In John 14-17, Jesus speaks in the form of a Jewish Farewell Discourse, but as usual, Jesus challenges and transforms the genre. For example, previous discourses never featured an allegory like the “I am the true vine” section in John 15. Previous Jewish discourses were all about the impending absence of the father-figure, but to us, Jesus promises his continuing, abiding presence, as the “Helper” he sends.
In John 16, Jesus transforms the genre of the Farewell Discourse again, when he predicts the future. Most previous Farewell Discourses had extensive, detailed predictions about the challenges to come. Instead of numbers and dates, Jesus predicts trouble more generally, giving the disciples not information but guidance and power. The disciples will receive help from God, or rather, a helper: the Holy Spirit. Jesus always gives of himself, through the Trinitarian mystery, as the Spirit of Truth.
Whereas John 15 spoke of the Father as a vinedresser, John 16 speaks of the Spirit as wearing three hats (to provide my own allegory): performing the same tasks as a lawyer, an angel, and a midwife. Each of these will give the disciples and us what we all need, when it is most needed.
You can’t read the Bible without seeing that prophets speaking for God encounter opposition. In a social form of Newton’s Law, every prophetic action produces an unequal and opposite reaction. But take heart: The prophet Isaiah says all nations are like dust to God (Isaiah 40:15), and God’s breath/spirit is more powerful than their might. “He blows on them and they dry up, and a storm carries them off like stubble.” (40:24)
Jesus was called a prophet because people felt the power of his words, to heal the broken, but also to pull down the lofty from their thrones. Rene Girard spoke of the “destructive effect” of the Word of the Lord: “the world of Herod and Pilate, of Caiaphas and the Zealots, must be literally dissolved at the breath of this word.” As Abraham smashed idols, Jesus cleansed the Temple, and it caused trouble for them both. The disciples would encounter the same.
When the powerful attack the weak, they pick the arena, and they often prefer the law court. Some of the disciples would literally be pulled before courts; for others and us, this may be metaphorical. It’s all a trial nonetheless.
Jesus has been on trial throughout John – think of how each sign is followed by a long interrogation, whether informal as when the woman at the well sparred with Jesus, or more formal as when the man born blind was pulled (with his parents) before the leaders.
In John 15:25, Jesus quotes a Psalm, but we’re not sure which one. The words “They hated me without a cause” show up exactly in two different Psalms, and the exact concept in two more! (Psalms 35:19, 69:4, also 109:3, 119:161) Being hated without cause is nothing new. As for which Psalm Jesus is thinking of, Psalm 69 is quoted multiple times in John, although Psalm 35 would work perfectly here: it begins with the courtroom call, “Plead my case, O Lord.”
Whether the courtroom is physical, spiritual, or social (the court of public opinion), Jesus promises that his Spirit will be with us in that courtroom. He even calls the Spirit the Greek term for a defense attorney four times in John (also used once in 1 John). The term Jesus and John use can be translated literally as “Paraclete” or as Advocate, Helper, Comforter, or Counselor. All of these describe what the Spirit does. Now, I don’t think we should retranslate “Wonderful Counselor” from Isaiah 9:6 as “Best Defense Attorney Ever” — but the concept would work, even if the poetry wouldn’t.
The Spirit cannot come as Advocate until Jesus leaves, I think for deep, Trinitarian reasons. When the Spirit comes, John 16:8 says the Advocate will “convict the world of sin.” This is an evidence-based persuasion that we already saw at work when the oldest laid down their stones in John 8. This is the kind of protection and help that the Spirit will give us, pro bono.
The disciples will be put in the place of the woman in John 8, or in the place of Jesus, by powerful people who think aiming their stones at them “is offering a service to God.” (16:2) In Acts, we’ll see that the Spirit can convict Saul in this very situation, converting him to the Apostle Paul. The disciples are to call on the Advocate, asking as Jesus told them to ask, and to wait for God to work. Sometimes the disciples will die from these trials – but even then, their souls remain forever in God’s hand.
If the Advocate gives help when you are attacked by legal means, the same Spirit gives help when you simply don’t know what to do. “But when that one comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you on the way to all truth … he will announce to you things to come.” (16:14) The root of the verb “announce” in Greek is “angello,” from which we get “angel.” The Spirit announcing is acting as an angel.
When the angels appeared to the shepherds on the hills outside Bethlehem, I don’t know exactly HOW the Spirit was there, but I know THAT the Spirit was there, announcing, or “angeling,” with the heavenly host. The shepherds weren’t asking what they should do, but the angels told them what to do anyway. They gave the shepherds an unusual quest to find a baby in a feeding trough, and the shepherds found something greater than the Holy Grail itself. The Spirit set this quest in motion, and the same Spirit can set you in motion, if you ask (John 16:24).
Angels also battle demons, and although the primary picture of this conflict is military, I suggest that we combine the Spirit’s two jobs and consider spiritual warfare with a legal metaphor. Could angels defend us legally when we are put on trial by unseen evils? When I try to convict myself of wrongs, when I think what I did can never be fixed, I’m attacking myself in this way. The Holy Spirit can defend against such charges – even when I bring them against myself.
The third job that Jesus says the Spirit does is not explicitly stated, but implied strongly. The disciples will feel anguish, as intense as a woman feels the pain of childbirth, but “I shall see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one takes your joy away from you.” (John 16:22 DBH) What better picture for the presence of Christ through the pain of spiritual birth pangs, than the picture that God is with us as a midwife would be? (This is my interpretation of the text, so feel free to argue with it. The exact word is not the Lord’s, but mine.)
Jesus promises weeping, lamentation, pain, and anguish — but only for a time. The ancients knew that childbirth is dangerous, bloody, and painful. Pain is a part of being “born again” in John 3 that we modern folks miss. But the joy of what’s ahead gives hope for the present suffering.
Isaiah used the same childbirth imagery twice. First in Isaiah 26, he says “We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind.” (26:18 KJV) But then there’s hope, even resurrection hope: “The dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust! … The earth shall cast out the dead.” (26:19a) Jesus and Isaiah use the same phrase – this trouble is but “for a little while.” (26:20 NIV, see John 16:16-19)
Isaiah’s second reference to childbirth is in 33:10-11, with a “lifting up” like Jesus foresees for himself: “’Now I arise,’ says the Lord, ‘now I exalt myself, now I lift myself up. You conceive chaff, you bear stubble; your breath is a fire that devours you.’”
There are two paths: one brings a complete “human” into the world (John 16:21) through the resurrection of being born again (Isaiah 26:18-20, John 3:3); the other brings forth chaff, stubble, fire, and death. The first path is the path Jesus walked, and it proceeds through pain and darkness. At this point in the narrative of the Gospel of John, most of the pain is still to come. But this is the way a complete human is brought into the world. Jesus doesn’t just tell us this, he shows us this, and he gives us the power to follow. He loves us to the end, even as he bids farewell, promising to return.
“I have spoken these things to you so that you might have peace in me. In the cosmos you have suffering; but take heart – I have conquered the cosmos.” (John 16:33 DBH)
QUOTE: p.204 Things Hidden from the Foundation of the World, Rene Girard.
TRANSLATION: Isaiah 33 from p.98 of Reading Isaiah, Peter D. Quinn-Miscall [Note that “your” is the literal translation, while other translations replace it with “my,” but the literal reading is that the devouring breath is the humans’, not God’s.] DBH = David Bentley Hart New Testament translation.
IMAGE: Bernini (1666) “Cathedra Sancti Petri Apostoli”