John 16:12-15,25-28
When you read the book of Genesis, you get a picture of a world that resembles our own and speaks about things we are familiar with but oddly different. When you read about "the dome" that is the sky you translate that into the sky and perhaps into more technical terms like stratosphere and the like. There is virtually no way an intelligent person would read Genesis or look at some pictorial representation of Genesis and take it literally. Yet, that is what the ancients believed and perceived the world around them, and it was good. They could not comprehend more than that.
As time marched on for humanity, God gave us laws and sadly man made more laws out of those laws - and it was good. This furthered humanity in so many ways, from order and discipline to ways we could honor our creator.
Time marches on and we are now capable of understanding more and perhaps more importantly we are in need of redemption. God wishes us to live full and holy lives so as we celebrate now, God became a man. God showed us how to live and love and even die. Jesus revealed things we could not perhaps have understood back in the day. ( to us that would be waaaaay back in the day ). Jesus preached forgiveness, love, healing, inclusiveness. He reached out to the marginalized as if to show us more. Jesus showed us that we are now capable of understanding more. In this passage he speaks of the Spirit which will teach us even more. Perhaps as we are a bit more capable of understanding. Humanity is growing, moving, maturing.
Time marches on and the Spirit guides us to know that the message of salvation is for everyone. The Spirit guides us to know slavery is not an acceptable practice, nor are concubines and many other practices that were once perhaps 'the norm'. The Spirit is revealing the dignity of all people. Women's right? Absolutely. Gay rights? That too. Marriage equality? Can the dignity and consecration of love be for more than procreation? Absolutely. The message of movement of the Spirit is alive and well.
As time marches on, I have no doubt that there will be other revelations, new frontiers of rights, new frontiers of knowledge that we were not capable of understanding. Perhaps it will be that we should all be vegetarians and that animals, other creations in God's kingdom deserve the same respect as any other of God's creations. Perhaps. I would have a difficult time with that seeing as how I love a good steak once in a while or a good slab of bacon. I use it though as an illustration that as time marches on, the Spirit promised to us by Jesus is alive and well and working in the world. We must respect and cooperate with the Spirit.
In the meantime, it is a great time to say thank you to God for sending his son to us in human form to show us how to love, to learn, to grow and to become whole. Jesus is pure gift, pure love. Seems to me like it is a great time to appreciate everything we have from families and friends to the knowledge we have of our world and the brains God gave us to discover it all. And it is good.
‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
‘I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures, but will tell you plainly of the Father. On that day you will ask in my name. I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father.’
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