Paraclete (John 15:26,27;16:4b-15)

Have you ever tried to give yourself a haircut?

When the COVID-19 pandemic was at its worst, there were stories about people who had been locked down for extended periods of time trying to tame their out-of-control hair by cutting it themselves. There were some interesting haircuts at the time as people trimmed their beards, styled their hair, and even shaved their heads by themselves. People learned pretty quick that we can do somethings on our own, but there are things in life where we definitely need the help of other people.

We all need help at some stage of our lives. Some challenges we face might be more ordinary and less important things like needing a haircut, but we can also face bigger issues which we can’t handle ourselves and we need help with. While we might think we should be able to manage the challenges life throws at us on our own, the reality is that we all need help.

In the gospel reading for Pentecost Sunday from John 15:26,27 and 16:4b-15 Jesus is preparing his followers for when he would leave them. He tells them not be sad because he was going to send the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, to them. John records Jesus using a name for the Holy Spirit which no other New Testament writer uses. In Greek the name is Paraclete. This name literally means someone who is called to be beside another person. It is a legal term for someone who stands beside another in a court of law. Paraclete is sometimes translated as Advocate, the word used in the New Living Translation, but it can also mean an intercessor, counsellor, comforter, or helper. Jesus promises his followers that, after he is gone, he would send the Holy Spirit to do all these things for us as the Spirit testifies to Jesus, speaks to us on his behalf, and bears witness to us about everything he has done for us. Jesus kept his promise on the day of Pentecost which we celebrate today. On that day, God gave his Holy Spirit to Jesus’ followers to be our Helper.

Jesus explains how the Holy Spirit helps us in the verses that follow. He says that the Holy Spirit will be our Helper by showing us our need for God’s grace and forgiveness (16:9), revealing God’s righteousness in Jesus which he gives to us as a free gift through faith (v10), and making known to us the coming judgement in which everything that is wrong and evil in this world will come to an end (v11). Jesus also calls the Paraclete the ‘Spirit of truth’ because the Spirit guides us ‘into all truth’ (v13). This is the truth of our human condition, our need for mercy and forgiveness, and ultimately the truth of God’s sacrificial and life-giving love for sinners in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

We need the Holy Spirit as our Helper because it’s impossible for us to do this by ourselves. It’s even harder for us to see our sin than it is to see the patch of hair that we missed on the back of our heads when we were giving ourselves a haircut. God’s gift of his righteousness to us as a free gift doesn’t make sense to human logic. It can often appear that the wrongs and evil of his world are out of control and overwhelming. We need the Holy Spirit’s help to guide us into the truth of God’s love and grace because we can’t trust it on our own. God’s gift of the Holy Spirit as our Helper gives us the grace to do what we can’t do ourselves.

From a human perspective, the work of the Holy Spirit Jesus describes in this passage might not seem to be very helpful when we face the harsh realities of life in this world. When we are dealing with sickness, grief, loneliness, financial struggles, or any of the many challenges and difficulties that confront us, we might be looking for God to give us more practical help. However, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, God gives us all the help we need for life in this world and the next.

The Holy Spirit helps us to see ourselves, our world, and our place in it from God’s point of view and not just our own. The Spirit helps us to trust God’s goodness in Jesus even when it’s obscured by pain, suffering or loss. The Holy Spirit helps us to live every day in hope, even when things seem hopeless. By guiding us into the truth of God’s unconditional love and grace for us in Jesus, the Spirit gives us what we need to grow through the trials and challenges of life. When the Spirit shows us our need for grace, God’s goodness in Jesus, and the coming judgment of everything that’s wrong in this world, the Spirit helps us to find peace, hope, and joy as he helps us to trust in the good news of Jesus.

Finding the Holy Spirit’s help begins just by asking for it, just like we might ask a hairdresser or barber to help with our botched attempts at cutting our own hair. We can ask for help through prayer, speaking openly and honestly with God about our struggles, failures, weaknesses, or sin. We find the Spirit’s help when we go to God’s Word, listening for his promises to us in Jesus, and hearing the good news of what Jesus has done for us. We find the Spirit’s help when we participate in a community of believers who use the gifts given to them by the Spirit to build each other up in faith, hope and love. Sometimes this help might come in a miraculous or supernatural way. Most of the time, however, the Spirit helps us through ordinary people who are part of a community of believers just like this one. When we confess our faith in the ‘holy Christian Church’ in the Apostles’ Creed, we are saying that we believe that the Spirit helps us by bringing us into relationship and community with others who share our faith in Jesus, who are gifted by the Spirit in lots of different ways, through whom we receive the help of the Spirit, and to whom we become an expression of the Spirit’s help as we use the gifts the Spirit has given us to serve, love and help each other.

It isn’t always easy for us to ask for help, especially for Australian blokes. We have this myth in our society that we should be able to handle everything on our own and it’s a sign of weakness to ask for help. Instead, asking for help is a sign of faith as we trust that help is there for us. Jesus promised us a divine Helper. He kept that promise at Pentecost when he gave the gift of his Helper Spirit to his followers. Since that time, to this very day, Jesus continues to send his Spirit to us to help us by showing us our need for his grace, the gift of his righteousness to us, and the judgment of everything that is wrong with this world. The Spirit helps us by guiding us into the truth of God’s life-giving love and grace for us in Jesus, and then brings us into a faith community where we can find all sorts of expressions of his help, and where we can give his help to others. Like trimming our hair or shaving our heads, we don’t have to do life on our own. Jesus gives us his Spirit to help us in all our needs.

More to think about or discuss:

• Do you find it easy or difficult to ask for help? Why do you think that might be?
• Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will help us by guiding us ‘into all truth’. What do you think he meant by that? How can the Spirit help us do that?
• What do you need help with in your life? How might the Holy Spirit help you with that? How might a community of believers (church) be a way the Spirit might help you?