Kindergarten, and Other Scary Stuff

Kindergarten, and Other Scary Stuff--May 15, 2018

[Jesus said:] "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live." [John 14:16-19]

I trust my wife.

I have trusted her for a very long time already, I suppose.  I trusted her when we were first married and it was just the two of us, bringing stacks of paperwork and graduate school reading to a local coffee shop to provide an escape from our one-room cinder-block wall apartment.  I trusted her when we bought our first house, too.  But I think I came to trust her in a whole new way, or at a whole new level, when our children came into the picture.  And I realized that trust was there the first time she and the kids were going somewhere new together without me, and when my anxious kids asked what it would be like, I could simply say, "It will be all right.  Mommy will be there."

Whether it was sending our son off to kindergarten while knowing that my wife would be in the same school building, or watching them all head off in the car to go visit relatives while I had to stay back at home, or when our daughter had a trip to the hospital and my wife took her while I kept watch on our son, there was this assurance that even if I couldn't be in that future room, it would be ok, because someone I trusted and they trusted would be with them.

From my kids' perspective, the critical thing is that one of us be with them.  The new and possibly scary stuff in the world, like kindergarten and trips to Ohio, has been bearable so far for them because there is the assurance that one of us will be there--that they would not be alone.  I know, there will be things they have to face for which neither my wife nor I can be there.  Neither of us were there at the lunchtime conversation when one of my son's classmates told him they couldn't play together because my son's skin is brown.  We weren't there when my daughter skinned her knee at preschool.  I know, all too well, there will be plenty of those difficult moments ahead for the rest of our lives, because that is the way of life.

But for those blessed moments, however preciously few, when I could bring peace to my son's or daughter's face and heart with the sentence, "It will be all right.  Mommy will be there when I cannot," I have had a glimpse of what Jesus has in mind when he talks about the Spirit.  

In the last extended conversation he has with his inner circle of followers before his trial and execution, Jesus gives the disciples advanced notice (again) that the cross is coming. He feels he has to tell them, if simply for the sake of being honest with them, that he will not be with them forever, and that in fact, the moments are rapidly sliding down the hourglass.  That understandably confuses and upsets them.  The disciples have, like Stevie Nicks sings, "been afraid of changing, 'cause I built my life around you." But Jesus doesn't see this moment as one of abandoning the disciples, and he wants them to know why.  "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth," he says. 

Whatever Jesus has meant to them, whatever comfort they have found knowing Jesus was there with them, whatever strength they took in being able to see Jesus and know that he was going to face whatever they faced, and right at their side, Jesus now says that the Spirit will be.  Jesus uses the word that gets translated, "Advocate," and while sometimes other translations will read, "Helper," or "Comforter," the common thread across all of those is someone who stands with you and gives you aid.  It is important, too, that Jesus says he will send "another" Advocate, too, because he means it in the sense of being another of the same kind that he has been.  (Without getting lost in the weeds, there are two words for "other," in Greek, one of which means "another of the same kind," as in, "I liked that first apple so much, I'm going to have another," and the second of which means, "another of a different kind," as in, "Those beets were terrible; I am going to order another kind of vegetable next time." Here, Jesus uses the first of the two, to indicate another (of the same kind of) Advocate like he has been.)

In other words, Jesus is telling the disciples, as scary as it may seem for them in this moment (and as truly dangerous as things were about to become), that it would be all right, because Another like him would be with them.  If they could trust Jesus himself when he was visibly in the room with them, then Jesus dared them to trust him in the choice to let the Spirit guard them when he could not.  Maybe at first they would simply trust the Spirit on Jesus' authority, because Jesus himself said the Spirit was as trustworthy as Jesus himself had been.  But they would also come to see in time that to be in the Spirit's care was still in some sense to be in the presence of Jesus himself--after all, Jesus also says in these verses, "I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me."  

This is the promise we are given, too.  We do not have the bearded, sandaled human figure of Jesus beside us in the car, or at the office, or sitting at the dining room table with us.  But Jesus says he has given us the Spirit, who is just as true and dependable an advocate for us as Jesus himself has always been--and Jesus died for us.  The bar is certainly no lower for the Advocate we call the Spirit.  These words of Jesus say to us as well as those first-century fearful followers, "It will be all right.  You will not be alone--I am seeing to it."

When I walked my son into the school for the first day of kindergarten and could not follow, it was not because I am too scared of kindergarten to face it myself.  It was because I had grown-up things that were mine to do, and because kindergarten is good for my son to help nurture and grow him into a mature grown-up in due time as well. Letting him go to school was not punishment; it is for his benefit.  At the same time, whatever anxiety he had was pacified with the knowledge that Mommy would be around, maybe not visible at every moment, but present in the same place.  So he would never be alone.  That made the new frontier called kindergarten bearable... maybe even good, if he dared admit it at the end of the day.

This is where we stand today, too--we have no other defense, no weapons or firepower in our hands, other than the promise of Jesus that he has sent the Spirit to be our Advocate, and his own assurance that the Spirit will be enough.  

For whatever you and I face in this day, the promise of Jesus is the same as it was in the upper room:  "It will be all right.  I send you with Someone I trust, Someone who loves you as deeply and fully as I do.  You will not be alone."

Lord Jesus, give us the grace and courage to trust your promise of the Spirit to guide us where we are now, whatever we face.