The Good News Proclaimed
Preached by Pastoral Intern Michael Diaz at
the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, April 27, 2008.
In our Gospel reading for today, we encounter Jesus talking about the
coming of the Spirit, but I want to first go back a bit and set the historical
context and the framework for the Gospel of John’s presentation of Jesus.
John’s Gospel was probably written in the mid 90s; it is the last of the
gospels included in our Bible to be written. In fact, it was probably written
not by the Apostle John but rather a leader(s) in the community that John
started. And so just like the other Gospels, there is a certain community
associated with John’s Gospel. It is a community that has a certain history
and has experienced significant life circumstances.
So if we briefly look back on the experience of John’s community, we must
start at the life of Jesus. Jesus’ followers experienced his stripping away by
the hands of Rome. They lived through the terror of his brutal execution
around the year 30. It was the end of the world for them but they said no it’s
not. They didn’t let that event destroy their movement of hope. They
experienced the Resurrection. They continued experiencing Jesus in their
lives. They continued being who they were. They continued being Jews. They
continued going to the Jerusalem Temple. They continued their fight for
justice and for a voice in a conquered society ruled by the Romans.
And when the Jerusalem Temple, the center of Jewish life and worship, was
destroyed in the year 70, John’s community could have thrown in the towel and
given up. It was the end of the world for them but they said no it’s not. They
moved from Palestine to Asia. They continued going to synagogues. They
continued being, even without the Temple. They continued being, even in the
face of a dominating Empire, a dominating Roman culture and lifestyle.
And then around the year 90 right before John’s Gospel was written, another
conflict is ensuing — this time within Judaism. Members of John’s community,
people we would call Christians, but whom actually still identified as Jews
are thrown out of synagogues because of their beliefs about Jesus. And so yet
again, it was the end of the world for them. Doubts were raised in their minds
about hope for their world. They began asking themselves, “Who are we?” “Are
we really experiencing the hope Jesus gave our community?” “How is Jesus
present in our lives?” “How is God present in our lives?”
And it’s in this context that John writes to his community and essentially
says that not only was Jesus resurrected, but before he was executed he
promised us that if we loved one another, another helper and another advocate
would come. In fact, that is part of how we experience resurrection power –
through the Spirit which resides within us. We’ve been looking for Jesus to
come back when in fact, Jesus is already here through the Spirit. John tells
his community: Just as Jesus advocated for our causes and defended us over 60
years ago, that same Spirit is with us and abides with us wherever we go. God
didn’t abandon us when Jesus was executed. God didn’t abandon us when the
Temple was destroyed. God isn’t abandoning us now. It may seem like the end of
the world, but it’s not. God has given us another comforter. This Spirit
resides within us. She continues what Jesus did. She comforts us and advocates
for us and tells us the truth that the joy of hope is still alive. John tells
his community: don’t let the present hard time or life situation instill in
your mind the lie that our lives are over. Listen to the Spirit within you
that says otherwise. She’s a Spirit of Truth because she tells us the truth of
who we are and how we can still have the joy of hope even if we’re kicked out
of synagogues.
How many of us this morning were once kicked out of our houses of worship
or our communities of faith or our very homes because of who we are or what we
believed? Do you remember the pain you felt? The isolation? The confusion? The
anger? It felt like the world was over, didn’t it? Some of us came away from
those situations hurt and disillusioned. Our faith, our lives, our joy of hope
may have been stripped away from us just as Jesus was stripped away from his
followers. For some of us, it has taken our whole lives to try and retrieve
that joy and happiness again. We might think to ourselves, if only we could
have recognized that the Spirit was always there with us. Then, it might have
caused less pain, sadness, anger, and heartache in our lives. But we can also
hear the good news that John is saying to his community — there is no need to
fret about the past. God’s Spirit, the comforter, is with us and we don’t have
to live in that sadness and unhappiness anymore.
Members from our church aren’t here today because their doing the AIDS Walk
and many of us are supporting them. In this act we can see that we’re not
letting HIV / AIDS steal our joy. When I did chaplaincy work in a Boston
hospital, I got to meet a Haitian lady by the name of Jessie before she died
of AIDS. She was only in the hospital a few months but her condition was
deteriorating rapidly. She told me that she contracted HIV from her husband
who denied even having the virus and who also wouldn’t get tested. Well, I
remember when Jessie’s little girl, Rose, would come visit her and Jessie’s
face would light up. She’d hug Rose and comfort her and read books to her.
She’d tell her how beautiful she was and how she was going to grow up to be a
strong woman. She’d tell her that even though she might not be physically with
her for too much longer, she would always be with Rose — in her heart. I’m not
sure Rose understood what her mother was saying, but Rose knew she would
always have her mother’s love. And what was so remarkable to me was that even
though I could sense the pain and sadness in Jessie’s and even in Rose’s
heart, I could still sense the joy of hope they both had with each other. It
was joy that said, “We’re not going to let AIDS keep us from having hope in
our future.” The point being… choosing to be joyous and happy does not mean we
deny feelings of tragic unhappiness and sorrow. When we lose loved ones or
when everything seems to go wrong, it’s okay to grieve and feel sad and angry
and frustrated, but we don’t have to stay that way and give up in life and
lose our joy of hope.
There is no crisis or evil big enough to fully take away your joy. Even
when the worst evil happens we can be sure that God hasn’t abandoned us, but
actually grieves and cries with us. But God doesn’t stop there – through the
Spirit of truth and joy within us, God works with us to create and bring about
good from our difficult situations. No matter what the journey of life deals
us… the less crises we encounter, the more tragedies we encounter, we can still
hold on to the joy of hope. We may think we need lots of money, a stress and
crisis-free life, and drama-free friends to hold on to joy, but in reality
there are no conditions to the joy we can experience. Just as we can choose to
experience God’s Spirit in lives, we can choose to experience joy in our
lives. We don’t have to allow our life circumstances take away our joy.
John’s community didn’t let the death of Jesus take away their joy of hope.
We don’t have to let the death of our loved ones, take away our joy. John’s
community didn’t let the fall of the temple steal their joy of hope. We don’t
have to allow the fall of the economy or a recession to steal our joy. John’s
community didn’t allow persecution and Roman oppression to take away their joy
of hope. We don’t have to allow racist, sexist, or homophobia comments take
away our joy. Don’t let any addiction steal your joy. Don’t let that job loss
steal your joy or that home foreclosure or that bad break up or negative
person or any one person’s inappropriate behavior or that superficial “in the
scene” culture that says you have to look a certain way to be attractive.
Don’t let your perceived imperfections keep you from experiencing joy in your
life. My whole life I’ve had to deal with the fact that I have a big nose and
having a big nose on the school playground was brutal. It gets hard to not let
our perceived imperfections take away our joy. (I did drag once and I thought
that I looked all pretty and that no one would recognize me. At first people
saw me and said, “Who is that Aztec princess?” Then this one person took a
look at my profile, and said, “Aw, that’s Miguel with his 11 inches of nose.”
I wanted to beat him down. You all would have missed his Aunt Gladys stories!
Luckily I didn’t let it take away my joy.) Our perceived imperfections should
not be a condition as to whether we’re happy or not.
John’s community didn’t allow any perceived communal imperfections or any
real life imperfections get them down. Just as members of John’s community
never lost the joy of seeing hope in their lives, we, through the Spirit of
Truth, can experience the same joy, no matter what the journey of life brings.
The good news is joy remains with us. Amen.