Meg Peery McLaughlin
June 22, 2025
John 16: 12-15
This week 65 children and 88 youth and adult volunteers spent an amazing week out at New Hope for Vacation Bible School.
And I’ll bet my bottom dollar that I was not the only exhausted child of God in bed before 9pm on Thursday night.
One morning on our drive out 86, one of my daughters asked me a question that I didn’t know the answer to. I can’t even remember what it was.
It could have been any number of inquiries:
What energizer are the youth going to start with this morning?
What will the snack ladies make today?
What is the science experiment?
Whatever it was, I said, “I don’t know Sweetheart
you’ll have to ask Nancy when you get there.”
She rolled her big ole’ blue eyes, and said, “Of course.
Nancy knows everything!”
Truth is, Nancy and her extensive VBS knowledge aside, we don’t know it all.
There is not one of us who knows it all.
Jesus has always known this.
In John’s Gospel,
when Jesus knows he’s standing in the shadow of the cross,
he prepares his disciples for his departure.
It’s a long stretch of scripture called the Farewell Discourse.
Tucked in that discourse is our text for today, which scholars have called John’s version Pentecost.
It was two weeks ago that we celebrated Pentecost,
the giving of the Spirit to the church.
That Sunday we read the traditional story from Acts—tongues of fire, a rushing wind.
Jesus’ promise of the Spirit in John 16 carries a different tone.
No flames. No frenzy.
Instead, Jesus describes the Spirit as the paraclete – which is an advocate,
one who comes alongside us and teaches us what we need to know.
Jesus knows the disciples don’t know everything,
and he knows the church has a long road ahead.
And so this is what he says:
A reading from John, chapter 16.
First a word of prayer.
Come, Holy Spirit.
You who hovered over the water at creation,
and you who flows through the river of life even now, making all things new.
Come, guide us into the truth we need for today.
Amen.
Jesus said:
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth;
for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears,
and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
14He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
All that the Father has is mine.
For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
First, a confession.
It’s not often I imagine Jesus as the actor Jack Nicholson.
But when Jesus says “you cannot bear the truth right now”–
I can’t help but hear Jack Nicholson as Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men,
barking “You can’t handle the truth!”
Anyone else?? Just me?
While Jesus does say we can’t bear the truth yet,
he doesn’t mean we are weak or fragile.
he means: the truth is still unfolding.
Jesus is speaking of a future not yet fully formed—
a world not yet arrived—a church not yet ready.
My neighbors, Jon and Katie Baumler, just remodeled their kitchen.
There was one 45-degree turn in the cabinetry where nothing could go—just dead space. Before the countertop was installed, they had an idea: a time capsule.
So now, decades from now, when a future homeowner rips off that slab of stone, they’ll get a surprise.
There is no greater fan of Halloween than Jon Baumler,
so first up will be a spring loaded plastic skeleton.
Then, beneath the bones, a CD with songs from
Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, Drake,
Bruno Mars, Chappell Roan, and a little Wicked.
A jar of pennies.
There are copies of the N&O with news of
Gaza and Israel and Iran,
the Trump presidency,
2024 being the hottest year of this planet.
A few Daily Tarheel editions too:
news of Bill Belichick’s girlfriend
a COVID cluster in Ehringhaus
protests on campus
a perfect season for Women’s Lacrosse.
Makes me wonder:
What will the world be like when someone opens that capsule?
What headlines will shape their lives? What songs?
What truths will they be trying to hold?
And for those of us still around when it’s found—
How will our faith speak to that future?
What will we stand for, stand up against?
How will we know what’s still true, really true?
Jesus promises the Spirit will lead us.
When the Spirit of Truth comes,” he says, “he will guide you.”
That verb there, guide, is ὁδηγέω
It’s a mix of two words: the word way and the word lead.
The Spirit leads the way.
One scholar writes:
“The Paraclete is a living teacher
unfolding in new circumstances the implications of what Jesus said .”
The Spirit leads us in the Jesus way no matter what the future path may hold.
This may feel quite obvious to you –
Maybe it’s what brings you back to church week after week.
But it also might make you odd.
This week our nation marked Juneteenth–the end of slavery.
Some of the abolitionists who helped bring that day about—Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass—were faithful followers of Jesus.
But others, also in Jesus’ name, resisted it.
Some of them are in our own Presbyterian family tree.
One man in particular—James Henley Thornwell—
was a Southern Presbyterian leader,
president of the University of South Carolina,
and later, a professor at Columbia Theological Seminary.
Thornwell once stood in a pulpit and said “Slavery is not sinful.
Slavery is a legitimate form of labor that has been approved by God.”
It is hard to even quote those words.
Thornwell arrived at that abhorrent belief
not simply by way of racism or economics,
but because of how he thought Christians should relate to scripture.
Thornwell insisted that being a Christian meant
1) Announce what the Bible teaches
2) Do what the Bible commands
3) Prohibit what the Bible condemns
4) Enforce church discipline accordingly
In other words, Christians were not allowed to speak unless the Bible spoke.
And if the Bible didn’t condemn something explicitly—like slavery–
then the church should, in his own words, “put her hand upon her lips.”
Thornwell’s model of faith was “Repeat.”
Repeat only what Jesus literally said.
Say nothing more. Do nothing different. Stay inside the lines.
But even Jesus knew that was . . . inadequate
so instead Jesus instructed his disciples to be led by the Spirit.
Be led by the Spirit—
the Spirit who is tethered to Christ’s life, his witness, God’s truth—
the Spirit who is still alive, still speaking new truths when we are ready to hear them.
Repeat vs. Be led.
Being led by the Spirit makes a life of faith more complicated, yes.
But it also makes faith courageous.
It makes faith come alive,
responsive and relevant – not just to a moment frozen in Scripture,
but to a world that is still unfolding.
Church, we are called to be led by that same Spirit—
the Spirit who does not simply echo the past,
but brings the truth of Jesus into new and unfolding realities.
I saw that happening recently in Charlotte at Covenant Presbyterian Church.
When I was in seminary, I studied ethics under the beloved Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon.
Last month, Covenant added Dr. Cannon’s face and name into their stained glass windows.
Like most stained glass, Covenant’s windows tell the great story of our faith.
Old Testament, New Testament, and the story of the church.
The church history windows, in the transepts of Covenant’s sanctuary,
are time capsules themselves.
They tell the story of the church from a particular perspective,
in a particular moment of time.
Covenant was built during segregation, so in that collection of colorful glass
are faces like John Calvin, father of Presbyterianism,
but also the face of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, a Presbyterian elder,
and Benjamin Palmer, a Presbyterian minister who preached in favor of slavery.
After much prayer and study, and (because they’re Presbyterian), committee work,
Covenant chose to update their windows—
to tell a fuller story. They made room for saints the Spirit has since revealed.
Among those added are Rachel Henderlite, the first woman ordained in our denomination. And Dr. Cannon.
Her name may ring a bell for you longtime North Carolinians,
Her family descended from those enslaved at Cannon Mills, in Kannapolis.
Dr. Cannon went on to become the first Black woman ordained in the Presbyterian Church.
Before her death in 2018, Union Seminary started the Center for Womanist Leadership in her name. Drawing from the black southern expression – “acting womanish” meaning bold, grown before your time.
Womanist theology centers the experience of black women
and asks: Where is God here? What does love require now?
This is something James Henley Thornwell could never have imagined.
But the Spirit could.
And did.
And still does.
Because we do not know everything.
We can’t bear the whole truth right now.
We actually cannot handle the truth…not all of it, not yet.
But, church, we follow the one who is the Truth.
And we are led by the Spirit who meets us where we are,
And brings us toward where we need to go.
So – be led
stay open.
Remain curious.
Because the Spirit is still teaching,
Still nudging,
Still leading the way
into truths we cannot yet bear
but truths we are being prepared to live.
Amen.