What if we had an hour with Jesus?

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/052019.cfm
Acts 14:5-18
John 14:21-26

"I have told you this while I am with you.
The Advocate, the Holy Spirit
whom the Father will send in my name —
he will teach you everything
and remind you of all that I told you."

This verse, spoken by Jesus to his disciples, delivers the pièce de résistance, the apex and masterpiece of the marketing strategy for God’s revolutionary plan to restore creation back to himself. Sending the Holy Spirit describes the path Jesus takes to change the universe. In what we imagine should look like a war, a wrenching, unwilling transition from evil allowed to only holiness lived out, Jesus sends the Advocate. 

The Holy Spirit has been here, within those of us who allow his indwelling, for almost two thousand years; and we're still counting. Jesus was with us for just a few decades. Publicly, for only three years. The Advocate moved in permanently.

Some challenge the unique application of the Holy Spirit's indwelling as different before Jesus came. "What about all those who came before Jesus? Are they just lost in the ether?" Differences in God's revelation and intervention can't be ruled out due to our fashioning of equality. How about cavemen, babies killed in the womb, and folks who lived before modern medicine's salvific role? Well, at some time in the future folks in our time will have been considered severely limited for some new revelatory reason. Also, while revelation's covenants and truths are present in scriptures, first the Old and then the New, the revelation of God (his constant presence with us in the Spirit) continues. No further Holy Scriptures, but constant holy encounters. 

The indwelling of the Holy Spirit marks a substantial change in human history. The indwelling is a radical upgrade. At all times, though, God consistently shows his desire to join us to him.

Everywhere in the New Testament, and throughout the prophesies of the Old Testament, we can find the promise of the divine’s amazing project to draw all of us into himself — heaven and earth in union with God. Jesus explained that the Holy Spirit — in relationship with Jesus’ followers — is how the marketing plan of communicating Jesus’s teaching will take place. “He will teach you everything.” Google is great. Powerpoint helps clarify. Testimonials are interesting. But, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit into the body and soul of Jesus’ followers feeds them everything they need to know. That is a revolutionary marketing plan.

It’s the speecy-spicey meatball of our present and future existence. The marketing plan for God to absorb us into him is by us willfully absorbing God into ourselves. Even with our probable hesitancy and certain fear, God designed our acquiescence, our very employment, as the teaching vehicle for bringing the universe under his wing. 

The plan again? God will teach the disciples everything (that’s a lot of things, everything), and remind them of all that he told them when he was with them. And, I believe that we are included as the disciples who are in his employ. We are living in this intricate metamorphosis of God and creation right now. Those three years weren’t only for those who knew him then.

The input of Jesus’ teaching, miracles, and interactions — which play out as the gut theology of sacrifice and martyrdom, the super cosmic prayerful relationship with the Trinity, and our exciting inclusion within the Mystical Body of Christ — all of that is reminded into the disciples makeup, their cognitive conscience. We get to learn the revelatory and holy stuff simply because we agree to be disciples.

This marketing plan of a conscious indwelling of God into our beings, giving us every bit of intelligence and mentoring that we both require and desire, didn’t just extend to the several hundred disciples that interacted with Jesus over his ministry. This promise to teach and remind must extend to all of his followers, through all time. That’s the incredible strategy of the roll out of the Advocate plan.

Consider two things — the period that Jesus was with the disciples, and the time that each disciple spent with Jesus. These limited blinks of time form the core framework for our faith and everything that we not only need to know, but everything that we need to have in the continual revelation of God into each of our everyday lives. Each of those interactions by Jesus account for additional insight to be revealed to us. Every moment Jesus spent on earth structurally builds what we might consider a university of revelation.

Jesus’ ministry research hearkened back to the revelations outlined in the Jewish scriptures. Jesus used them to point to the beginning of time, and then pointed forward to the revelations described for the future still ahead of us. The time he was with us, however, planted in the fulcrum of Jewish history, was quite short. In review, it was somehow enough to implant both the succinct and the explosive “everything” that Jesus needed to teach us.

We must suppose that the three decades of his youth and early adulthood included lots of formed relationships that were important in God’s plan’s to rollout his revolution, too. They were seeds to his revolutionary syllabus of teaching that the Advocate would teach to the subsequent followers of Jesus.

As an aside, regarding the “everything” that Jesus told his disciples that we are being taught about by the Holy Spirit, think for a minute about the idea of this revolution of Jesus as a restoration rather than something strange to God. Jesus as King and Jesus destroying the permanence of death are more of a restoration than a revolution, because God created the universe as the perfect place for both him and us. Jesus’ restoration of everything, though, will really look more like a takeover than a transition when we compare our before and after the indwelling of the Spirit. Though counter-intuitive to our independent way of life, striking out on our own goals and endeavors, the indwelling transforms us into a divine profile. We are no longer alone.

We’ve been taught from an early age that death is just the eventual part of life. It’s practically speaking impossible to imagine life without death, but that’s what Jesus changed for us. Death no longer has power over us. It doesn't look that way, but the transformation of our passing has been secured. 

The plan for the eventual eradication of all death is still playing out, and that’s part of what Jesus taught. He’ll come back at some point in the future and finish off the restoration completely. That’s the framework of what we know now as disciples. It’s revolutionary to even think such a thing is possible. In effect, though, this was the initial design of creation — there was to be no such thing as death. It’s a revolutionary way to think; but in fact, Jesus is restoring everything back to God for that very purpose — eternal life. 

That's an important detour, but now back to the marketing plan idea of getting out the word of Jesus’ life and teaching through the use of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus surely had lots of relationships with family (like James) and friends (like Lazarus and Martha and Mary). The bulk of his disciples came through contacts with him just over his three year ministry. That’s the genius of Jesus’ plan. He first established core relationships as he grew up, sealing folks to himself as invaluable witnesses to the disciples, and some as their leaders and mentors, like James and his mother, Mary. Those ministry recruited disciple relationships began a fertile colony of followers, forming innumerable chains of relationships. The chain of followers looks like pyramid scheme we are warned against. Those at the bottom cannot benefit like those at the top. Not so in Jesus' plan. 

Jesus began with dozens of personal and family relationships. Then there were hundreds of disciples. When he died and rose from the dead the cast grew into thousands. Over the centuries the numbers grew into millions. After a millennia there were billions. If we could count everyone over the last 2,000 years who cemented that seal of witness I’m sure the numbers have grown into trillions. 

That’s a lot of eventual disciples in Jesus’ employ. We’re all part of an ingenious marketing plan that cannot be stopped. It cannot be stopped because it pays off. It delivers the promise of brotherhood with Jesus and each other, with transparency viewed and lived in the truth, and with a joining to the divine that bursts open in grace and mercy. The plan has an ultimate payoff of eternal life with each other, and with God as our brother, king, and divine authority. 

Through their relationship with the Christ, the first disciples joined up over a three year period. Some of the disciples came later to join up, certainly. The late-comers may have only been with Jesus for a few weeks. That’s OK. That's how the marketing model of the Advocate works. That means we’re similar to those late comers, peeking over the crowd to get a glimpse of the miracle man. We are prompted to witness the truth like the apostles — particular revelation experiences for all of those around us.

Over three years Jesus had only one thousand days to pull off the creation of his unstoppable marketing plan. It’s conceivable that over three years Jesus had every one of those thousand days to build hundreds of relationships. Still shy of one thousand actual followers, Jesus began the spread of his witnesses. If you add up the hours Jesus spent with his disciples it might be only 10,000 hours of intimate opportunities that people had with Jesus. What if we had an hour with Jesus? Certainly even one hour with Jesus would be enough to change your entire existence, but there’s still a limit to the number of people he would meet. Jesus' plan is that we have 24 hours everyday with him. The indwelling is an impressive upgrade over the disciples' intimacy, isn't it?

Ergo, the roll-out of the marketing plan didn’t rely on the teaching of a few hundred people, and teaching them everything. The plan simply started by Jesus' intimacy with one, two, a dozen, a hundred, and then 500 to establish his transformation of Humanity. The masterpieces of those interactions is recorded in scripture, and the depth of everything he said and did is played out in the Advocate's teaching to us. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father sent in Jesus’ name, he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you. In the room where Jesus appeared to the apostles, and at Pentecost where the Holy Spirit descended upon hundreds, the telling and of everything took place. That’s the roll-out. The Holy Spirit would dwell with those disciples, and then with everyone else who joins up for millennia to come.

The verse we are discussing, I am sure, is considered a weighty baseline measure for the veracity of all the scriptures. That is, those who wrote letters and gospels were people regarded as holy, inspired followers filled with the Holy Spirit. They were told they would remember what Jesus taught them. They would remember because the Holy Spirit reminded them. That’s the definition of Holy Scripture. The Holy Spirit was not absent before Pentecost. His interactions were as common as the cycle of the seasons. They were not, however, an indwelling as residential to us, the temples that walk in witness.

This verse we’re hearing, by the way, is because of a question from one of the disciples. Judas, the disciple who was not “the Iscariot,” a moniker unlike any other in scripture, sets up the announcement of the whole point of Jesus and his Father’s plan for the Holy Spirit’s indwelling. 

“Master, then what happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” There’s the opening that Jesus needed, and knew was coming. Eventually, somebody was going to question about Jesus’ marketing strategy. 

In so many words, Judas asks Jesus why he’s decided to spread the Word, the Gospel, and witness Jesus as the Christ through a bunch of average Joe’s. Judas is probably thinking of the mighty news machines of the time — Roman officials, Greek orators, and the religious leaders of the Jewish people. Why not them? Why not the Jewish leadership? Why aren’t they the ones to tell this story? Maybe they should have been. But, I think the plan for the Advocate desired more than that. Sure, the unwillingness of the authorities across land, education, and religion of Jesus' time combined for skepticism, competition, and fear of challenged authority. Choosing not to convince them, however, mystically fits the working of the plan. In effect, the Holy Spirit is not campaigning for Jesus to run for office. Nor is he running for the job himself. First of all, Jesus is already King, and his subjects must choose to belong to him.

Rather than taking over all of governments, philosophy, and religions, putting kingly and priestly prophets back in charge of the workings of the world as the Jewish faith began, Jesus chooses the love of God living in each disciple as the means to spread the word. 

“Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” 

God’s marketing is in dwelling within us and loving us. It’s not just enough. It’s freaking brilliant.