The Spirit the world cannot receive

John 14:16-21

I will ask the One who sent me

to give you another Paraclete, another Helper

to be with you always— 17 the Spirit of truth,

whom the world cannot accept

since the world neither sees her nor recognizes her;

but you can recognize the Spirit

because she remains with you

and will be within you.

18 I won’t leave you orphaned;

I will come back to you.

19 A little while now and the world will see me no more;

but you’ll see me;

because I live,

and you will live as well. 20 On that day you’ll know

that I am in God,

and you are in me,

and I am in you.

21 Those who obey the commandments

are the ones who love me,

and those who love me

will be loved by Abba God.

I, too, will love them

and will reveal myself to them.”

Priests for Equality. The Inclusive Bible (pp. 2325-2326). Sheed & Ward. Kindle Edition.

I will not leave you orphaned, I am coming to you—this Mothers’ Day it isn’t a stretch to imagine Jesus as mother,

As a provider, sending care for her children in her absence,

as an advocate, a comforter, a help.

Jesus himself identifies with his love for his people as a motherly love in the gospels of Luke and Matthew when he says “O Jerusalem, I long to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.”

It can be hard to imagine Jesus as mother with all of this “he” language in the gospel text, most of them about the Spirit of Truth Jesus promises to send.

In preparing for this sermon, I noticed that in the original Greek language about the Spirit, the word for Spirit, pneuma, is gender neutral, and all of the pronouns referring to them are also gender neutral.

Jesus is describing a Spirit who will come to remind of the truth—a Spirit whom the world cannot recognize or receive because of its straying from the truth—

and this Spirit whom he describes with gender-neutral language

is translated into our language with masculine pronouns instead—heabides with you, he will be with you.

The translators of every English translation I checked use masculine pronouns for a gender-neutral spirit. Why would this be?

It seems to me that the mistranslation of this verse about the Spirit indicates just how hard it is for the world to receive this spirit.

“The world cannot receive” is not about Jesus’s followers having the answers, and it is definitely not about being better than anyone else.

Let’s return to the Greek for another moment: “the world cannot receive—”

The word translated “world” is the Greek kosmos, which can mean world, or universe, or the inhabitants of the world—what all of those meanings of this word have in common, though, is the underlying meaning of the word: which is a way of ordering things.

Jesus is teaching about the order of this world, and how it is opposed to the Spirit of Truth.

“The world cannot receive” is about naming the reality that the systems and structures of our human world are not set up to nurture our relationships with God.

For example: patriarchy,

a system of organizing society characterized by one sex dominating and subjugating the others. Patriarchy might prompt us to only describe the divine with masculine language, erasing the image of a powerful

feminine or non-binary personhood.

Think of the mistranslation from the original Greek we discovered here—the world could not receive a Spirit of God who was not masculine, so they changed it!

Of course there are loads of other examples of ways our society is not structured for our spiritual wellbeing. Another: white supremacy,

an ideology that insists on total societal conformity to the dominant, white culture, and tolerates no diversity.

These two ideologies, patriarchy and white supremacy, have been baked into our society since its foundation. They are so prominent in our world that it takes work to even recognize them.

And these hierarchies where some bodies are more valuable than others are completely opposed to the Spirit of Christ.

At this moment in time, we are being asked as a society, as a collective, to acknowledge what is no longer acceptable—to name the evils that have gone unchallenged for too long, and to imagine a better way forward.

As we teeter on the brink of economic collapse and world war,

as we grapple with housing crises and pandemics

and irreversible environmental degradation and microplastics and AI,

it might seem obvious that these human systems of order were not designed with our spiritual thriving in mind.

This is not to say our modern world is beyond redemption,

only that it is designed to put us in a sort of stupor,

the kind that brainwashes us about who we are and what we’re meant to do with this one wild and precious life.

It is society’s stupor we have to snap out of before we can awaken to the spirit of truth.

Jesus talks to his disciples about the spirit of truth at their last supper together—the spirit of wisdom,

the spirit who reminds that Love is never far from those who seek it,

The spirit that reveals God’s presence in all things,

in all beings,

in all circumstances,

in all darkness,

in all confusion,

in all judgment,

in all life,

Christ is there.

This spirit reveals to us the true nature of God—the expanding, multiplying, self-emptying love that pushes us out beyond ourselves,

The connecting, trusting love that reconciles us to our own vulnerability,

The transforming love that brings life from death

and wisdom from pain.

When the spirit reveals to us the true nature of God,

We see God everywhere.

And once we see God in all things, we can’t unsee it.

We can’t stop seeing God in another person as we hear their story.

We can’t stop seeing how God connects us all to one another.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has diagnosed America with a loneliness epidemic—more than one third of all Americans report feeling “serious loneliness.”

By the way, this includes 51% of young mothers and 73% of Gen Z.

Because of the structure of our society, this is the loneliest humans have ever been.

We are distracted, preoccupied, and overstimulated.

We have been bred by advertisers to give them our attention and to believe our culture’s greatest lie.

We hear it all the time and we are often completely unaware.

We’ve been told that there is a magic solution to our suffering, it is only one purchase away. A drug. A car. A cleaning product. A new investment. A tv show.

The promise of relief sinks into our subconscious, and we go searching for it—

where is the solution to our suffering?

The solution is not found in the world we’ve created. The solution is found in what we’ve abandoned.

You know what eases the ache of loneliness? Social connection. Service. Remembering you are loved and known and seen.

The solution is found in returning to the truth of who we are, that we are designed for relationship, for connection. The solution is found in returning to Love.

And what a gift we have here, to be a part of a community like St. Andrew’s to practice love. What a precious, precious gift to have a place for social connection, service, and remembering you are loved and known and seen.

What a joy to have a place to come to remember that this world, with its broken systems, does not determine who we are.

Jesus says, “I will not leave you as orphans,” and he comes to us to Mother us still.

We are not abandoned. We are never alone, and that is good news that this lonely world desperately needs right now.

And it is our togetherness that makes it possible to imagine a more diverse, sustainable, and just world order.

And the Spirit of God calls us to share our hearts, our minds, our whole lives to help cultivate this new world order as members of a global community.

God is with us, and God is in us, and we are in God, together.