Sermon

John 14:15-21

Let Your Conscience be your Guide

By The Rev. Dr. James D. Kegel

The blue fairy had the right idea when she gave Pinocchio little Jiminy Cricket. Pinocchio needed someone to keep him on the straight and narrow. Now the little marionette did not always little to Jiminy, but he should have. Jiminy Cricket was Pinocchio’s conscience. It was his song that most of us remember best from the Walt Disney film, “Give a little whistle, give a little whistle and always let your conscience be your guide.”

Conscience is a wonderful thing. It is the little voice inside us telling us what we should or should not do. Jiminy Cricket did not go far wrong when he cautioned Pinocchio and us that we should obey our inner voice. Jesus also talks about our inner guide that he calls the Paraclete, the Comforter, the Advocate, the Guide. This Spirit of truth is with us forever: “I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, that he may be with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world can’t receive; for it doesn’t see him, neither knows him. You know him, for he lives with you, and will be in you” (John 14:16-17 WEB). The Spirit of truth will be given us by God.

We are people of the Holy Spirit. We cannot see this Spirit of truth but we received him at our baptism/ Baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we were born anew of water and the spirit, transferred from the realm of this world to God’s Kingdom. With the laying on of hands and prayers we received the gifts of the Spirit and with the sign of the cross marked out in oil we were anointed by the Spirit, sealed in the Spirit and marked by the cross of Christ forever. It is the Spirit of Jesus who calls us to remember all that he taught. It is the Spirit which calls us to faith and through life in the Spirit, we are cajoled and encouraged, strengthened and led.

Let your conscience be your guide—let the Holy Spirit work in and through you to build faith and power to reach out in God’s Name. But as James McCracken, the great preacher, once told his congregation, “The maxim ‘Let your conscience be your guide’, warrants scrutiny. Sometimes conscience can go wrong.”  Think of St. Paul. He acted according to his conscience when he persecuted the early Christians. Through history, religious people have massacred and killed in crusades and pogroms and jihads—all this in the name of truth and the name of God.

One of the world’s greatest living writers is Guenter Grass of Germany, a Nobel laureate. I have often enjoyed his novels. He wrote an article about growing up in Danzig during the Nazi era. He was a practicing Catholic during the time when Jewish synagogues were destroyed and that community exiled or sent to concentration camps. He said he never remembered a single word about the fate of the Jewish people in church or heard a single prayer for them. He did remember praying each work for the Fuehrer and the victory of the German armies. The Protestant Church was equally bad, he said.

The conscience of the Christians allowed them to persecute the Jews, take away their property, even send them to death camps. This was not the Spirit of truth but of falsehood. Whether they had so dulled their consciences or their consciences spoke falsely, we cannot know.

Martin Niemoeller was a noted pastor in Berlin during the Nazi time; before that he was a renowned U-boat commander during World War I. Niemoller was persecuted and imprisoned by the Nazis but for too long he remained silent in the face of injustice. He used words from experience which have become famous:

When they came for the Jews, I said nothing.
I was not Jewish.
When they came for the Socialists, I said nothing.
I was not a Socialist.
When they came for the Catholics, I said nothing.
I was not a Catholic.
When they came for me, no one said anything.
There was no one left.

Even for Christians, it is possible to so dull our conscience, warp our conscience, that we numb ourselves to the needs around us, injustice, bigotry, tyranny, want. If we are to let our conscience guide us, we must make sure that the spirit within us is the same Holy Spirit promised by Jesus. The Spirit will always point us to the Lord, direct us according to God’s Word, enable us to witness to the love of God. We must test the inner voice, our inner promptings, by the external Word. We have been promised a Counselor, Comforter, Advocate and Guide. God’s Spirit will never contradict God’s Word. God’s Spirit will always glorify God and be true to Christ.

Bishop Rick Foss, now president of Luther Seminary, is fond of calling the Holy Spirit, the “shy member of the Trinity.” It is an interesting concept. What the Holy Spirit does for us to keep bringing us back to Christ. The work of the Spirit enables us to believe, to understand, to be strong enough to follow the Lord. The Spirit keeps bringing us back to the real Jesus who loved and accepted all people. Certainly Jesus condemned sin, but never, ever condemned the sinner. Jesus ate with tax-collectors and publicans, welcomed the outcast, healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, restored relationships. It is the Spirit of truth who shows us grace more powerful than law. It is the Spirit who condemns the judge but lifts up the guilty. It is the Spirit who reminds us that the Gospel is freedom not bondage; forgiveness not rejection; wholeness not brokenness. It is the Spirit who works in our conscience and always condemns us when our conscience gets in the way of God.

Oswald Chambers once pointed out, “Nothing blinds the mind to the claims of Jesus Christ more effectively than a good, clean-living upright life based on self-realization. For a thing to be satanic does not mean that it is abominable and immoral. The satanically-managed person is one who is moral and upright, proud and individual. The satanically-managed person is absolutely self-governed and has no need for God.” There are plenty of folks who live clean and wholesome lives, who yet fall short of God’s intention for them. They may follow their conscience but have forgotten their relationship to the Lord.

“If a man loves me, he will keep my word,” said Jesus (John 14:23 WEB). It is good to keep the commandments, but did you notice that first Jesus talked about loving him? Many in his day were scrupulous in keeping the commandments. The Pharisees “fenced the Law” so as not to break the commandments. They may have tithed dill and cumin but their hearts may have been far from God.

Jesus is not commanding us to be legalists, sticklers more concentrated on the letter than the spirit. St Augustine had the right idea when he said, “Love God and do what you want.” Those who love their Lord will lead lives in accordance with God’s love. The Law never makes one righteous, it always condemns. Paul understood that the Law makes us rebellious when he said that the Law made sin increase all the more. Luther understood it too. He said, “A good man does what is right by his very nature. What a foolish man that would be who gave an apple tree a book of rules and laws about how to grow apples and not thorns when the tree naturally knows how to do that better than all the books can describe or command.  In the same way, all Christians have it in their very nature to do good and right, more than all the laws can teach them.”

It is important to do good. It is important to love God and live life with God. It is important to let our conscience, informed by the Holy Spirit and consistent with God’s Word, guide us. Three fishermen sat in a lobster boat at anchor eating their lunch. The wind was full of news. The sea murmured as when a tale is whispered into one ear only. The sun was a burning pearl. The young man said, “If this might last forever, it were enough.” His father smiled, “If a man comes to the mid-years has quiet, a full table and some gold in the crock, it were enough.” But the grandfather said, “If a man knew the will of God and had the power to do it, it were best of all.” The gift of Christ’s Spirit is given us so that we might know the will of God and do it. The Spirit of truth is greater than custom or tradition, common knowledge of common sense. It may be opposed to what our conscience tells us—especially that numbed, dumbed, conscience of so many of us. Or it may be that the little voice within us prompts us to remember Jesus, to recall his words, urges us and warns us. God has not left us orphaned but send God’s Spirit to be our guide, keep us in faith and bring us to eternal life. Amen.

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible.

Copyright 2014 James D. Kegel.  Used by permission