…the main Christian emphasis of the day is the promised coming of the Advocate, or Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has always been the most confusing and elusive person of the Trinity. It certainly is for me, and it appears to have been just as puzzling to the leaders of the Early Church. If you look at the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed, for example, you’ll see multiple lines or sentences dedicated to defining the Father and Son, but the Holy Spirit receives little more than a comment in each.

Christian tradition is always about preservation of life—at its most basic level, the entire concept of “salvation” is about restoring people from death to life or delivering them from danger to safety and security! From the birth of the Church—the Day of Pentecost that we celebrate next Sunday—Christians have been people of Life….So how is it that so many of us today have become thralls of Death?

Our reading from Revelation reveals a bit of how John at least interpreted the vision of peace Jesus had been casting. There we catch a glimpse of what it can look like when, as we heard last week, “the home of God is among mortals,” where God “will dwell with them as their God; they will be [God’s] peoples, and God [themself] will be with them.” And what John presents us with isn’t dissimilar to what we saw when we talked about Revelation two weeks ago…

At this point in the story, we’re nearly halfway through the book of Acts….Christianity is still a largely ethnic religious movement—and happily so. Jesus’ death and resurrection were in the process of revamping culture among Israel’s descendants, but like many good things, people within its original community probably didn’t expect it to have much application outside their standard social boundaries—boundaries honed and reinforced across centuries to help an exiled or oppressed population survive with a common identity.

In the modern world, what most of us think about when we hear the word prophecy involves prediction—something like prognostication or the mutterings of an oracle. It’s the sort of fantasy movie thing where a “chosen one” follows a fated and forewarned pathway either to their own destruction or to the liberation of the world. But the Bible doesn’t often use prophecy in that way. “Prophecy” in the way the Bible presents it is frequently little more than preaching or proclamation. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the future—far more frequently it’s focused on the present.

Prior to this point in John, we’ve seen Jesus as an authority in the heavens: the Word that was with God, and the Word that was God. The evangelist records Jesus talking at length about how he’s come down from heaven and is the bread from heaven. His miraculous signs such as changing water into wine, feeding the 5,000, and healing the congenitally blind man demonstrated his power in the terrestrial realm. We’ve also seen one incident—walking on water—where he has authority over the sea. But walking on the water doesn’t show us any sort of power within the water.

Where is God? That question—along with its siblings: “What is the meaning of life?” and “Why do bad things happen to good people?”—is one of the constant themes of human existence. “Where is God?” is why we’re all here today—why any religion exists in the first place. Independent as we imagine ourselves to be, in all the uncertainties of life the human heart wants to know how to find God, however we might define that.

Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Having spent my whole life in the Church, it just feels overused to me. Here we have yet another illustration of how God loves us no matter what we might do. While that’s true, the sentiment isn’t remotely surprising and, after who knows how many times hearing it, not necessarily even all that inspiring.

The Church has gazed far too longingly and for far too long on empire, authority, modernization, and marketing. And after focusing on the faces of those gods for generations, we’ve forgotten they aren’t the One we ought to reflect. It’s time that we once again turn from our own images of power and once again follow Christ into the world—and not just to foreign countries but to our own neighborhood playgrounds and stores and restaurants and salons and houses.

…what if we start looking at Lent less as preparing ourselves for death and more about readying ourselves for the coming world? What if we substitute our idea of “giving up” with something more like “giving away?” It’s like moving to a new home. As we get ready for what’s to come, we discover that by clearing out the attic and our closets we aren’t sacrificing as much as disencumbering ourselves. A new world is dawning; a new life awaits. So why bring along the same things that were dragging us down in the old one?

When we read in the Bible about “unclean spirits,” like in today’s Gospel, the most straightforward translation of those words—and the translation you would find in nearly any other context apart from the “spiritualization” of a religious text—is “foul” or “impure air.” The same goes for the Holy Spirit, which is essentially “sanctifying air” or “purifying breath.” The presence of the Sanctifying Air forces out the corruption of every type of foul air, thus resulting in the healing, restoration, and sanctification of an individual or community.

But Jesus has also chosen his words quite carefully. He isn’t telling anyone to make friends with their very real enemies or show them “unconditional love”—those are different terms than what he uses here. This is agape, “love as action,” love that you do. He’s saying to “act lovingly—even to your enemies. Behave yourselves among those who hate you. Speak respectfully to whoever curses you. Pray about those harming you.”

A month or two ago I offered a warning about our journey through the Book of Luke this year. Luke is a very physical Gospel, and it has similarly physical, practical expectations of Jesus’ disciples, including us. In Luke’s account, Jesus is far less concerned with otherworldly matters than he is with everyday interactions and how people treat one another. He doesn’t pull punches or soften his statements to make anyone feel more comfortable, no matter who they happen to be. He’s come to turn the world upside down—to reverse not only our standard expectations but also our practices. Luke’s is very much what we would term a social justice Jesus, and what Jesus has to tell us today might—and probably should—give all of us pause.

Today we’re celebrating the Feast of the Presentation, when Mary and Joseph brought the 40-day-old Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem for his dedication to the Lord. Mystical birth announcements and angel choirs aside, sleepless nights and the constant responsibilities of rearing an infant would have been wearing on them. How long exactly would it take before God would give this only begotten son the throne of David? Mired in the struggles of real life, the dream of deliverance may have no longer felt worth the effort. So God sends them a little boost of encouragement.

We can have emotional love. We can have fondness and affection. We can have loyalty and comradery. Those are all good things and important aspects of our lives. But God isn’t found in any of them. They may point us toward God, but they’re not where God exists—where God becomes real.

A body is one. We can look at it from the outside and see how different sections operate or support each other, but from the inside, every single part is simply doing what it knows how to do. A finger doesn’t understand that it’s unique in its ability to touch or grasp. White blood cells have no clue that they specialize in fighting off infection. Each simply does what they do to the best of their ability.

It can be easy to get caught up in the worry of exact details regarding when or how things in the Bible happened, but honestly, I’m not too concerned about precisely representing this scene. Frankly, our imagination of the kings often has more to do with centuries of theological speculation and accrued mythology than with what the Gospel tells us in the first place. None of those ideas are necessarily bad or wrong—most of those kinds of developments begin with the intention of helping people become more faithful by better connecting with the Bible—but sometimes it’s helpful to strip off the layers of embellishment solidified by generations of story and song and briefly reestablish the basics behind our modern traditions.

God doesn’t hide from Creation. God hasn’t given up on humanity in our constant chaos, our violence, greed, and corruption. No, God comes down, descending right into the midst of it all: the pain, the poverty, and the sorrow; the love, the hopefulness, and the joy. God isn’t like a judge closed up in her chambers, reviewing the laws and striving to remain impartial. Nor does God wander the edge of the Cosmos, disinterested in what already is and dreaming only of new adventures or things to come. No, God comes down.

A few weeks ago we started talking about John’s call to repair the Royal Road and how easy it is to assume this thoroughfare only exists for the King and his nobles to easily pass by. But Baruch reminded us that God has a different intention for this highway. These lanes are not being built for the King’s convenience but for commoners—an open route for all to reach the Royal Hall in safety. It doesn’t matter where their paths have previously led them: all are invited to feast with this King.

If someone asked you to pick one of our readings this morning as good news, you might have trouble choosing. Zephaniah’s prophecy, our canticle from Isaiah, and the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians each practically jump off the page with positivity. But I doubt our Gospel lesson would be anyone’s first choice. It’s hard to hear any good news when someone starts their message with, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”