Recruiting has to be one of the most miserable enterprises in the contemporary workplace. Very often, people get jobs through personal contacts. That’s how I’ve got nearly every job of my life. But, quite rightly, employers also have to advertise and interview so everyone gets a shot. So people spend hours writing a CV and stressing about an interview, when Darren is always going to get the job because Karen told Aaron that he’d fit right in. Job interviews are the worst, right? Usually the interviewers are anxious and confused, and the interviewee is trying to impress and say all the right things. They are so fake, and you can’t tell anything from them really. That’s why people who can afford it use an agent to get them work. Someone who speaks on their behalf, has informal and casual conversations and helps do a bit of matchmaking. Actually, these matchmaker people are solid gold. You can use them in real estate and buying insurance and planning a wedding and negotiating an EBA and just about anything really. I wonder if there’s a time you’ve suddenly realised that having someone act for you is going to be much more successful than trying to do it yourself?
In the ancient world, if you were involved with a judicial or commercial process, you might have a parakletos by your side. They might be there to support or advise, to speak on your behalf, or to offer advice. They might be someone for whom this is their job (if you’re rich) or your friend with a bit of chutzpah (if you’re poor). The parakletos was a kind of a mix a lawyer, an agent, a support person and an advisor.
This week, we are smack in the middle of Jesus’ farewell discourse – the long speech after he washes the disciple’s feet at the last supper. As with the whole section, the language is flowery and complicated and repetitive and, as a result, rather confusing. Last week we heard ‘do not let your hearts be troubled’ and ‘in my Father’s house there are many moné (which I usually translate as caravan parks). This week’s reading has John’s Jesus promising the disciples another parakletos.
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another parakletos, to be with you forever.
So, if the Father is going to give another parakletos, who was the first? Well, it was Jesus himself. The first letter of John (which comes from the same era and is similar in style to the gospel of John) explicity describes Jesus as a parakletos. In John’s gospel itself, it is not explicit, but Jesus behaves like a parakletos.
So, as the speech continues, it becomes clear that Jesus will be going away, but another character is coming. This is ‘the spirit of truth’, says Jesus, so Christian doctrine has taken this to refer to the Holy Spirit. In some cases, the Anglicised form of the word – Paraclete – is used to refer to the Holy Spirit. As a boy chorister, I remember singing the final verse of a hymn:
All glory to the Father be,
With his coequal Son;
The same to thee, great Paraclete,
While endless ages run.
The Great Parakeet inevitably became the topic of many hilarious funnies, and may be the linguistic genesis of Pirate Church’s Ghostly Parrot. But I digress.
Jesus himself was and is our sort-of-lawyer-agent-support person-advisor-parakletos, and the Holy Spirit is our sort-of-support person-agent-advisor-lawyer-parakletos. Presumably God the Father is also actively involved in the business of support personning-lawyering-agenting-advising-parakleting as well, given the fact that those three are inseparable and seem to work together all the time.
But how often do you - how often do I - behave as though we have all three persons of the Trinity in our corner, ready to give us the right words, ready to offer us strength and wisdom and insight? How often do we instead act as though all we have are our own resources and capacity, without recognising that we have the fulness of God’s being standing by ready to help?
I was reflecting on my reluctance to actually draw on God for help as I thought about today as International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. Most of us around here are pretty woke, and have long since stopped worrying about who is attracted to whom or how people express their gender identity. But when confronted with casual language that dehumanizes others, or perhaps in the face of aggression or strong convictions, we lose our nerve, and find it hard to put a different perspective. It can be the same when it comes to other ways of putting people down, whether to do with race or mental health or wealth or whatever. We just lose our nerve.
But things change when we are open to the reality that God is in our corner, actively helping and supporting us. ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father, and he will send you another parakletos to be with you forever’. The commandments, by the way, are not just some vague statement. Just over the page, Jesus will declare ‘this is my command, that you love one another’.
So we might augment the scripture by saying ‘If we love God, we will love one another, and Jesus (who is already in our corner) will ask the Father to send another person to work with us, who will be by our side and never abandon us’
So I wonder, how does your life and ministry change, if you accept that God in all three persons is right there next to you, ready to lend you strength and wisdom and grace? And how might that change the world?
Christ is Risen, Alleluia, Alleluia!