In these final weeks of Easter as we prepare for the feast of Pentecost, the Gospel readings for Sundays and weekdays are taken almost entirely from Jesus' farewell discourse at the Last Supper (John 13-17). This is really a very unique goodbye. Jesus is leaving his beloved band of followers, but promises to be with them in the future in a new way. He's not saying, "Cheer up, things won't be so bad," because actually things are going to get quite bad both for him and for them. But he tells them not to let their hearts be sad or troubled.
He assures them that the Father will send to them the Holy Spirit who will feed and guide the community and who will gift the community with empowerment and direction.
Even more extraordinary is that immediately after Jesus promises his disciples the Spirit, he says that he is leaving them peace. The community is to be a Spirit-animated community working to heal divisions and settle disagreements and to continue Jesus' work of peace-making in the world.
We know the kind of peace we need these days. It is a peace that only the Spirit can bring, a Spirit of resistence, rising above all hatred, hoping against all hope. We need to assure that we have leaders who can bring God's peace despite the failures at peacemaking that we encounter in the world. We need the Spirit to bring healing to our troubled and wounded faith community. We need a peace-rendering Spirit to draw together our local communities that are divided by arguments and idealogies, large and small. And we also need the Spirit's vision to appreciate the peacemaker and non-violent folks in our midst whose voices and actions are often ridiculed as being naive or ignored because their ways seem "impractical in our modern world."
The message of Jesus started out as a quite simple one: Love God and love each other. Since then, and for some strange reason we seem to have felt the need to refine, redefine and wrap this message with our own theological and political concepts of what He was talking about.
But the message remains, and the challenge continues before us. If the gospels have taught us anything they have assured us that the Spirit will be with us always, helping us to continue Jesus' work in the here and now despite any resistence we may encounter.
The Spirit will always be with us. Brazilian theologian, Leonardo Boff describes this presence eloquently: "The Spirit is that little flicker of fire burning at the bottom of the woodpile. More rubbish is piled on, rains put out the flame, and the wind blows the smoke away. But underneath everything a brand still burns on, unquenchable. The Spirit sustains the feeble breath of life in the empire of death."
