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Easter 7 (Exaudi) May 20, 2012 Jesus Sends Help John 15:26-16:4 Dear friends, See how Jesus is preparing His new pastors for their work! These 40 days of Easter are like finals. Final exam week or final last second preparations before a long trip. These new pastors knew they only had a few days left with their Teacher. 26 “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. 27 And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning. Several times Jesus reminds the pastors whom He's sending out into the world that they will go out there in the company of the Holy Spirit, their new best friend. The Holy Spirit is sent to them by the Father and the Son, which means the Spirit is not going rogue. It means that God the Holy Spirit is acting in perfect harmony with the Father and the Son. So these first Christians can be confident about His help. The Holy Spirit helped those first pastors by pointing sinners to the cross. He would give them the words to preach. (We'll see that next Sunday at Pentecost.) He would give them the Sacraments to distribute—these pastors would baptize babies and adults and forgive their sins and give Communion to many souls. This is still what the Church and her pastors do today: faithfully preach, teach, and administer the Sacraments. Interestingly, Jesus tells His Church to testify. He doesn't tell them to get positive results. 10 As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55) If I could sculpt or paint, I'd wrap these words up in art, because they are beautiful poetry. But they are also beautiful because they tell us that we testify and confess Christ and the results are entirely in His hands. If a church body starts to base its work on the assumption or expectation of results, they'll be moving in the wrong direction. They'll be moving away from God's promise that He'll handle the results and instead, they'll be moving toward their own very good intentions. But very good intentions, assumptions, and expectations without Jesus' promises are dangerous. Here's what Jesus tells His people to expect: 1 “All this I have told you so that you will not go astray. 2 They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. 3 They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. 4 I have told you this, so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you. I did not tell you this at first because I was with you. The only statistics Jesus told His Church to expect would be martyrs, the Christians who would testify about Christ and be killed because of Him. What kind of results can we expect today? None. But He does promise to make us clean and new every day. He promises to wash away all our selfishness and evil thoughts and words from yesterday. This is what we need and this is the help He sends. In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.