This week, in preparing a sermon on today's Gospel reading (John 14. 15-21), I found the material at ‘Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary’ particularly helpful.
Paul J. Nuechterlein highlighted the way in which our whole human way of doing things is infected with the need to justify ourselves with one another, creating conflict and accusation and unjust judgments. Jesus, he writes, came to call us to a whole other way to live and the Paraclete (the Holy Spirit), our Defense Attorney, is there to remind us that we don't need to respond defensively. We don't have to get embroiled in trying to defend ourselves because God has already justified us. This was the basic insight of Martin Luther at the Reformation, when he lifted up justification by grace rather than by works. We are justified before God by sheer gift, through faith in Jesus Christ.
James Alison emphasised the way in which the Holy Spirit brings into creative presence the person of Jesus through our loving imitation as his disciples. It is not that the Holy Spirit is simply a substitute presence, acting instead of Jesus, but instead it is that all of Jesus' creative activity is made alive in the creative activity of us, his disciples. The Spirit reminds us of Jesus (John 14. 26) to bring about the possibility of acting creatively in imitation of Jesus. And this is the sense of the peace which Jesus leaves with us, his disciples; the peace that comes from knowing we are justified by God and which enables us to act without defensiveness in order to bring peace into being in our relationships, homes, communities and workplaces.
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Alfred Schnittke - Choir Concerto.
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