God is With Us!

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever” [John 14:16 (NRSV)].

The Reverend Dr. Sam Wells, former Dean of Duke University Chapel, now “merely” the vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields at Trafalgar Square, in central London, has written and lectured extensively on what, for lack of a better term, might be called “social engagement.” In doing so, Sam is neither offering comments on how far we should stand apart during the COVID-19 pandemic, nor is he giving advice on which London Dry one should prefer — e.g., Hendricks or Tanqueray. In a bit of a round-about designed to draw us closer to the subject, Sam offers an unusual hypothetical (I apologize to Sam if I muff this summary; it’s drawn from several of his talks and from his wonderful book, The Nazareth Manifesto: Being With God).

He allows that one sees a homeless person on a busy street corner. One can “do” one of four things. One can:

1. Drive home, get on the horn, and form an organization to tackle and solve the problem of homelessness in America.
2. Get a large group of people together, including homeless people themselves, plus local business people, civic leaders, church members and others, to work with you to rid America (or the world) of homelessness.
3. Go up to the homeless person, perhaps buy them a cup of coffee, and then sit down with them and talk with them about college basketball, local food tastes, the price of tea in China, whatever.
4. Go home and blog about homelessness, saying “Let’s not talk in general terms of homelessness; rather let us concentrate on individuals with their own stories.

Wells names each of these methods of dealing with the situation. The first, he calls “Working for.” The second, he calls “Working with.” Sam says this second type of reaction is a bit like community organizing. The third, Sam designates as “Being with.” Here, there’s no “work” going on. One merely shares the company of and conversation with another person. The fourth, or last “activity” Sam calls, “Being for.”

As Sam allows, with both the “Working for” and the “Being for” responses, one never actually has to talk to the homeless person at all. One already knows the answer to the problem, so nothing is gained by such a one-on-one discussion. We “fix it.” According to Sam, the third category, the “Being with” approach, is the one response that doesn’t label the homeless person as “the problem.” It starts and ends, not with the person’s deficits, but rather with his or her common humanity.

Now bear with me here just for a few more moments. Sam then asks us to consider the “shape” of the life of Christ, using the four categories named above (although, as Sam notes, only three are actually necessary). Jesus spent one week of his life in Jerusalem, “working for” us, and dying for us. He spent three years in Galilee, “working with” us, building a social group of disciples, empowering and training them. He spent 30 years in Nazareth, simply “being with” the people there, being “with us” as human beings. There, Jesus shared life as a carpenter’s son, hanging out in the local coffee shops, or whatever served as coffee shops of first century Nazareth.

According to Sam’s calculations, Jesus, therefore, spent one percent of his life “working for us.” He spent nine percent of his life “working with us.” He spent 90 percent of his life on Earth, “being with us.”

I was struck by Sam’s “being with” language earlier yesterday, as I began to read John 14:15-21, the Gospel reading appointed for the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year A), in the Revised Common Lectionary . As I mentioned in last week’s reflection, John 14 is located within Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse.” As I also said, these are the words of a “dead man talking.” He’s told the disciples that he must leave them soon. In this week’s lesson, He assures them that He will not leave them alone. “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever”** [John 14:16 (NRSV)].

Scholars have had particular difficulty with the word in verse 16 that gets translated in the New Revised Standard Version as “Advocate.” Particularly now, with the benefit of hindsight, we recognize that Jesus is speaking of the third “person” of the Holy Trinity — the Holy Spirit. But the nature of the Holy Spirit can easily get caught up within the word that Jesus used to describe “It.” For many of us — I know I’m not alone here — the term “Advocate” contemplates a legal expert, someone to help us maneuver through a complex regulatory scenario, someone to “represent” us, using Sam Wells’ idea, someone to “work for us.” That’s not, however, the idea that I think Jesus had originally in mind.

The Fourth Gospel is, of course, written in classical Greek, not actually the native tongue of Jesus (although Jesus would have been quite proficient in Greek). To describe the third person of the Trinity, here John uses the Greek word, Paracletos (the Latin Vulgate uses the similar “Paracletus“), which, as noted above, can be translated as “Advocate.” Yet, it can also be translated as “Comforter” (KJV), “Helper” (New KJV), “Counselor” (World English Bible), and “Companion” (Common English Bible). Should we, therefore, think of Holy Spirit in terms of “Advocate” or in terms of one of the other words? You that know me well, know that the answer is “Yes.”

If we look back to the original Greek (or Latin) meaning of Paracletos, we learn that it literally means “the one called alongside.” That sounds a lot like Sam Wells’ category of “being with,” doesn’t it? You see, Jesus is telling his disciples, telling us, that in spite of His departure, at his bidding or prayer, the Father will send to them and to us “One who has been called to be alongside us,” This One will not merely “work for us” nor will this One merely “be for us,” but rather this is the One who will be with us forever.

Oh, before I forget, there’s one more word in verse 16 that I’d like to emphasize. It’s the adjective that comes just before “Advocate/Helper/Comforter,” etc. Referring to the Vulgate (remember that I can’t actually “do Greek”), the two words together form “alium paracletum.” The adjective “alius/alium” means another. You see, the Holy Spirit not only has been sent to “be with us,” there has already been another Paracletos who has come before: Jesus Christ himself.

But I’ll bet you’ve already guessed that, since no doubt your mind has already traced the point back to St. Matthew’s gospel, near the end of the chapter that we number one, where Matthew quotes the prophet:

Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means “God is with us” [Matthew 1:23].

Whether in the form of God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit, God is always with us.

May I ask if in these days you are afraid? Are you troubled, bewildered, lonely, or lost? Rest assured, my dear friends, that God is indeed with us forever. I’m haunted by a beautiful point made by Karl Barth in his moving work, The Life of Prayer. Barth offers a soothing assurance that can be for us an affirmation of faith. He says, “God is nearer to us that we are to ourselves.” Indeed, God isn’t just for us; God is *with us forever.” Amen.