Yesterday, Today, and Forever

A Sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on June 8, 2025 by Revd Dr Sam Wells

Reading for address: John 14: 8-17, 25-27

I wonder if you’ve ever had a conversation that got you so wound up it still bothers you 30 years later. When I think about such conversations what’s so annoying is not just that the other person is totally infuriating and insufferable; it’s that at the time you couldn’t work out what to say in return – and in some ways you still can’t work out what you should have said. So it lingers in your brain like an unpaid bill squatting on your desk.

I had one of those conversations sat next to another guest at a wedding. I think the bride thought we’d get on because we were both ‘religious.’ How little she knew. My conversation partner was happy talking for an hour about how God had blessed him and his wife and led him in the paths of righteousness and prospered the work of his hands. Then when we reached dessert, he asked about me and my parish. Eventually we got on to the Ph.D. I was pursuing. I said it was on Christian ethics. He asked what that was. I replied it was trying to put together the Bible and the history of the church and the tradition of reflection on human experience and work out what it meant to be a faithful Christian today. He looked puzzled for a moment, and then, in a kindly way, he explained benevolently, ‘I don’t worry about all that. Jesus has always been enough for me.’

Perhaps I should have admired his simplicity of heart. Instead I was exasperated by his unctuous self-satisfaction. I might have said something passive-aggressive like, ‘I think it’s a bit more complicated than that,’ but whatever I said was wholly inadequate. I’d like to take some time this Pentecost Sunday to offer a better reply.

It’s a common experience to realise that what you find most wonderful about a person is also what you find most difficult. We’re drawn to a person because they’re happy-go-lucky, totally present, effortlessly creative, utterly adaptable, full of colour and life. But we also find they never reply to messages, they’re often late, they’ve a terrible memory for what you thought you’d agreed, and they don’t seem to think in a straight line. It turns out the difficult is the flipside of the wonderful. It’s the same with Jesus. What’s wonderful about Jesus is that he’s totally present at a precise historical moment; he embodies everything about God’s character and purpose; he’s on earth, among us, and we can see and touch him and know he’s real and so trust his promises; and that he’s done specific things, most of all died and shown us God loves us come what may and risen and demonstrated nothing can separate us from God. What more could we possibly want or need? This is the force behind saying, ‘Jesus is enough for me.’

Well here’s what Jesus doesn’t give us. Because he was with us at a particular point in time, he isn’t accessible in the same way today. Because he’s principally and definitively the manifestation of God on earth, he doesn’t reveal everything we want to know about heaven. Because he didn’t appear at the beginning of time, we don’t know the meaning of the time before he came. Because he reveals the full character of God in time, we don’t entirely understand the nature of God beyond time. Because the circumstances and customs of the first century were in significant ways different from those of today, we don’t know exactly how to follow in his footsteps 21 centuries later. Because a lot of people assumed his coming would coincide with the full unfolding of God’s realm, we don’t know what to make of the ways in which the world has so much injustice and oppression and suffering. Because 70% of the world doesn’t recognise Christ as God, we don’t know what to make of other faiths and convictions.

That’s a rather intimidating list of challenges. I imagine my conceited conversation partner still smiling and saying with a wave of the hand and assured innocence, ‘Oh I don’t worry about those things. I just think about Jesus.’ But if Jesus is to be the normative centre of our lives and not just a talisman or moral ideal, I think we do need to ponder these things. And if we do, I believe it turns out there are two words that provide the answer to all those questions. Perhaps still too complicated for my conversation partner (who’s clearly occupying too much space in my head even 30 years on), but I hope simple, familiar and memorable enough for the rest of us. Those two words are Father and Spirit.

When we think about forever, we’re in the territory of the Father. If we think of all things as an hourglass, with essence at the top and existence at the bottom and Jesus the aperture between the forever of essence and the limited time of existence, then the Father is about the essence part. Remember there might not have been existence – there might only have been essence, where the Father, Son and Holy Spirit dwelt in perfect trinitarian relationship. But as soon as we get existence, we get different roles for the three persons of the Trinity to perform. The Son’s role is to conjoin essence and existence. He is the tree in the Sycamore Gap, the identifiable crossover point between eternity and time, the presence of God on earth and of humanity in heaven. The Father is largely about the top of the hourglass. He represents the nature of God beyond time. He is the presence that pervades heaven. Jesus says, ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.’ If you imagine the hourglass, with us at the bottom, in existence, and Jesus as the aperture, it is through Jesus that we see the Father. It is through Jesus’ presence among us that we understand the character of God and the nature of eternity.

So Jesus is what we could call Yesterday: God at a particular point in time. And the Father is what we could call Forever: God filling heaven and encompassing eternity. That leaves one more role: Today. The role of Today is played by the Holy Spirit. In Jeremiah God says, ‘Do I not fill heaven and earth?’ We can say, ‘Yes, the Father fills heaven the Spirit fills earth and the Son connects the two. All the questions about everything that were provoked by Jesus and not fully answered by the Father are fulfilled in the Spirit. Let’s revisit those as-yet unanswered questions.

If Jesus lived at a point in time, how do we connect with him today? The answer lies with the Holy Spirit. Jesus was fully human. That means he was in only one place at a time on earth; and he’s in only one place now – in heaven. He had a body then and he has a body now. When we say, ‘I feel Jesus with me,’ or ‘I sense Jesus moving in this place,’ what we’re really saying is, ‘The Holy Spirit is making Jesus present to me,’ or ‘Things are happening by the power of the Holy Spirit and I know it’s the Holy Spirit at work because these are the kinds of things Jesus would do.’ It’s not that Jesus doesn’t matter anymore because at Pentecost the Holy Spirit came; it’s that today is the realm of the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit isn’t embodied and visible like Jesus, so in order to tell whether it’s the Holy Spirit at work we have a simple test, which is, ‘Does this look and feel like the kind of thing Jesus did or would do?’ This is what happens when we pray. We want Jesus to be with us, but we feel a distance of time and space and from existence to essence that seems insuperable; so we ask the Holy Spirit to transcend those differences and enable us to be with Jesus, and to speak the words of Jesus to us.

Let’s consider another question. If Jesus didn’t appear at the beginning of existence, what do we make of the meaning of time before he came? The answer lies with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is at work in our loves from when our lives begin. Likewise it’s at work in existence from the day of creation. It’s natural to wonder why Jesus came at the moment in history he did. But whenever he came there’d have been a time before and a time after. So the Holy Spirit was always going to have two roles: anticipating Jesus; and reflecting Jesus. One role before Jesus came – one after. So the Old Testament is a series of accounts where the character and purpose of God embodied in Jesus are in different and often imperfect ways anticipated and modelled – and this is the work of the Holy Spirit. And the Acts of the Apostles is the definitive account of how the church reflects and seeks to embody who Jesus is, for example in perceiving the widening of God’s mercy to those once thought to be outside it. And all this is the work of the Holy Spirit. Indeed Acts is sometimes called the Gospel of the Spirit.

Here’s another question. If the circumstances and customs of the first century were in significant ways different from those of today, exactly how do we follow in Jesus’ footsteps 21 centuries later? The answer lies with the Holy Spirit. This was the point I was trying to make to my conversation partner 30 years ago. We can’t simply read a 21^st-century ethic straight off the page of the Bible. So how do we walk in Christ’s ways? We stay close to Jesus, we listen to the experience of Christians over the centuries, we attend to the wisdom of the world. Above all we remain open to the shape of Jesus’ life and allow our lives to be conformed to his. This is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Two more questions. Since Jesus’ coming didn’t coincide with the full unfolding of God’s realm, how do we understand the injustice and oppression and suffering in the world after his departure? The answer lies with the Holy Spirit. We assume the purpose of our existence is endless joy, peace, and indulgence, with chocolate and doughnuts on the menu every day and rewarding but not backbreaking work to look forward to each morning. But it seems life isn’t about individual fulfilment. Life is about being with one another in moments of sorrow and pain as well as flourishing and fun. We’re called to imitate Jesus in the face of the limitations and hardships of existence; and because that’s hard, the Holy Spirit empowers us to do so. It seems Jesus hasn’t fixed everything, giving us nothing to do. We’ve got plenty to do, but because of the Holy Spirit we’re fortified to do it and we’re never alone.

Finally, since two-thirds of the world doesn’t recognise Christ as God, how are we to relate to other faiths and convictions? The answer, you’ll have guessed by now, lies with the Holy Spirit. I’ve come to this one last, because of all of these challenges it requires perhaps the biggest transformation in thinking. The Holy Spirit, in Greek ‘paraclete,’ is the ‘One Beside Us’ – the maker of relationships, the conveyor of truth and understanding across divides. The Holy Spirit is not about one-way communication; it’s about drawing us beside, with, together: finding strength and wisdom and joy in one another and God. So we approach other traditions not with fear or defensiveness but with anticipation of the gift the Holy Spirit is giving us through them, and a corresponding desire to bless them by offering our own gifts in return. Thus we turn from the scarcity of our limited knowledge and experience to the abundance of God’s overflowing realm.

So this Pentecost, here’s my answer to my smug table companion. We can’t follow Jesus except in the context of the Father who places Jesus against the backdrop of eternity and the Spirit who populates the foreground of our existence today. Jesus is yesterday, the Spirit is today, and the Father is forever. Almost all the ways we talk about Jesus in our lives and the world today are really references to the Holy Spirit – the with-us God who binds our lives to one another and God today. Then and only then may we truly say, not in self-satisfaction but in genuine humility, ‘Jesus is enough for me.’