Preached on the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year C), May 25, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by the Reverend Stephen Crippen.
Acts 16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 14:23-29
The Dove – Come Holy Spirit, by Philip Mantofa
All my life, I have needed help. There are all the obvious, universal examples. When I was an infant, just like you, I needed help with everything, and would quickly have died without it.
But there were particular moments over the years when I needed help, and help did not come. When I was in seventh grade, I needed help with my attention problems, even just the basic help of someone in authority who would tell my parents that attention was the issue, and that this professional helper had a clear solution. That authority figure could have been my friend and ally. They could have eased my deep loneliness while helping me function better in school. Instead, I just struggled through it alone.
I wonder if you have felt lonesome and confused at some point in your life, and if you sensed that you didn’t have the help you needed.
In ninth grade I was overwhelmed, it’s fair to say traumatized, by my family’s move to a major city, and I didn’t have enough help with my depression and anxiety. At the time, my mother was going through a similar rough adjustment. She didn’t have enough help, either.
I wonder if you have felt anxious or depressed at some point in your life, and if you sensed that you didn’t have the help you needed.
In my sophomore year in college I needed help coming out as gay. But I had precious little help. One particular pastor was a champion helper! But I came out to my parents all by myself, and I had no idea how to handle their complicated first reactions. And then, for years afterward, I didn’t have help learning the ropes of being a gay man in his twenties.
I wonder if you have had an identity crisis at some point in your life, and if you sensed that you didn’t have the help you needed.
When a person doesn’t have help, they do the best they can, but they are likely to make mistakes. They are likely to say and do things they later regret. These days, when I recall a particularly upsetting or embarrassing event from my life, I’ll try to take a good, deep breath, and then I’ll say to myself — often out loud! — “You just needed help when that happened. You just didn’t have help.” This is a form of self-compassion. I encourage you to try it. I mean it.
Today we celebrate the Good News that all of us, individually but also — more powerfully – all of us together are going to get a lot more help. The help is coming in the form of an Advocate, who in Greek is called the Paraclete. An advocate is someone who speaks up for us: the word ‘advocate’ is related to “vocal,” and also “vocation.” The Holy Spirit, the Paraclete — she advocates for us. She speaks on our behalf. She is coming to help us.
But of course the Paraclete is already here, and has been here for all of the uncounted eons that there has been a here, here. The Holy Spirit brooded over the waters when the Holy Three brought order from chaos. The Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. The Holy Spirit has always moved through the entire created universe. We wait for more help to come, but we affirm that the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Helper, has always blown around us and between us like the wind, the very Breath of God. We affirm that the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Helper, has always provoked us and driven us, the very Fire of God that blazes a path of liberation for those in bondage — liberation for the Israelites fleeing ancient Egypt, liberation for the American slaves on the Underground Railroad, liberation for all people today who are in bondage in all its forms, crying out for freedom.
‘Already and not yet’ — that’s how we say it. The Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Helper, has already been here, has always been here; but we wait for the ‘not yet’. We wait for even more help to come in our uncharted future.
I grasp for an example, to bring it home, into this room, and I am delighted to find one almost immediately, an example of two members of St. Paul’s. Both of these persons would be mortified if I named them now, so I will honor their shared preference for modest discretion. Let’s call them Faith Leader 1 and Faith Leader 2. Faith Leader 1 volunteers diligently for the parish in many ways. Recently, Faith Leader 2 spoke up — by speaking up, this person became an advocate — and offered their help with a major project at the heart of the St. Paul’s mission. This help now relieves Faith Leader 1 of as many as eight hours of work each week.
Truly I tell you, this is nothing less than a visitation of the Holy Spirit, who surrounds these faith leaders, draws them together in collaboration, brings sorely needed help to one of them, and fills the other with power and purpose.
Again, it’s already and not yet. Already the Spirit has been here; already the Spirit abides here now. Faith Leader 1 has done a great deal, and they have done everything by the Spirit’s power. But there was a gap, an absence, a ‘not yet’: Faith Leader 1 didn’t have enough help. And so the Spirit brought more help. The Spirit blew in. The Spirit fired up.
We rehearse all of this in the rhythms of our Sunday prayers. We take seven Sundays out of our year — seven out of fifty-two, just about one seventh of the year, a Sabbath Day of the year — and we devote these Sundays to joyful contemplation not only of Resurrection, but also the descent of the Spirit, the arrival of the Advocate, the Good News that more help is coming.
To aid our prayers, we open the Holy Book to a chapter before Jesus dies, the long conversation when he says goodbye to his followers. Jesus gives them a lengthy, oh so lengthy, goodbye speech. There’s a lot to unpack in that speech. But today, it’s enough that we hear this message: Jesus has departed from our immediate sight, but he remains with us, he remains with all creation, as the Ascended One; and — pay close attention to this part! — and, Jesus is sending us more help.
Dear friends in Christ, we sorely need this help. We need someone like Lydia to come into this room and be a helper for us. We just heard about Lydia in the Acts of the Apostles. Lydia, like Tabitha, is one of the ancient women lifted up by Luke the Evangelist. (Luke loved recording the names and accomplishments of women in that time: this almost never happens in ancient literature! I believe this is yet another action inspired by the Paraclete, who in this instance helped Luke proclaim the Good News about Lydia.) From the perspective of the Jesus followers, Lydia is a foreigner. They — and we — don’t spend too much time with her. She is baptized, and she joins the People of the Way.
But then Lydia does something intriguing, something remarkable, something inspired by the Paraclete: she “urges” Paul and his companions to stay in her household; she “urges” them to accept her hospitality. Let me dip into the Greek for just a moment (stay with me, I promise it’s interesting!): the Greek word for Lydia “urging” them to stay with her is parekalesen. That is, the word is the same as paraclete. That is, Lydia is an advocate. She is filled with the Holy Spirit. She is a helper. She has come to help.
Lydia makes it plain for us, for you and me. Where is the Holy Spirit in this frantic age? She blows through you, she fires you up, she rushes between and around all of us, and the Holy Spirit sends us into the embrace of our neighbor. The Holy Spirit inspires us to urge our neighbor to stay with us. We advocate to and for our neighbor, urging them to join us in this community of the Paraclete.
For here is where the Spirit of God broods over the chaos. Here is where the Spirit of God heals our aching hearts. Here is where the Spirit of God drives us into the wilderness places of the world. Here is where the Spirit of God rushes to the aid of those in need.
Here is where help comes.
Friends in Christ, I need help. And so do you. We may all be doing the best we can, but we need help. And so we rejoice to hear the risen Jesus say this to us today:
“The Advocate, [the Helper,] the Holy Spirit, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid.”