SERMON FOR MAY 17, 2020, SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER          TEXT: JOHN 14:15-21

          Public health experts think we may have to give up the practice of shaking hands for some time to come. How then will we acknowledge one another when we meet or take our leave? One suggested alternative is to adopt the greeting Namaste. It is widely used throughout the Indian subcontinent and parts of Asia and among people of South Asian descent, wherever they live around the world.

            Namaste is a respectful form of greeting, acknowledging and welcoming a relative, guest or stranger. If you have ever attended a yoga class, you know the gesture — palms together, thumbs at the heart, head inclined. The spoken word is Sanskrit and translates literally “I bow to you.” At the end of a session, the teacher addresses her students with the salutation as a mark of her respect and appreciation for them and their hard work. They then respond (Namaste) to thank her. For me, it also expresses relief and wonder at having made it through the class despite my multiple replaced joints and general klutziness.

          So here is a form of greeting that, like our customary handshake and “how do you do,” uses the hands with an accompanying verbal component. But it goes deeper; it comes from the center, open heart to open heart, one soul acknowledging another. Namaste:    “The divine light within me bows to the divine light within you.”

          “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” This is the promise Jesus made to his disciples the night before he died. Jesus, the first advocate, is returning to the Father, and yet he can assure his friends that he is not abandoning them. “I will not leave you orphaned,” he says, “I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me . . . .” Jesus is crucified; to the world he is dead. But he comes to the disciples again; they do indeed see him as their resurrected Lord. And in John’s Gospel Pentecost occurs then, on the evening of the first day of the week, when Jesus stands among the fearful disciples, hiding behind locked doors, and gives them his greeting of peace. “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. . . . ‘(20:21-22).

          As the New Testament scholar Jaime Clark-Soles observes, “What appeared to be bad news for the disciples, namely Jesus’ departure from them, turned out to be the best of news for both them and us. While Jesus walked the earth, his ministry was limited to one locale and one person, himself. Upon his departure his disciples are given the Spirit and moved from apprentices to full, mature revealers of God’s love. And this happens not just to the first disciples but to all those who would come later, those who never saw the historical Jesus. You see, the evangelist insists that present believers have no disadvantage in comparison to the first believers. Everything they were taught and they experienced is available to the same degree and with equally rich texture to us.” The same gift received by the disciples that night is bestowed on every one of us in our baptism. Dear children of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.

        John’s name for the Spirit is parakletos, Paraclete in English. It’s a unique term; it appears four times in chapters 14-16 of the Gospel and once in chapter 2 of 1 John and nowhere else in the Scriptures. Parakletos translates literally as “called alongside.” It has a range of meanings in Greek, and John draws on them all: comforter, counselor, helper, and, as in today’s text, advocate. An advocate pleads the cause of another; she supports and promotes their interests.    I thought of the Spirit as advocating on our behalf before God in the court of divine judgment. But I think I had that wrong. The Spirit does not need to come before God to plead the case for our being restored to God’s good graces. That case has been long settled; the verdict on our lives has already been handed down and made known through Jesus. We are the ones who need convincing, not God. The Spirit advocates on God’s behalf among us. The Spirit pleads the case of God’s love so that we might know the truth of it and make its power known to the world. This is the command Jesus gives to his followers, “. . . that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another ” (13:34-35).

          Professor Clark-Soles concludes, “The believer does not stand close by admiring the majesty of the Trinity; rather, she is an equal part of it. Johannine believers don’t ‘imitate’ Jesus; they participate in him wholly.” Today’s Gospel stops short at verse 21; the reading, she argues, should continue through verse 23, the dramatic conclusion of the passage: Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’ “If God and Christ have made their home with us, [if the Spirit of truth ‘abides with us and will be in us’], how can we imagine there to be any distance between us and God?”

          And so, my sisters and brothers in Christ, Namaste,    the divine life in me bows to the divine life in you. Amen.