When I was growing up, a daily feature of family meals at home was iced tea. We typically sat down to eat as a family every evening, and without fail, the beverage of choice was iced tea. Because I grew up in Texas, it wasn’t just any iced tea; it was sweetened iced tea. If you’ve ever tried to add granulated sugar to a glass of tea, you will know that you have to sweeten it up when the tea is piping hot and before you add the ice to it. This is what my mom would do in preparing our dinners when I was a kid. She would boil water for the tea, steep a number of Lipton tea bags in the boiled water for a time, and then dump cupfuls of sugar into the hot water, all before adding the ice. Cupfuls. And just like that, the sugar would dissolve. But forget about trying to sweeten the tea when it has ice cubes in it. It’s a futile endeavor.
The inability to dissolve granulated sugar in a glass of cold tea is really just a matter of basic science. When a solvent like water is heated up, its molecules are energized, and the increase in kinetic energy allows the molecules of a solute—such as sugar—to break up more easily. And so, the sugar is able to dissolve. It’s actually the movement of the water molecules interacting with the sugar molecules that increases the rate of absorption. On a molecular level, the water moves from a state of relative inertia to a state of vibrancy.
If we move from a scientific dimension to a more imaginative dimension, I imagine a glass of cold, iced tea as a stubborn entity, a lifeless thing, inert, full of little molecules that seem unwilling to interact or engage with the sugar that is added to it. At a basic level, the tea will not accept or receive the solute that is dumped into it, at least not until water is energized by adding heat. And there is a point, too, in which the tea reaches its saturation point. Once the limit of sugar has been added relative to the volume of liquid, no more will be dissolved.
Now, let’s continue the imaginative journey and move for a moment to Jesus’s words in John 14:17. Jesus says that he will ask the Father to send the Advocate to his disciples after his death. This Advocate is the Spirit of truth, and the Spirit of truth is the One whom the world cannot receive, “because it neither sees him nor knows him.” These are chilling words. On one level, this encapsulates the world’s rejection of Jesus himself. Speaking on the eve of his death, Jesus recognizes that the world has already rejected the sum total of his ministry and presence, and it will epitomize that rejection in a short time by crucifying him on a tree. Jesus’ death on the cross was the result of the world’s inability to contain—absorb, if you will— his convicting presence. As John tells us, Jesus did not come to condemn, but his very presence, a presence of love, truth, light, and peace, does judge simply because of who Jesus is. Jesus could not be received by the world, because his very nature judged all in the world that was opposed to it. Against perfect humanity, imperfect humanity stood in stark relief.
And on the eve of his death, Jesus tells his disciples that when he has ascended to the right hand of his Father, another Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will also be rejected by the world. John sees the world in somewhat binary terms: you’re either of “the world,” which is a place of darkness and rejection, or you’re living in Christ, which means you live in the light and oriented towards the kingdom of God. And as John implies, “the world” is like an inert glass of cold tea, unable to receive and absorb the enlivening presence of the Spirit of truth.
Is it just stubbornness or ignorance that causes our own world to be incapable of receiving the Spirit of truth? Is it willfulness or blindness? What is it? Are the citizens in this world content in their own immobility and inability to be energized into action for the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of the well-being of others? The world of 33 AD is more or less just like the world of 2020, characterized by thousands upon thousands of lifeless molecules, individuals satisfied with their own position, selfishly preoccupied with their own individuality, concerned with their own personal stature, and deeply unconcerned with interacting with the Spirit who is trying to lead human souls into all truth.
I dare say that this pandemic has revealed the numerous ways in which our world is like a glass of cold, iced tea. Not a glass of refreshing cold tea when we are hot and thirsty, but a glass of useless tea, unable to absorb anything intended to spice it up or soften its bitterness. This glass of tea is sitting on a kitchen counter, not being drunk to refresh the palate or being used to any salutary effect. A pandemic that affects every single person on the planet brings into vivid relief the landscape of the human condition. And this pandemic is revealing that landscape, especially in this nation, to be a collection of self-contained molecules, individuals who are obsessed with number one and only number one. Whether it’s refusing to wear a mask in public or arguing for sacrificing the lives of the sick in order to get back to business as usual, many molecules in our world in the midst of COVID-19 are deeply resistant to interacting with the other molecules around them.
Look around. The statistics on coronavirus deaths coming out of nursing homes in this country is staggering in what they reveal about our general lack of concern for our fellow citizens. After years and years of hunkering down in a broken healthcare system, the molecules are suddenly trying to energize themselves in a time of crisis, but it feels as if it’s too late. If this dreaded virus has revealed anything, it has revealed how interconnected each and every one of us is. All you have to do to get a better sense of this is to read about how the virus spreads. One infected person can transmit the virus to dozens of people in a short period of time.
Even this insidious virus seems to have a better sense of how we are connected to one another than many people do. Because of this virus, we are seeing how every system and aspect of our world is related: the economy, healthcare, methods of education, the systemic poverty, and every fiber of our society. The current state of affairs is revealing the ways in which the Spirit of truth, which is the Spirit that exposes injustice in the light of the Gospel, is unwelcome and incapable of being received by the world. In many places, the world, indeed, seems resistant to learning anything from this Spirit of truth.
There is something else about receiving this Spirit of truth that our world has largely forgotten, and it’s this: with Christ as our example, we must empty ourselves in order to be filled with this Spirit. And here it gets more personal. While it may be easy to blame “the world” for its inability to receive the Spirit who will lead us into all truth, none of us is let off the hook. We must look into our own souls. If I’m honest with myself, especially in the conditions in which we find ourselves, my heart has begun to be filled with things that, left untended, will continue to reject the Spirit of truth who is trying to lead me into greater truth. Whether it’s impatience with this situation that turns into anger or resentment or concern for my own well-being, until I can begin to empty my heart of these potentially deadly things, I will not make sufficient room for the Spirit of truth to dwell within me, to teach me, to guide me into all truth. Until collectively our society can begin to realize that at times we don’t, in fact, know everything about everything and always have the answers, we will be unwilling to learn from the Spirit of truth. Like a glass of cold, iced tea that has reached its saturation point, there will be no more room for the sugar. It won’t dissolve.
And so, if we only read the New York Times or watch the evening news, we might feel hopelessly abandoned. Going into the third month of social distancing, many of us are feeling deeply alone. We are longing for the companionship that we took for granted prior to lockdown. Constant reports tell us that the virus is here to stay. No one really seems to know how to effectively tackle this medical pandemic.
But as Christians, our future is not rooted in what the New York Times says or in the dire news reports. Our future is oriented towards hope and the Gospel, and the Gospel says something quite extraordinary to us today. The Gospel tells us—Jesus tells us—that we are not orphaned and that we are not bereft. We have a companion in the way, and this companion has been with us all along. But it takes awareness to see and know this companion. And this companion, who is far greater than any virus, is here to abide with us, forever. The catch is that we must make ourselves ready to receive this Advocate, the Spirit of truth. And even when we don’t receive or absorb this Spirit, the Spirit is still there, abiding with us, ready for acceptance and absorption into our lives.
You see, Jesus says something so very simple and yet so very difficult to accept. It’s why the Spirit of truth is not accepted by the world; this Spirit continues to reveal how we have not accepted one crucial teaching of Jesus. Jesus says the essence of love is keeping his commandments. In fact, keeping the commandments is putting love into action, because the commandments we are given are to love God and our neighbor.
And here we have a key to being able to receive the Spirit of truth. Here we have the potential for the glass of inert cold tea to be energized into something capable of receiving the sugar that will soften some of its innate bitterness. The more we are propelled into action through love of God and neighbor, the more we will find ourselves able to absorb the ever-revealing Spirit of truth. The energized molecules of our heart will interact with other molecules, and we will find, soon enough, that something is different. We will have begun to absorb the Spirit of truth. The Spirit of truth, who is the continuing revelation of the Risen Christ among us, is constant and will always be an enlightening contrast to the broken, sinful world in which we live. The Spirit of truth will show us the ways in which we have fallen short of God’s intentions for us, or plain rejected those intentions. And thank God for that!
None of us knows, and may ever know, how we have gotten into this pandemic. God certainly didn’t cause this pandemic to happen. But even now as we try to climb our way out of it, God is showing us how to grow into the kingdom he has in store for us. We are not orphaned in this great tragedy, and it may be that this tragedy is precisely the time for us to recognize where we have sinned and fallen short of loving God and neighbor.
It may seem sometimes like the glass of cold, iced tea in which we are swimming is saturated and there is no room to absorb anything to sweeten the circumstances. But actually, if we look around, good things are happening. The absorption rate just seems far too slow. It is not too late for things to change. The Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, as the name suggests, has come right alongside us for the journey and is accompanying us on the way. That same Spirit is there, right beside us, in fact, abiding in our hearts and waiting for us to recognize its presence. The Spirit is our guide as we travel through this vale of tears, revealing to us the ways in which we have gone amiss and in which the world has been too saturated with its own ways instead of the ways of God.
We should be moved and convicted by what is happening around us and within us. But we should not despair. Indeed, we cannot despair. The Spirit of truth is alongside us and is leading us into greater truth than we know right now. This Spirit will abide with us unto the end of the age. And if we can energize the molecules of our hearts, we will increase the absorption rate of this truth. We will find this Spirit dwelling ever more and more within us. And this Spirit assures us that the protection and love of God will never, ever leave us.
Notes for a Sermon Preached by Father Kyle Babin
17 May 2020
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia