The promise of the Holy Spirit
Sermon by Pr. Sharai Jacob on the Sixth Sunday of Easter + Sunday, May 10, 2026
Happy Mother’s Day! This week I found myself thinking of all the ways my mother has poured wisdom into me, helped me to understand the world in new ways, and equipped me for life. Before my mother taught me to read, she would read stories to me, and sing songs that taught me important lessons about faith, community, and how to live well. She taught me that the best stories always teach us a lesson, they speak truth to our hearts, and send us out into the world changed.
Our gospel reading is part of a story that does just that. We hear Jesus talking to the disciples during the last supper. Jesus had just informed the disciples that he would soon be killed. They were understandably upset by this, and Peter declared that he would lay down his life for Jesus! Jesus predicted that Peter’s plan would go poorly. Now, Jesus is assuring the disciples that they will not be alone.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.” These words are not meant as a transaction, as though Jesus is saying, “If you obey me, then you will earn the Spirit’s presence.” Rather, Jesus is describing the way love naturally shapes us. When we love someone deeply, that love changes how we live.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus teaches that the greatest commandments are to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Love of God and love of neighbor cannot be separated. The more we are drawn into God’s love, the more we are drawn toward lives of compassion, mercy, and justice for others.
At first, those commandments can sound simple. But in our world today, it is becoming increasingly radical to truly love our neighbors of every gender, race, faith, and economic status. Authentic love calls us not only to feel compassion, but to stand with those who are oppressed, excluded, or attacked.
Jesus tells the disciples that this love does not begin with them alone. It begins with God. The Creator’s love flows through Christ into his followers, binding them together in mutual care and sending them out to embody that love in the world. And because Jesus knows they cannot do this on their own, he promises them “another Advocate,” the Spirit of Truth, who will remain with them forever.
In my reading of the gospel, I used she/her pronouns to describe the Advocate. The pronouns ascribed to the Advocate in the original Greek are genderless, like “they or it,” so there is some freedom to interpret the Spirit of Truth as a feminine presence on this Mother’s Day!
The Advocate is introduced here, and later, in chapter 16, we learn more about her role. She is meant to offer the disciples comfort and to illuminate to them the many lessons in our faith’s stories. Perhaps most importantly, she is here to be the ongoing presence of God in the world and in our hearts.
Unfortunately, in our reading, Jesus names that the world cannot receive the Spirit of Truth because it does not see or know her. A phrase that might resonate with women throughout history. Over centuries women’s wisdom has been demonized as “witchcraft or voodoo” or devalued and ignored as “pseudoscience, or old wives tales.” Even in scripture, women are often unnamed, and most authors of scripture were assumed to be men.
But, if we look closely, we can still find mothering voices in scripture! Proverbs 31 opens with the line: “The words of King Lemuel. An oracle that his mother taught him:” This example is especially important because long before the scriptures were ever written down, these stories were passed along through oral tradition by generations of storytellers and teachers.
There are two main kinds of Oral Tradition: there is factual oral history and then there are stories that are less about the facts and more about the lesson. I grew up hearing my family's history from my parents, my grandmothers, aunties, and elders. The written records of our Indian ancestry were destroyed by the Apartheid government, so my family passed on our history and culture through oral tradition. In South African oral tradition, the Zulu myth about where stories come from centers a woman, a mother, who journeyed to the spirit world in search of bedtime stories for her children and her neighbors.
Many of the ancient storytellers who passed along the stories of the Bible were likely mothers, or people in mothering roles, sharing stories of history, medicine, faith, and ethics with each other and the children or young people in their care. They were some of the first people to proclaim the Gospel, and their voices are still woven into our faith today.
In the same way, the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, is moving among us now - revealing truth and drawing us deeper into God’s love! Yet, so much of western culture teaches us to ignore her quiet, holy voice. Our fast-paced lives leave little room for silence, contemplation, or wonder at the connectedness of creation. And, the increasing brokenness of the world today draws us into fear and anger, drowning out the quiet voice in our hearts.
Still, our Advocate -with all the Grace of our triune God- continues to gently remind us of the eternal truth: that we are held -with all of creation- in the infinite love of God.
So this weekend, as we celebrate and remember the mothering people in our lives, may we also take the time to listen for the steady voice of our mothering God—a voice that comforts, guides, and continually calls us deeper into the way of Christ: to love God wholeheartedly, to love our neighbors boldly, and to stand with those who are oppressed. Amen.
