Experiencing The Spirit: Light - John 14:26; 16:4b-15

Who in here likes walking in an unfamiliar dark room?  We stumble through the room running into the furniture bruising our shins, stepping on toys breaking them, tripping and falling, or, worse yet, as happened to me visiting a friend during my college years, have your toes land in something a sick family pet left behind.  Nothing really good happens when we choose to walk in the dark.

We’ve spending time for several weeks now considering the variety of ways we experience God’s Holy Spirit.  Today we move into the second half of our reflections leading up to Pentecost and the celebration of the outpouring of God’s Spirit and the birth of the Church.

We’ve considered how we might experience the Holy Spirit as life-giving wind or breath—from the wind of God blowing over the earth at is creation, to the Breath of God being blown into the lungs of the first of humanity to Jesus breathing out His Spirit upon the disciples after the resurrection as He sent them out into a new age of ministry.

We’ve considered experiencing God’s Spirit through Baptism of water and fire.  Through the symbolism of water, God’s Spirit cleanses us from sin as we are joined to Christ and seen by God through Jesus’ own righteousness.  Through the fire, we are purified as the impurities are burned from our lives, as God seeks to not only see us as holy through Christ, but seeks to actually make us holy.

Last week we considered experiencing God’s Spirit as anointing oil, remembering that through the Spirit’s presence in our baptism, we are anointed by God, marked as special, and set-aside for God’s purposes—those purposes found in the words of the prophet Jeremiah and Jesus—bringing good news to the poor, proclaiming release to the captives, offering recovery of sight to the blind, letting the oppressed go free, and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor. 

This week we come to find that at times we experience God’s Spirit as “light.”  How do we experience the Holy Spirit as “light”?  It is through the many ways that God’s Spirit brings revelations into our lives.

In our reading this morning, Jesus is preparing the disciples for His impending departure—it is a conversation held the night He will be arrested, the next day to be tried, convicted, and executed.  Jesus is telling them about the blessing they will receive in His departure…the blessing of God’s Spirit being poured out upon them.  Jesus tells them that as the Spirit comes, the Spirit will remind them of the things that He has told and taught them, that the Spirit will guide them in the ways of truth, that the Spirit will offer proof to the world with regards to sin, righteousness, and judgment.

Hearing the role of the Spirit of God in this way takes us back to the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in John 3.  Jesus and Nicodemus have already had a conversation about the importance of being born of the Spirit, what many like calling being “born-again.”  Then Jesus says:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

The Light of the Holy Spirit reveals sin in our lives.  Jesus’ words remind us of what we do not know.  Sin likes the darkness.  Like a roach or a rat that scurries off into the shadows when hit with the light, sin wants to remain hidden.  We know about those things.  They are the skeletons hid in the closets.  The secrets we don’t know want anyone to see.  We keep them hidden and in the dark—the drugs in the sock drawer, the pornography under the mattress, the after-hour rendezvous, the credit card bills hidden from our spouse, all those things that we do not want anyone else to see.  Yet the Spirit wants to come into our lives and shine light on that sin and expose it for what it is.  The Spirit may do this literally by exposing our sin for others to see—the times we are caught with our hand in the cookie jar.  The Spirit may do it figuratively by whispering to us as we get ready to share a piece of gossip or make a racist comment—“don’t do it, you know that’s wrong.”

As the Spirit reveals our sin to us, we are shown that we cannot be righteous own our own—the light of the Spirit reveals that we and the world are in need of a Savior.  A Savior found in Christ Jesus, who came not to condemn the world, or us, but that the world, and we, might be saved through Him.  The Spirit reveals that is through the death and resurrection of Jesus that His righteousness is offered to us—in this, the light of the Holy Spirit shows us the grace of God.

Finally, Jesus says, the Spirit reveals the truth about judgment.  Jesus points out that the ruler of this world, those listening would have thought of the Accuser, the Tempter, and Satan—already stands condemned.  He is the once condemned by God—yet going back to the scene with Nicodemus and Jesus, the Spirit can shed some light upon the truth of the judgment of the rest of the world.

So often we hear folks who are anti-God paint an image of God as some mean being just wanting to condemn everyone to hell for every little thing they do wrong.  We hear others who claim to be pro-God painting a picture of God as ready to condemn folks to Hell for a particular sin.  Yet, John paints us a different picture.  As Jesus is talking about those who stand judged, those who will find themselves condemned, He says those who will find themselves judged and condemned are those who have chosen not to believe, those who have chosen to turn from Christ and the Light of His Spirit and would rather walk in darkness.  It is not God who condemns us, we condemn ourselves by our own choices.  We distance ourselves from God when we choose to harden our hearts, when choose to walk in the darkness, when we choose to hide in our sin, or when, worse yet, we choose to pretend or deny that it is even there.

However, my brothers and sisters, God’s grace offers us the alternative as well.  We can let the Light of God’s Spirit to flood our lives…to let it, no matter how painful it may be, expose our sin, reveal to us through the Word of God and the words of the brothers and sisters that journey with us that may see more clearly that we can, and be prepared to confess that sin.  Then, as that Light continues to pour over us, God’s grace gives us the power to choose to surrender our lives to Christ, to give our lives over to Him, to believe in Him by embracing Him not only as Savior but also as Lord. 

Then, as we walk with Christ, we will find that we are not abandoned to a dark room for this journey, but the Spirit that has brought Light into our lives bringing us to this point continues to shine into our lives.  Revealing God’s direction for us through the reading and studying of Scripture, through worship, through fellowship and conversation with our brothers and sisters in Christ, through prayer, and through the experiences we encounter every day.  It is then that we fill find ourselves walking the journey of Eternal Life, walking not towards the Light, but in the Light.

My friends, may we let the Light of God wash over us today, revealing all we need to see.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.