Sermon for May 25, 2025

May 25, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



John 14:23-29


Christ is risen!


As I’ve been working on this sermon this week, I’ve been seeing people’s graduation and end of school year pictures. Our set of readings today gives me a similar kind of feeling.

When I listen to Jesus talking to the disciples, his speech sounds like some of the graduation speeches I’ve heard through the years. He’s telling the disciples that their time together is coming to an end—but it’s not the end of their education. No indeed. It’s just the beginning.

Jesus will not be their instructor in the next phase. The disciples still have much to learn. It will be the Holy Spirit who gives them the advanced lessons.

The Holy Spirit is an advocate, and those of us who teach, or who have had good teachers, know the role of an advocate. When I was interviewed for my current teaching job, I was asked to define good teaching. I said that the purpose of teaching was more than just delivering subject matter, but the real purpose of teaching was to make students know that they are more than their worst day, to remind them again and again of their potential. The best teaching reminds students of their better selves and what could be.

As I’ve thought about today’s Gospel text, I see the Holy Spirit as precisely this kind of Advocate. The Holy Spirit reminds us of all that Jesus has taught us and showed us and promised us. In this way, the Holy Spirit advocates for Jesus. But the Holy Spirit also advocates for us. The Holy Spirit has an imagination bigger than any individual can have. The Holy Spirit has a more expansive imagination than any group can have. The Holy Spirit knows that we are not the sum of our bad days. The Holy Spirit knows that we can be even better than our best days.

In the readings from Acts that we’ve had since Easter, we’ve seen what happens when the Holy Spirit empowers the disciples to claim a bolder vision. Last week Peter got instructions to include the Gentiles, and by following the teaching of the triune God, the inbreaking Kingdom of God spreads across the known land—and beyond. In today’s reading from Acts, we see Paul including women.

The cynical among us might say--but not just any woman. She’s a weaver of purple cloth, which tells us that she’s a woman of some wealth. But still, she’s a woman. The Holy Spirit comes to her and inspires her to be part of this brave new world. And again, the Kingdom of God comes breaking into the world in an interesting new way.

Our reading from Revelation shows us the ultimate end, what it will look like when God is finally done making all things new. We might wonder why it’s taking so long. We probably yearn for that time when there will be no more night. I know that 2025 has felt like a year when we have one long endless night of sliding into the abyss. I know how afraid we have been.

Let’s return to the words of Jesus. Jesus tells us not to let our hearts be troubled. Jesus is going on ahead of the disciples, but he’s giving them his peace. But more than that. Jesus gives us this intriguing picture of God and Jesus making a home with us, while the Advocate guides us towards this beautiful vision of a different world.

Yesterday we spent time with Carl’s brother, who is in the process of moving from Florida to South Carolina, and we spent time talking about his new neighborhood, along with old neighborhoods. After he left, I turned to other translations of today’s Gospel as I revised this sermon, and I was struck by the imagery of neighborhoods in the Message translation. Here’s the first verse of today’s Gospel in that translation: “’Because a loveless world,’ said Jesus, ‘is a sightless world. If anyone loves me, he will carefully keep my word and my Father will love him—we’ll move right into the neighborhood!’” It echoes the first chapter of John, all the way back to the beginning, John 1: 14: The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”

If we believed that God was living right next door, would it change our behavior? Would we be less afraid? Jesus paints a cozy picture, of God moving not into just our neighborhoods, but into our very bodies. Or maybe that’s because I often remember this text slightly differently: God making a home in us, not with us. I did look up the Greek, and I’m not sure that the English preposition of in us or with us really conveys the level of intimacy that I think the Greek conveys. The word in Greek has a generative quality or a quality of being joined together.

It's interesting to think of this concept as we get ready to celebrate both Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. Christians have spent a lot of time thinking about the three natures of God and what it means to have a God in three persons. But this passage speaks of something even more radical: a God joined to us, joined to our human bodies, our oh so frail and fragile human bodies.

I’m thinking of all the people who have ever asked me if I’ve invited Jesus into my heart to be my Lord and Savior, but I don’t think they truly thought that if I did so, Jesus would move into my literal heart and rearrange the space.

Just think for a minute how much easier life would be if we truly believed that God was with us: in our neighborhoods, in our very bodies. Here you might be hoping that I’m about to give you a cool trick that I learned in seminary for how to live that way, and trust me, if I had mastered this skill, I would share it with all of you.

Fear is part of the story of Jesus from the very beginning. The angels announce his coming and the first thing they say is “Fear not.” Jesus shows us ways to live in love, not in fear. Jesus doesn’t say that by following him we have nothing to fear ever again. The story of Jesus’ life reminds us that powerful forces can move against us, whether they be governments like Herod’s or Romes, or disease, or the ways that societal institutions are set up to make sure that humans do not flourish.

Jesus doesn’t say that we will never face those things—no, on the contrary, we will have our crosses to bear. But Jesus promises to be with us as we bear them. Jesus promises that the Triune God makes a home with us, to celebrate life’s sweetness and to help us navigate life’s set backs.

The Pentecost story shows us the power of acting out of love and not fear. Those earliest Christians demonstrate what can happen when a small group of people embody the teachings of Jesus and following the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Martin Luther too. We are part of that bold tradition. Jesus gives the disciples his peace and his assurance that they are never alone.

Here is one way to move through the fears we face. Remember the promise of Jesus, the promise that he literally breathes into them. Resurrect the pining for a better reality that the creator has placed in all of us. Recognize the promptings of the Holy Spirit and prepare to move with boldness into this next season.

Christ is risen!