Proving the World Wrong.

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

May 20, 2018

The Day of Pentecost

I.

The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, the Advocate, is the way Jesus is present with us even now.  Jesus insists that this mode of presence is to our advantage, which is to say, even better for us now than when he was with his disciples in the flesh.  It is better because by the Spirit he is within and among us forever, always available to us, always there.

The work of the Spirit, he says, is “to prove the world wrong” about three things: sin, righteousness or justice, and judgment.  Proving the world wrong means demonstrating that the way “the world,” which is to say the normal, standard, conventional way of thinking and acting, is wrong.  That is, the way we usually act is simply at a variance with the truth.  It is mistaken.  It is wrong in the sense of being false and inaccurate.  

The world thinks and acts in certain, self-centered, ego-driven, fearful, violent ways that are based on a kind of spiritual and moral blindness.  The inevitable result of moving through the world with a false and incomplete understanding is that we do unspeakable damage to ourselves, others, and God’s whole creation.  Our actions are twisted by sin, injustice, and condemnation.  We bring wanton destruction upon nearly everything we touch.  This is the way the-world-as-we-know-it operates.

II.

The first thing he says that the Spirit will prove the world wrong about is sin.  The world and those who are privileged to rule in the world have their own definition of sin.  They have decided that sin is any transgression of the rules designed to keep these rulers in power by dividing us and making us fearful of our own gifts and desires.

In fact, in the world’s view, sin is almost anything that appeals to our desires, especially when they get in the way of the agenda of the rulers.  Sin in this sense is very selective.  Bob Dylan once sang: “Steal a little and they throw you in jail; steal a lot and they make you king.”  It means that the bigger and richer and more powerful you are, the more immune you are to any kind of accountability.  And conversely, the less wealthy and powerful you are, the more you are liable to be arrested and jailed, if not worse, for the smallest, even nonexistent, infraction.  

Jesus says the world is wrong “about sin, because they do not believe in me.”  To believe or trust in Jesus is to follow him in his Way of compassion and equality.  To follow Jesus is to act as if we were all one, which we are, instead of under the delusion that we are each independent, separate, competing adversaries, fighting over scarce and depleting resources.  

Jesus is unity and reconciliation.  He does not play favorites; he heals and serves wherever there is need and pain.  His approach to sin is not to punish it, but to love it back non-existence, overcoming it with his embrace of boundless compassion.  He takes away the sin of the world by suffering sin’s gruesome consequences on the cross, thus neutralizing it and removing its power over us.

The world uses sin as a weapon of social control; Jesus abolishes it in the ocean of his reconciling love.

III.

The second thing the Holy Spirit proves the world wrong about is righteousness or justice (they are the same word in Greek).  We are very confused about justice because we automatically think it is retributive and punitive.  That’s certainly the way we talk about things like “criminal justice.”  For us, justice means somebody is made to pay in some way for what they have done wrong.  

If we think of this in terms of righteousness, we are confused about that as well because we have made it into a way to rationalize and justify our enthusiasm for this kind of justice.  As in the “righteous indignation” we feel when we seek vindication.  Righteousness has devolved into the personal pride we feel about our own personal and private morality.  It is our sense of justification as we administer some awful punishment upon those we have decided are bad.

Jesus says that the Spirit will prove the world wrong “about righteousness [justice], because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer.”  In other words, his ascension is what convicts the world about its misunderstanding of justice and righteousness.  Let’s not forget that it was the rulers of the world who arrest, try, convict, and execute him for the twin sins of blasphemy and sedition.  They were administering the world’s swift and sure justice against what they had defined as wrongdoing.  Everything that happened to Jesus was done correctly according to the law and the will of those administering the law.

But his resurrection and ascension overturn that whole regime.  Instead of being punished as a deterring example, he is rewarded by God!  God vindicates him!  God neutralizes the world’s power by showing its complete ineffectiveness in administering justice.  God turns the world’s excuse for justice upside down by revealing it to be the grossest most murderous injustice, to support which is the sourest unrighteousness.

The essence of the good news is that the Roman excuse for justice and righteousness is over, and that God’s justice and God’s righteousness will triumph in the end, and that we can trust in that truth as we live our lives now.

IV.

Finally, the Lord says that the Holy Spirit will prove the world wrong “about judgement, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.”  The world calcifies and expands its power by judgment and condemnation.  This is exactly what Jesus himself experiences.  But by his resurrection, judgment and judgment have themselves been judged and condemned.  Thus they are neutralized and revealed to be the evil and destructive forces they are.

Judgment is the opposite of forgiveness.  It divides and kills rather than including and healing.  It places one person over another as executioner, rather than seeing people meet as equals under one God.  

And just as forgiveness is a field in which we don’t receive it unless we are giving it, so also with judgment.  To judge another, to put yourself over and above them, to dispose of them as if they were an inanimate object, this is to invite and bring down the same judgment upon yourself.  In judging another we become the inanimate objects.  We judge and condemn ourselves.  We choose death over life. 

Jesus calls on us to create, by the power of the Holy Spirit, communities of welcome, acceptance, forgiveness, and healing, where we lift one another up in mutual support and encouragement, where we are able honestly to confess our own wrongdoing and shortcomings to each other, and so receive  grace and pardon in our shared humanness, from each other and from God.

V.

Jesus says that the new gatherings that the Spirit will birth will be fed by his life and teachings.  The Spirit “will take what is mine and declare it to you,” he says.  But we’re going to have to let go of the world’s ways of thinking and acting.  We’re going to have to let go of our fear, anger, and hatreds.  We’re going to have to let go of self-righteous, self-serving, self-centered approaches, and broaden our vision.  We have to start seeing things and people from the perspective of Jesus, who looked on the world with nothing but love and compassion, and who lived in the world in humility and service.

To be people of the Holy Spirit is to be people of Jesus Christ, subject only and always to him, finding in obedience to him our hope, our confidence, and our joy.

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