William H. Willimon - "Our Advocate" (June 11, 2000)
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| - | The gospel for this Pentecost is from John. | 0:06 |
| Jesus is preparing to leave his disciples. | 0:14 | |
| Most of the gospel of John is taken up | 0:18 | |
| with this long departure. | 0:20 | |
| Jesus tells them this, | 0:25 | |
| but when the advocate comes | 0:28 | |
| whom I shall send you from the Father, | 0:29 | |
| even the spirit of truth who precedes from the Father, | 0:32 | |
| He will bear witness to me, | 0:36 | |
| and you also are witnesses because you have heard, | 0:39 | |
| have borne with me from the beginning. | 0:44 | |
| I didn't say these things to you from the beginning | 0:48 | |
| because I was with you. | 0:51 | |
| But now, I am going to Him who sent me. | 0:54 | |
| Yet some of you ask, whence are you going. | 0:57 | |
| But because I have said these things to you, | 1:02 | |
| sorrow has filled your hearts. | 1:05 | |
| Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. | 1:08 | |
| It is to your advantage that I go away for I do not go away, | 1:11 | |
| but the advocate will come to you if I go. | 1:17 | |
| I will send him to you. | 1:24 | |
| This is the word of the Lord. | 1:26 | |
| - | Thanks be to God. | 1:30 |
| - | I was with a group of law students, | 1:34 |
| people preparing to be attorneys. | 1:38 | |
| They had asked me to speak on the subject | 1:42 | |
| on being a lawyer and a Christian at the same time. | 1:46 | |
| I don't know why you're laughing. | 1:54 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 1:56 | |
| Some of you are thinking, wait a minute, | 1:58 | |
| isn't that the definition of an oxymoron, | 2:00 | |
| a Christian lawyer. | 2:02 | |
| All right, I've been guilty of these tasteless lawyer jokes. | 2:06 | |
| They seem to me a respite from tasteless clergy jokes. | 2:12 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 2:15 | |
| But I really was quite touched | 2:18 | |
| by these young, would-be attorneys | 2:20 | |
| as they spoke of their fears | 2:25 | |
| at going into the practice of law. | 2:28 | |
| Fear, it is an awesome responsibility | 2:32 | |
| to have someone else's fate in your hands. | 2:37 | |
| Or more accurately to the practice of law, | 2:42 | |
| to have someone's fate in your words, | 2:46 | |
| because that's mostly what lawyers do, words. | 2:51 | |
| With words, lawyers plead | 2:55 | |
| the cases of other people. | 2:59 | |
| I expect there are people here today that can tell us | 3:03 | |
| if you're in trouble, if you find yourself in a situation | 3:07 | |
| where it's your word, say, against the word of the police, | 3:12 | |
| or you see your name across the docket | 3:17 | |
| from the People of the United States, | 3:20 | |
| well, it's then that lawyers look good. | 3:25 | |
| 'Tis a frightening thing to stand before the bar of justice | 3:31 | |
| as the accused and be forced to defend yourself. | 3:35 | |
| How can you defend yourself? | 3:43 | |
| What legal precedent should you invoke? | 3:46 | |
| How should you present yourself? | 3:51 | |
| How should you put yourself forward to the court? | 3:52 | |
| As the old saying goes, | 3:58 | |
| the one who has only himself for his defense | 4:00 | |
| has a fool for an attorney. | 4:05 | |
| No, you really need somebody else to put forward your case. | 4:09 | |
| My wife spent a week on jury duty. | 4:15 | |
| She came home saying I learned one thing. | 4:18 | |
| If you're ever called before the court, | 4:20 | |
| you better get a good lawyer. | 4:22 | |
| Because we saw cases that were lost, | 4:24 | |
| not on the merits of the case, | 4:28 | |
| but simply because they had a bad attorney. | 4:30 | |
| I teach a course at the divinity school called | 4:34 | |
| the rhetoric of preaching. | 4:37 | |
| The art of rhetoric, | 4:40 | |
| the art of using language persuasively and effectively, | 4:42 | |
| we believe grew up in Greece about 6 B.C., | 4:46 | |
| when, in a chaotic time in Greece, | 4:50 | |
| there where a lot of property disputes, | 4:52 | |
| and people were always having to go to the court | 4:54 | |
| to try to get their land back. | 4:56 | |
| And so people would go out and hire skillful talkers | 4:59 | |
| to plead their case to the court. | 5:03 | |
| And that is when philosophers began studying language, | 5:08 | |
| how language works, how words work, | 5:12 | |
| and thus was born the science of rhetoric | 5:16 | |
| and the study of law. | 5:19 | |
| That's all they do over at the law school. | 5:21 | |
| They just argue about words. | 5:23 | |
| Jurisprudence was born in a time when people needed | 5:28 | |
| other people to stand up and speak in their behalf, | 5:32 | |
| to find the right words. | 5:37 | |
| And that's a holy task. | 5:42 | |
| I remember asking this guy, | 5:46 | |
| now, why did you leave sales | 5:48 | |
| and go back and earn your undergraduate degree | 5:50 | |
| and then go to law school. | 5:53 | |
| What made you want to be a lawyer? | 5:54 | |
| And he said, I read this book | 5:57 | |
| by John Grisham, The Street Lawyer. | 5:58 | |
| This young lawyer in John Grisham's book is | 6:01 | |
| on his way up in some law firm. | 6:05 | |
| One day, he is encountered by | 6:09 | |
| this homeless man out on the street. | 6:10 | |
| And that encounter changes his life. | 6:14 | |
| And he dedicates the rest of his life | 6:17 | |
| to working with street people. | 6:19 | |
| And that young man said, it was right then that I knew | 6:23 | |
| that I wanted to be the voice of the voiceless. | 6:26 | |
| My mother's favorite movie was Inherit the Wind. | 6:35 | |
| You know, the one where Spencer Tracy plays | 6:39 | |
| Clarence Darrow defending John Scopes, | 6:41 | |
| the little teacher in the Scopes Monkey Trial? | 6:45 | |
| Or who can forget that good man Atticus Finch | 6:50 | |
| in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird? | 6:54 | |
| We thrill to these stories of those | 6:57 | |
| that dare to speak up for those who have no speech. | 7:01 | |
| In high school, my junior year, I wandered into the library, | 7:06 | |
| I picked up this autobiography called The Story of My Life. | 7:10 | |
| It was written by Clarence Darrow. | 7:14 | |
| And he told these stories about all these despicable people, | 7:18 | |
| anarchists, child molesters, child killers, murderers | 7:24 | |
| whom he in his life's career had defended. | 7:30 | |
| And Darrow said, one of the deepest human rights, | 7:34 | |
| that which makes us truly human | 7:41 | |
| is to live in a world where there's somebody out there, | 7:46 | |
| no matter who you are or what you've done | 7:51 | |
| or how bad you've been, somebody out there | 7:53 | |
| to present your defense. | 7:55 | |
| It made a deep impression upon me. | 8:00 | |
| How do you defend yourself? | 8:03 | |
| Well in today's Pentecost gospel, | 8:08 | |
| Jesus is preparing to leave his disciples. | 8:12 | |
| Jesus tells them that while He will not be with them | 8:17 | |
| in the way that He has been with them before, | 8:20 | |
| He is not abandoning them. | 8:24 | |
| He will be with them, He says, but in a new way. | 8:27 | |
| He will send them what He calls, the advocate. | 8:32 | |
| In the Greek, I will give you a parakletos. | 8:39 | |
| The King James translates parakletos as comforter, | 8:44 | |
| the RSV as counselor. | 8:50 | |
| But let's go with the NRSV's advocate. | 8:53 | |
| Jesus tells them, I'm gonna leave you with a lawyer. | 8:58 | |
| Jesus promises to send his disciples | 9:04 | |
| an attorney, an advocate. | 9:07 | |
| Last Sunday, from this pulpit, | 9:11 | |
| Clay spoke of our various images of God. | 9:13 | |
| We speak of Christ as King, as Savior, as Lord. | 9:17 | |
| But today at Pentecost, | 9:23 | |
| here is a strange word, | 9:26 | |
| a name for God as advocate, lawyer. | 9:29 | |
| Pentecost among the Jews is when | 9:34 | |
| the first five books of the law are celebrated, | 9:39 | |
| the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible | 9:43 | |
| giving the law to Israel. | 9:46 | |
| Pentecost is when those books are celebrated. | 9:47 | |
| The Jewish festival of the law is, in this scripture, | 9:51 | |
| when Christians get together and celebrate, | 9:57 | |
| not the gift of the law, but the gift of a lawyer, | 10:01 | |
| the parakletos. | 10:07 | |
| John encourages us here to speak of the Holy Spirit | 10:10 | |
| as parakletos, advocate, attorney, | 10:14 | |
| the third person of the Trinity as a lawyer. | 10:19 | |
| Elsewhere in 1 John 2, it is said, | 10:25 | |
| if anyone sins, and who here does not, | 10:30 | |
| if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father. | 10:35 | |
| Jesus Christ, the righteous. | 10:39 | |
| Imagine yourself standing one day | 10:44 | |
| before the thrown of almighty God, | 10:47 | |
| holding your little life in your hands, | 10:51 | |
| and you think about all that you've said | 10:55 | |
| and all that you've done, | 10:58 | |
| all those words uttered in anger that you can't take back | 11:00 | |
| that are part of the record, | 11:04 | |
| all of the battles that you fought, | 11:06 | |
| the battles that you've won, | 11:08 | |
| and the battles that you've lost, | 11:11 | |
| and the battles that you've run away from. | 11:13 | |
| Now, what would you say to God in your defense? | 11:17 | |
| With what words would you pled your case? | 11:22 | |
| Picture this, the righteousness of God, | 11:26 | |
| the Ten Commandment, the sermon on the mount, | 11:29 | |
| everything Jesus taught and said against Joe Jones. | 11:30 | |
| A couple of years ago, | 11:38 | |
| when the president of the United States | 11:39 | |
| was being investigated for his improprieties, | 11:41 | |
| more than one person asked, | 11:44 | |
| well, what if $50 million was spent investigating your life. | 11:47 | |
| Who could stand? | 11:55 | |
| Who could stand under such scrutiny and investigation? | 11:58 | |
| You think about all those secret misdeeds | 12:02 | |
| that we so quickly push to the back of our minds. | 12:06 | |
| What if we were dealing with someone who never forgets? | 12:12 | |
| By what argument would you defend yourself? | 12:17 | |
| Uh, well I'm only human. | 12:20 | |
| Uh, look, I'm not, I never said I was | 12:22 | |
| the best of Christians, I, uh. | 12:25 | |
| Hey, the Bible says so much stuff. | 12:27 | |
| I didn't even know that was in the Bible. | 12:29 | |
| I didn't know it was a rule, you know. | 12:30 | |
| If God knows everything you've done and said | 12:35 | |
| and every word spoken, every deed done in darkness, | 12:38 | |
| remembers every sin we so quickly forget, | 12:43 | |
| well, what hope has any of us to stand before | 12:47 | |
| the judgment seat of God? | 12:52 | |
| Who could defend you? | 12:56 | |
| Studies show that the number one phobia is America | 12:59 | |
| is having to stand up and make a speech. | 13:05 | |
| And to have to stand up | 13:10 | |
| and make a speech in your own defense | 13:11 | |
| when the audience and the judge and the jury | 13:15 | |
| is God Almighty. | 13:20 | |
| Well, huh. | 13:23 | |
| So Jesus says, I'm getting ready to depart, | 13:27 | |
| but I am going send you an advocate. | 13:31 | |
| I am going to send you somebody | 13:36 | |
| who will be able to take the argument, your defense. | 13:38 | |
| You're going to have an advocate with God. | 13:43 | |
| You need, when you stand before God, | 13:50 | |
| when your life is held up for divine scrutiny | 13:55 | |
| and your only possible defense is | 13:58 | |
| "guilty as charged," | 14:03 | |
| you need an advocate. | 14:06 | |
| In my last church, we had this clothes closet | 14:10 | |
| and a food pantry for the needy. | 14:15 | |
| And people in need a couple days a week | 14:18 | |
| would come by the church looking for help. | 14:20 | |
| Now there was this business man in the church | 14:26 | |
| who spent his life in upper level management positions | 14:29 | |
| in a big corporation. | 14:32 | |
| Well, the corporation went through some changes, | 14:34 | |
| and he was unceremoniously fired. | 14:38 | |
| And he went into deep depression, | 14:41 | |
| and we became deeply concerned about him. | 14:44 | |
| The corporation called it early retirement. | 14:48 | |
| He called it being put out to pasture. | 14:51 | |
| He became sullen, depressed, | 14:55 | |
| and out of concern for him, | 14:58 | |
| you know, trying to find something for him to do, | 15:00 | |
| I said, why don't you come down to the church | 15:03 | |
| a couple mornings a week and help out at the clothes closet. | 15:05 | |
| He was reluctant. | 15:10 | |
| Maybe he thought, well, this is quite a come down | 15:13 | |
| for somebody who had previously been | 15:15 | |
| in such a high position of power. | 15:18 | |
| Maybe he was bothered by being around poor people. | 15:20 | |
| But he consented. | 15:24 | |
| Now while working there | 15:27 | |
| and handing out these clothes and this food, he met a woman, | 15:28 | |
| a woman trying to make ends meet and her little family | 15:33 | |
| from her wages as a domestic worker. | 15:38 | |
| She happened to tell him about how bad her week had been | 15:42 | |
| since she had no electricity at her home, | 15:45 | |
| since the electric company had cut of | 15:48 | |
| the power to her house. | 15:50 | |
| She had paid her bill late. | 15:52 | |
| When she went down there to pay her bill, | 15:54 | |
| they were demanding the unheard of huge sum of $100 | 15:56 | |
| just to turn her electricity back on. | 16:01 | |
| Well what could she do? | 16:05 | |
| She told him, she said, I've called down there. | 16:06 | |
| I can't get anybody to talk to me on the phone. | 16:08 | |
| Well the man thought he had played golf a couple of times | 16:12 | |
| with the head of the electric company. | 16:15 | |
| He said, okay, let me go down there. | 16:16 | |
| Let me make a couple of calls. | 16:20 | |
| He called down there. | 16:22 | |
| Somebody down there made the mistake of telling him, | 16:23 | |
| I'm sorry, you called the wrong place. | 16:27 | |
| Call another place. | 16:28 | |
| He called that place. | 16:29 | |
| They said, no, we're not dealing with that today. | 16:30 | |
| He said, let me talk to the president. | 16:34 | |
| And he said, I was astounded | 16:38 | |
| at how miserably people get treated | 16:42 | |
| when the company thinks they're nobody. | 16:46 | |
| Well the next thing you know, | 16:50 | |
| he's there on the church phone, | 16:52 | |
| and he's making a call for somebody else | 16:54 | |
| to this loan company. | 16:56 | |
| She had missed her payments on some loan some time back. | 16:58 | |
| She couldn't understand the paper they had sent her. | 17:01 | |
| He had read the paper. | 17:02 | |
| He found something wrong on that. | 17:04 | |
| He was calling the loan company. | 17:05 | |
| An area of ministry opened up for this man. | 17:09 | |
| In giving, he received. | 17:12 | |
| And he learned, as he said later, | 17:16 | |
| he said, I didn't know what a gift it is | 17:18 | |
| just to be able to talk on the telephone. | 17:22 | |
| Well, he had become an advocate. | 17:29 | |
| Someone to plead with words | 17:33 | |
| the case of the powerless before the powerful. | 17:36 | |
| In Luke's gospel, they say, | 17:41 | |
| Jesus says, they're gonna deliver you up before kings | 17:44 | |
| and princes before courts. | 17:48 | |
| They're gonna make all manner of accusation against you, | 17:51 | |
| but you don't worry. | 17:55 | |
| The Holy Spirit will tell you the words to say. | 17:57 | |
| Well Jesus, Jesus is about to leave us. | 18:05 | |
| He is is not going to be present with us as He has been, | 18:10 | |
| but He will not going to leave us desolate. | 18:14 | |
| He's gonna send the Holy Spirit, the near presence of God | 18:18 | |
| to speak for us, to speak to us, to speak up for us. | 18:23 | |
| See a lot of people think of religion as, | 18:28 | |
| you know, reading the Bible | 18:30 | |
| and learning a lot of religious words, | 18:31 | |
| learning how to talk religious like yourself. | 18:33 | |
| Well maybe the Christian faith is also | 18:38 | |
| the gift of having somebody to talk for you. | 18:42 | |
| As Paul says, we don't know how to pray. | 18:48 | |
| But the Holy Spirit intercedes to God Almighty | 18:53 | |
| with words and with sighs too deep for words. | 18:59 | |
| Here is the near presence of God among us, | 19:05 | |
| as near as the bread and wine of communion, | 19:08 | |
| as near to us, our advocate. | 19:12 | |
| Because this advocate is the same one | 19:16 | |
| who shares the life of Jesus. | 19:19 | |
| Here's a spirit that knows first hand our need, | 19:23 | |
| finds words to articulate our groaning. | 19:27 | |
| You are not alone. | 19:31 | |
| You may not be good on your feet in front of people. | 19:32 | |
| Well, okay, you don't have to speak for yourself | 19:37 | |
| before the thrown of God. | 19:39 | |
| You don't have to find some way to present your life | 19:41 | |
| into the courts of the Almighty. | 19:44 | |
| You've got an advocate with the Father, | 19:46 | |
| Jesus Christ, the righteous. | 19:49 | |
| Amen. | 19:54 |