On Not Getting It Right

The Day of Pentecost; June 4, 2006

John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15

“And when [the Advocate] comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.” (16:8-11) That is about as contorted a piece of teaching I have ever encountered. It is no wonder Jesus adds, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” This sentence about sin and righteousness and judgment has left our heads spinning!

Well, mine, anyway. Whenever I have run across these verses, they have bothered me, so when I saw them in the lectionary for today, I decided they were what I needed to focus on. After thinking about them, praying about them, and studying them, they still bother me. I was relieved to learn from one of the commentaries that the great theologians – such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas – also were bothered by them. If I’m puzzled, at least I’m in good company.

I want to understand things. May I get personal? I wrote my dissertation, For the Forgiveness of Sins: Original Sin, Evolution and Baptism, because I wanted to understand something about human nature in a way true to the best scientific evidence and true to our theological tradition. And I believe that what I wrote makes sense, and really does help explain sin, and my Doctoral Committee and the external reader from the Ohio Board of Regents agree. Yet Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will prove the world wrong about sin; can the Holy Spirit by whispering a word or two undo all those months of work?

Of course. I don’t expect that the Holy Spirit is going to issue a revelation through some prophet – even one of you – that my head is screwed on backwards on the matter. But the Holy Spirit might remind me that understanding sin is not nearly as important as believing in the One who deals with sin. There is a lot of disagreement about what Jesus is actually getting at in these few lines, but this much surfaces: religion is not about getting it right. That is, living is not about getting it right. There is something more important: trusting in the Son of God.

St. John the Evangelist is consistent in his view of reality: there are two competing realms, the world and the Kingdom of God. You are part of one or you are part of the other. If you believe in Jesus, then you are part of the Kingdom of God; if you do not believe in Jesus, then you are part of the world, an enemy of the Kingdom of God. In John’s mind, there are no non-combatants. You are either with Jesus or you are against him; no one is neutral about him.

Yet you know people who are not Christians but have no particular bone to pick about Jesus. Perhaps we have not made a particularly good witness. Perhaps they simply find a lot of what we teach hard to swallow. Perhaps you have heard or read this challenging bit of contrast. The Da Vinci Code contains suggestions about Jesus that we Christians claim to be untrue, and even fantastic. But which is harder to believe: that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, they had children, and their descendants became the Merovingian monarchs of France? or that Jesus was crucified for the sins of the world, raised from the dead and ascended into heaven?

I wish to trouble no one’s faith, least of all my own. But honesty and the use of reason require me to acknowledge the contrast. And yet: I believe. It is fantastic, yet I believe that Christ has been raised from the dead, that he has gone to the Father, and that he has sent his Holy Spirit to prove the world wrong about sin, about righteousness and about judgment.

And that is the point of Jesus’ statement. If I believe, it is not because I am particularly gullible, on the one hand, or particularly faithful, on the other. It is because Christ has sent his Holy Spirit. If anything a preacher says gets through to you and helps you believe that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life, it is not because of the rhetorical skill of the preacher, but because Christ has sent his Holy Spirit.

The world thinks sin is all about sex and chocolate; the Holy Spirit reveals that sin is about failure to trust in Christ. The world thinks righteousness is all about toeing the line, about proving that you are good enough; the Holy Spirit reveals that righteousness is about the victory of Christ in his death and resurrection. The world thinks judgment is what happens to those people when they get theirs – those of you as old as I am or who watch classic television programs may remember Maude’s repeated warning to her husband, “God will get you for that, Walter” – and the world thinks that judgment is when God smiles and says, “Well, you did your best, come on in.” The Holy Spirit reveals that judgment is about the condemnation of the powers of evil, the destruction of Satan.

The structure of our liturgy and the structure of our theology and the drawers full of sermons that every middle-aged preacher can point to are elaborations and guides to one central point: trust in Jesus Christ. Read the accounts of the martyrs, if you care to: they did not go to their deaths reciting their lists of virtues, but commending themselves to Jesus Christ. My struggle to understand our theology, especially to understand the work of God in the world that the sciences reveal to us, is not to help me believe, but is because I believe that Jesus is my Savior. And my passion for you – my yearning for you to participate faithfully in worship, my desire for you to know your Bibles, my wish for you to experience the hope and joy of God in your lives – is because I believe that Jesus is your Savior.

I do believe it is telling that Jesus’ statement concludes with the condemnation of “the ruler of this world.” Condemnation not of “this world,” not of “those who refuse to believe in me,” but of “the ruler of this world.” Condemnation is for the one who wishes our destruction; salvation is for the world. You and I may or may not get it right; what is more important is the Holy Spirit getting through to us, to persuade us to trust in Jesus Christ.

You show us much, loving God, about our life in you, yet much remains a struggle. Send your Holy Spirit to give us faith. Lord, we believe; help our unbelief. Amen.

Robert A. Keefer

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Clarinda, Iowa