Sermon - Exaudi 2022 - John 15:26-16:4

Reading the Bible, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1755

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Hurry up and wait. It’s a pretty apt phrase for our modern society. We’re always in a hurry, but we also spend a lot of time waiting. We speed down the road to wait at a stoplight; we hurry to the restaurant to wait for our food; we hurry to the doctor’s office to sit in the waiting room. The church is also busy waiting. This Sunday has been referred to from ancient times as “waiting Sunday.” The Sunday between Ascension and Pentecost, the apostles waited in Jerusalem until they received the Holy Spirit. The church continues to wait for the return of our Lord Jesus, and He can’t come soon enough.

During this time, in order to give us courage and patience, the waiting church makes use of the Spirit’s gifts by remembering Jesus’ words and speaking them. See, we’re not waiting for the Holy Spirit anymore, instead we’ve already received the Spirit and His gifts. Ezekiel prophesied: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” In Holy Baptism we’ve been sprinkled clean from all of our iniquities. We’ve been cleansed of our idols and worldly passions, and have received the Holy Spirit. “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

Two of the gifts of the Spirit are to remember and to speak God’s statutes. “When the Helper comes… you will bear witness… I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away… that…you may remember that I told them to you.” These two gifts of memory and speaking are actually divine attributes belonging primarily to God, which are given also to us humans who have been made in the image of God.

God is the One who speaks. He created all things by speaking them into existence out of nothing. He spoke through the mouth of His holy prophets. Jesus’ ministry was one of speaking. Jesus’ three hours on the cross is marked by the seven last things He spoke. The primary work of the church is to speak aloud the words of our Lord. By the Word, by speaking, the Lord forgives our sins.

God is the One who remembers. When you read through the Bible it’s a common refrain that God remembers His holy covenant, He remembers His promises, He remembers His people. This shouldn’t be understood to mean that God forgot and then He’s suddenly remembering, instead it should be understood that God continually keeps His promise and us at the forefront of His mind to keep them in remembrance.

Memory and speaking are two of God’s attributes given to us humans made in the image of God. These are to some extent traits that differentiate us from animals. Animals can remember things, but only on a basic instinctual level: they remember food and pain. Some animals like monkeys can use sign-language and parrots can say words, but they’re not really speaking. We understand that both of these attributes are quite significant and we all understand that when we lose our memories and the ability to speak, we lose a lot of what makes us who we are.

It’s not just memorization of facts and the ability to sound out words which makes us human, there’s more to it. Humans aren’t robots or computers; the crazy sci-fi idea that you can preserve a person by uploading their minds to a computer is just stupid. Our memories aren’t only composed of information but emotions and sights and smells and tastes. When you speak it’s more than just sound coming out of your lips, but it’s all of what makes you uniquely human condensed into words and sentences.

So when a person loses their memories, they lose a lot of what makes them uniquely human. The same thing happens with groups of people. A big part of what makes a bunch of people a community is collectively remembering things, having a common knowledge base. The reason shared experiences help build friendships is because those experiences become shared memories. When people don’t have a common knowledge base and a shared memory, then they also don’t have a community, they’re just a bunch of individual people in some geographic area. So when shared memories are forgotten the community falls apart.

A loss in shared memories and common knowledge is part of what is causing so much of modern American life to be so contentious and lonely. The tearing down of monuments is but a symptom of many people having forgotten significant events and figures, shared memories, which at one point made that large group of people a community. When those shared memories are forgotten, the ties that bind are lost, and the community falls apart. One way to rebuild the community is to restore the shared memories which have been forgotten. 

Memory works the same way with congregations, but to an even greater extent, since the shared memories and common knowledge is that of God’s Word! What binds us together isn’t just the history of the revolutionary or civil wars or even the history of the Lutheran Reformation, but the person of Jesus Christ and His teachings draw us together and give us courage and patience to wait for His return without falling away. “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away.” The shared memory of God’s Word keeps us in the faith.

So when we collectively forget God’s Word, we lose the one thing that binds us together and makes us a parish. What’s more, when we forget the Word of God we become disconnected from Christians throughout the centuries. But the good news for us is that just as memories can be forgotten, so can they be regained! The Holy Spirit is the Helper! He helps us by bearing witness about Jesus. The Holy Spirit speaks, not just about anything, but about God!

Since the Holy Spirit isn’t physical, but a spirit, He therefore works through His christians to speak. “You also will bear witness, because you have been with Me from the beginning.” These words are particularly spoken to the apostles who were with Jesus for a few years, but they’re also spoken to all Christians in general who have heard Jesus’ teachings. Just as God speaks His word to us, so do we speak God’s word to others. The things that Jesus tells us to keep us from falling away, the things that He said which we’re to remember, are remembered by speaking them to one another.

The Bible verses we learned by heart this past week describe our speaking and how we remember God’s Word: “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” God’s Word is memorized and internalized into the heart such that when God’s Word is known so completely it becomes part of us and a companion to us.

Remember that I explained before that memories are part of what makes us who we are. So when the spoken voice of Jesus is memorized, who we are changes and is shaped by that word. There’s no such thing as rote memorization, because when things are memorized they become part of us and shape the way we think and speak and believe. “You are what you eat” doesn’t just refer to food, but to everything you consume and take in. When you consume holy things and words, your mind, heart, and speech become holy.

The Lord said: “I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.” God is the builder of His church. By instilling His Word into our hearts God builds us up into a community called the church. This Word gives us a new and living heart, a heart of flesh. A heart that serves one another with joy instead of grumbling. When the Word dwells in our hearts we have the courage and patience to remain faithful, in spite of fiery trials, until our Lord Jesus finally returns and takes us home with Him to paradise. 

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!