to another. Today, the kids of the same age can use an electronic device to Skype with a friend in Hong Kong or play a video game against someone in India.

In Jesus’ time, coins had become popular. A powerful debate arose about whether the Temple would receive Roman coins with the emperor’s face on them. Today, there are bitcoins which have become the new global currency for edgy consumers. I wonder how long physical checks, written on paper with a pen, will actually last. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I ordered a box of checks. Personally, I find the Venmo app extremely helpful to share money back and forth with my sons, and most of my bills are paid online, but for some reason, I still write a check to the church. Have you noticed that we print a QCR code on the bulletin these days for online giving? But how many of you actually use it yet?

Change is inevitable. Change is not necessarily bad or good; it just is. How we respond to change is important. Jesus knew his disciples, and later, his Church, would face tremendous change. The early church would leave the temple and the synagogues and begin worshiping in homes. Not long after, they would invite Gentiles into their worship. Not too long after that, the Church would become more institutionalized and begin to build their own sanctuaries and become more formalized in their leadership. Eventually, the Church would compile the scrolls of the old covenant, along with letters from Paul and gospel writings of the disciples, and form something called the “canon”, which ultimately became the foundation of our Bible.

Our understanding of God and of God’s will changes over time. Our understanding of who God is and what God desires evolves. We have changed in our understandings of what is good and acceptable and right in God’s eyes. Many times, but admittedly, not always, the Church moves in a good and helpful direction. Thank God we no longer live by an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Thank God that most of the world believes that slavery of any form is wrong. Thank God the Church has come back around to the acceptance of women in leadership roles.

Issues like slavery or the rights of women remind us that Holy Scripture is incomplete. Not everything that Jesus has to say to us is written in Holy Scripture. While the study and interpretation of what God has said in Holy Scripture is ongoing, so too is the study and interpretation of what God is saying today in a new and fresh age. Jesus told his first disciples, “I still have many things to say to you.” Jesus proclaims those words to us still; we still have many things to hear from Jesus. There is much guidance and wisdom that Jesus wants to offer us in this 21st century, to add to what Jesus taught his disciples in the first century.

The ironic thing is that in order to go forward, in order to learn new things for a new day, in order to be guided by the Holy Spirit in the twenty first century, we do what followers of Jesus have done over the generations, which is that we first go back. We return to Jesus’ original words to his disciples, that were incomplete and not all they could bear,
so that we can hear and bear a new word in a new world. We do not do so in vacuum, however. We study God’s Word in light of all the other things that we are learning about God’s world.

Over the last 50 years, I have had the opportunity to learn so many things. I have been blessed with educational experiences in numerous states and several continents. I have heard the stories of countless individuals of varied backgrounds. I have read many books and earned the terminal degree in my field, but every day I wake up realizing how much more I have yet to learn. We have the privilege and the opportunity of being lifelong learners.

The world continues to change; the needs of humanity continue to change. We have moved from an understanding of the world being flat to the earth being round. Then we moved from the earth being the center of the universe to our sun being the center of a solar system, and then we came to understand that our sun is only one among millions of stars in the universe, and then we realized that our universe is only one among millions of universes. What do we yet have to learn?

Twentieth century faith was challenged by issues of biblical interpretation related to science and evolution, related to race and gender, related to war and ethnic cleansing. Today, the twenty first century Church is seeking to come to grips with questions of human sexuality. Not only the Presbyterians, but the Methodists and the Roman Catholics
are forming study groups to understand terms like “transgender” or “queer” or “cisgender”. In so doing, we seek to parse out God’s truth and God’s will. We seek to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit amongst all the other voices that vie for our attention.

Jesus said, I have more to tell you, but you cannot bear it all now. There’s only so much a person can take in at a time. Did you ever take calculus, or managerial economics or cost accounting? What about organic chemistry? If you did, you know that you cannot learn it all at once. You cannot start those courses in the first grade. There is so much to learn before one ever gets to organic chemistry or calculus. There are foundations to be built before one can move on to the more difficult subjects.

The importance of high school, and even college, is that we learn how to learn. Teenagers will ask why they have to take certain classes they will never use again, like algebra or physics, yet those classes are foundational. High school and even college classes teach us a way of thinking; they help us learn how to learn.

Sunday School for children and Confirmation classes for youth can be similar. They are not the end of our Christian education, but only the beginning. Sunday School and Confirmation and youth conferences help us learn how to  learn. They teach us a way of being before God and others. They teach us wonder and humility and reverence before the great narratives of faith, but they do not teach us everything we need to know for all time. We seek to be lifelong learners, not only in our professions or in the technology or scientific world, but in the Church as well. We have much more yet to learn. There is more the Spirit has to teach us.

A wise person once said that a particular congregation is either growing or declining. A congregation will not stand still for long; it will either be growing or it will be declining. That is true for individual followers of Jesus as well. We will either be growing in our faithfulness and understanding and service of Jesus Christ, or we will be going the other direction. British theologian James Stewart rightly claimed that God judges a person not by the distance traveled in faith, but by the direction facing. Even so, if we’re facing in the direction of God, we need to be moving. We need to be learning and growing and seeking God’s truth for a new day. We never stop having the opportunity to learn and grow, especially when it comes to spiritual matters. In spiritual matters, we never arrive. We are never done with the exam or the semester or the degree. We are lifelong learners of what Jesus is saying to us today.

One of the challenges, of course, is parsing out truth from falsehood. Jesus said that the Spirit who would come alongside would be the “spirit of truth”. What is true and right and good and acceptable before God is not always self-evident. We need the guidance of the Holy Spirit to show us the way. The task of the Spirit is to reveal to the church and its members the truth.

In the verses just prior to our text for today, Jesus said that he came to prove the world wrong – to prove the world wrong about sin, about righteousness, and about judgment. In many of his actions and words in the first century, Jesus showed that the religious and political leaders were wrong. They had a limited or misguided perspective. This still happens today. As the Church engages in Bible study, we discover that Jesus is still proving the world wrong. He proves today’s religious and political leaders wrong – wrong about sin, wrong about righteousness, and wrong about judgment.

Jesus said that the Spirit who would come alongside would glorify his name. This is one critical way of discerning in these complex, ever-changing times. Does the decision or direction before us glorify the name of Jesus? Do we believe that this course of action or this perspective on others glorifies the name of Jesus and is consistent in some way with his ministry? If so, then we just may be on the right track. But if we wonder, if we doubt, if we are not at all sure that the direction we are going brings glory to the person and ministry of Jesus, we should probably slow down and ask some difficult questions.

It is shocking how many people with strong religious convictions never study Jesus’ words. Thankfully, many still do.
The Bible has been the book most printed each year, in every year since the printing press was invented, the best-selling and most widely distributed book ever. And in this rapidly changing world, I recently read that Bible apps for handheld phones and tablets are the best-selling and most widely distributed of all.

No matter how much change comes to our lives, no matter what forms the church takes or what kind of buildings where the Church gathers, no matter whether the Word of God is read on paper or on screen, followers of Jesus will continue to study what Jesus said then in order to hear what the Spirit is saying to us now. Jesus said: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.”

By the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, may the Church continue to listen to his voice.

Amen.

Rev. Dr. Todd Speed
Decatur Presbyterian Church
Decatur, Georgia
May 22, 2016

 

(Image: George Rouault)