A good friend who is a college chaplain once expressed what he had learned working with students and their middle-aged parents this way.  Adolescence, he says, is when we discover just how human our parents are.  Middle age is when we finally forgive them for it.  It was his way of saying that whether we mete out judgment or understanding has a great deal to do with our perspective.  Children tend to be more forgiving of their parents when they have children of their own.  Some of you have hinted that one of the joys of grandparenting has involved hearing your children say something like, “If I had known then what I know now . . ..”  Perspective is everything.  

Since Jesus’ resurrection, he’d spent some very serious quality time with his disciples.  It must have been a remarkable time.  Time like you and I have never known.  We’ve never spent quality time with someone we loved dearly who had died and then come back for a visit.  It’s impossible to know what those few short weeks must have felt like.  But, now, it was time for Jesus to leave again, to go back to his father.  From that perspective, things must have been very frightening.  They couldn’t probably imagine, having walked with Jesus all this way, what it’d be like now walking this road alone.  He’d tried many times to explain to them what this time meant, that it had to come and why.  But, you know how it is, trying to let go, especially of the one person who always made you feel most loved, safest.  No logic is ever so good that it can explain away how bad that feels. 

Jesus knew, because he’d been alone himself, even felt abandoned at one time, what that aloneness was going to feel like for his disciples.  It was more than just emotional X-ray vision that gave Jesus the ability to tell them he knew how they felt, “‘sorrow has filled your hearts.’”  As we’re fond of saying, he’d been there, done that, gotten the T-shirt (“‘My God!  My God!  Why have you forsaken me (Matthew 27:46?’”)?).  There is just no greater fear than the fear of abandonment.  A fear that, by the way, is too often one of the greatest fears that drives most parent-child relationships.  A fear that must be resolved for life to go on.

So, Jesus made the disciples a promise.  He had to go away, but he would not abandon them.  They would not have to walk this road alone after all.  He would send the Holy Spirit, not to take his place, but to the very presence he’d always been to them.  The presence of God in their lives, day by day come what may.  And, that promise would mean two very specific things. 

First, someone to guide them.  The greater bulk of this text is actually given over to that issue.  The Holy Spirit is described as “‘the Spirit of truth.’”  The one who would “‘guide (them) into all the truth.’”  He would specifically be the one who helped them discover the boundaries of “‘sin and righteousness and judgment.’”  They would not be on their own, left to their own resources, left with nothing but their own emotional barometers to feel their way through this very confusing life.  It’s more than hinted at here in this text that Jesus believed there were some moral, spiritual and intellectual absolutes.  The Holy Spirit, Jesus said, would “‘guide’” them through the mazes of what was less than absolute.  It would always be process, never finished, a journey.  But, they would have a guide.  They would not be walking this road alone.

Just out of curiosity, what do you believe to be absolutely true?  Who told you that?  How did you discover it?  Are you even looking?  Are you on a journey to learn or have you settled upon a few safe, easy things you can know for a fact that keep you comfortable when things go bump in the night and you’ve just decided that, as far the more confusing things are concerned, you’ll just let sleeping dogs lie?  Well and good, perhaps, until it doesn’t work anymore.

Jayson Blair has recently had his name in the news in a way he would probably say he never dreamed or wanted.  He’s the New York Times reporter who was recently fired for making up stories.  He’d been assigned to cover some of the most prominent news events in recent American life.  And, he just made stuff up, turned it in and one of the most prominent, if not the most prominent, newspapers in the world that was trusted as a standard by which other sources of truth were measured reported as fact what was nothing but lies.  Now, not only has Blair been fired but the heads of some of the top executives at the Times are also rolling, the very integrity of the paper is now being questioned, its future clouded.  Blair was young.  He’d been given a job most reporters only dream of ever having.  Not only did he throw that all away but he probably also destroyed any chance he’ll ever have of fulfilling his career ambitions.  He lied when it would have been easier and even more profitable to tell the truth.  Why did he do it?  In his own words, “I lost my compass.”  Whatever it was that guided him morally he lost, he says.  Whatever helped him distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad, truth and lie, he just lost.  How lost are you if you have no inner compass to guide you?

One of the most important reasons for parents to introduce their children to faith in God through Christ is that every believer is also on the receiving end of this promise Jesus gave his disciples that day.  Every follower of Jesus is also blessed with the presence of the Holy Spirit to guide them into the truth.  The Holy Spirit is our spiritual compass, to inform our consciences, to point the way, to turn on the light within when we’re stumbling in the dark.  If you don’t give your children an inner compass to guide them when you aren’t there to guide them any more, how will they know the truth?  How lonely will that journey be?

We live in a pluralistic culture.  Multiple and diverse ideas and values compete for prominence at the same time.  We’re standing in line at a moral, intellectual and emotional buffet every day and there are simply more choices than our consciences can afford, if we try to put a little of everything on our plate before we pay out.  We’re bombarded daily with information from all those sources, especially from television where, more and more, we’re propagandized with messages that physical beauty, sexual prowess and financial prosperity are the standards of meaningful living.  For many people anymore, even in the church, the Bible is no longer the standard by which other truth is judged but just another option on the buffet.  What happens to us if we lose our compass? 

Jesus promised not to abandon us without the light of moral reason.  He is himself defined as “the true light, which enlightens everyone,” the light that no darkness can overcome, but also a light that not everyone chooses to accept (John 1:1-11).  Light, in scripture, is a metaphor for the capacity for moral reasoning that points to God.   Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus promised that his moral light would be within those who followed him.  But, whether we choose to accept that light is the most sacred choice God ever bestows on any person.  How’s your compass these days? 

Jesus promised us a guide.  He also promised something else.  He said the Holy Spirit would be our “‘Advocate.’”  It’s one of the most beautiful words in all the New Testament.  From its original, root meaning, “‘Advocate’” means one called to walk along side us.  The company of God, his “walks with me, talks with me and tells me I am his own” daily presence in our lives.  The Holy Spirit.  Someone who is on our side, with us, not against us.  We’re not abandoned to our resources, our wits, our skill, but accompanied by the very presence of God in every moment of our lives.  Not a presence we have to invoke or conjure up or whip up or hope for but a presence that is there because God gives it.  Not a presence we’re given, as we’re too often told, as a reward for Holy Living.  But, the gift of God that prevents us from having to walk this confusing, sometimes very dark, road of life alone.

The American Film Institute named the top 100 heroes and villains in film history this past week.  Sure enough, Hannibal Lecter, the cannibalistic psychopath from Silence of the Lambs, won the nod for the worst of the worst.  The character named top hero, however, wasn’t what I expected.  It wasn’t some digitally produced cartoon-like superhuman.  It was Atticus Finch, a very real life character played by Gregory Peck in 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird.  A story based on life in Deep South Alabama in 1932.  A young black man has been falsely accused of raping a young white woman.  The judge comes to visit Atticus one evening, and appoints him to be the young black man’s advocate, his attorney.  Someone to stand with him during the trial, to guide him through the process, to see that justice is done.  The court scene where lawyer Finch makes his closing argument to the all white, all male jury is one of the most moving in all of American film history.  No wonder Atticus is America’s favorite film hero.  He defended the defenseless.  He told the truth.  He didn’t abandon the most vulnerable.  So it is with God and you and me.  God, in the presence of his Holy Spirit, is on our side. 

I’ve tried to decide what it is I’ve been trying to say from this pulpit since becoming your pastor.  What’s the common theme of my preaching?  What’s the bottom line of all I’ve said?  I think this is it.  God is on our side.  He’s on your side.  He’s for you, not against you.  And, even in what Jesus called the Holy Spirit, “‘Advocate,’” we have that promise. 

Mockingbird is told from by Atticus Finch’s daughter, Scout, looking back on her childhood from the perspective of adulthood.  Toward the end of the story, Atticus’ ten-year-old son, Jem, is brutally attacked by a vicious man who is angry at Atticus’ defense of the black man.  Remember, this is the Deep South in the ‘30’s.  The little boy’s arm was broken and he’s been knocked unconscious.  A man many thought to be violent himself fends off Jem’s attacker, rescues him and takes him to his father’s house.  As the movie ends, Atticus is sitting in a rocking chair by Jem’s bed, watching over him as he sleeps.  From her adult years, Scout remembers that night when her father stayed the whole night in Jem’s room and was still there when we awakened in the morning.

The last thing Jem would have remembered was the brutal darkness.  The first thing he would see when he woke up was a father who never left his side and who, almost certainly, would have been there to explain what went bump in the night, tell him the truth about what happened to him and help him heal.

Do you have someone like that in your life?

Jesus wants to be that someone.