Holy Trinity
June 16, 2019
Proverbs
8:1-4, 22-31
Romans
5:1-5
John
16:12-15
INTRODUCTION
Today, Holy Trinity Sunday, is a difficult one to preach or
even talk about, because it is the only Sunday dedicated not to celebrating a
particular event in Jesus’ life or the life of the church, but rather, a
doctrine. And at that, it is a doctrine that is, by definition, impossible to
describe, because as soon as you try to define God, you have limited God to
something definable by a merely human mind. So what our texts do today is
present to us some of the ways God works. They each (except Proverbs) mention
all three persons of the Trinity. And they paint a picture of some small part
of who and how God is. As you listen, don’t try to figure out exactly how to
explain God, how the Father relates to the Son, relates to the Holy Spirit.
Instead, just let the images wash over you, and sit in them, and imagine how
these images of a Triune God can feed you and give you life. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord
Jesus Christ. Amen.
We have begun our small group gatherings here at St.
Paul’s, and the conversations have been wonderful. I have been touched by
people’s willingness and openness to share things that are important to them –
to entrust these things to me and to those gathered. And it has been beautiful
to see people connect, not only over things we find mutually funny or
interesting, but also the discovery that we share similar pain with one
another, presently or in the past – and so are also able to love one another in
the midst of it.
Of course, none of us are strangers to pain and suffering.
We are all bearing something, sometimes fresh, sometimes long past but still
living in our awareness. Many of you know that I am a three-time cancer
survivor – diagnosed first in high school, and then twice more in the first 18
months of my first call. One of my favorite prayers someone ever offered to me
happened as I was enduring treatments for my third cancer diagnosis. A friend
of mine from seminary wrote to me and said, “I’ve been praying for you, and
telling God, ‘God, Johanna has enough character already.’”
It
was a reference to today’s wonderful text from Romans. It is such a powerful
text; let me just read a part of it for you again: “We boast in our
sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces
character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us,
because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that
has
been given to us.” In just a few lines,
the Apostle Paul has put meaning to the suffering we all endure – and though I
admit it is not always very helpful language in the moment of suffering (like
my friend’s prayer, I thought many times during my treatments, “Don’t I have
enough character? Give me a break already!”), in hindsight it offers great
consolation. Christians and non-Christians alike have used a similar image to
get through times of trial: it is the hope and belief that “what doesn’t kill
you makes you stronger,” because we have exercised our emotional muscles and
hopefully, as Paul suggests, gained endurance to weather what may come in the
future.
Many of the struggles we face are personal ones – a
diagnosis, a death, a life circumstance changed. And these certainly can take a
lot out of us. This week, though, I have been thinking especially about the
sorts of struggles we face in our various communities. Anyone here ever have an
interpersonal conflict, with someone you care about? Yeah, I figured I wasn’t
alone in that! Such conflict is all around us – in politics, around major
issues like abortion and immigration and guns and racism, and perhaps most
difficult of all, in our families and among people we love. Because few things
are as heart-wrenching as enduring major conflict with someone you truly love, or
have loved, or want to love, especially if it is around an issue or topic that
is important to you. So, in light of this, I wanted to look at what our texts
today can show us about how faithfully to navigate such conflicts.
First,
we look to the Gospel. Once again, we have a piece of Jesus’ farewell
discourse, the speech he gave to his disciples on the night before his death.
Here he tells the disciples, “I still have many things to tell you, but you
can’t bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all
the truth.” I find this both frustrating and encouraging. It’s frustrating
because it first requires us to admit: we don’t know everything. Jesus names
it, straight out, saying we simply can’t bear knowing everything at once. Isn’t
that frustrating to admit? I hate not knowing everything. We have a joke in my
family of origin, because my dad is such a know-it-all. Whenever someone
challenges him on a fact, he looks all smug and says, “Look it up!” And he is
usually right. One time, just one time, I want to “look it up” and prove him
wrong! I want to know the thing!
But the battle to be
right or wrong doesn’t really help in arguments with people we love, does it?
If it is always a matter of right and wrong, someone has to end up wrong, and
someone else makes them so, and no one likes to be wrong, and no one likes when
someone they love makes them feel bad or stupid. Plus, usually the most
important arguments don’t have answers that are right and wrong; they are just
different. I’m not talking about facts here, I’m talking about what is true for
someone, what resonates with your heart. In that sense, one person’s truth might
be different from another person’s truth, but that doesn’t mean one has to be
right, and one wrong.
And
so a much harder, but more faithful way to approach disagreements is to listen
to Jesus’ words, and take to heart the reality that we don’t know
everything, and we never will – we cannot ever fully know the experience and
feelings of another person. What we can do is put aside our insistence that we
are right… and simply listen to one another, with open hearts and minds, and
try to hear and understand as much of the other person’s truth as possible.
That’s when that second, more encouraging part of Jesus’ statement can enter
in: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the
truth.” The Spirit will guide us into truth. But this can’t
happen unless we first admit that we need guidance, and then let down our
shield and sword and make room for the Spirit to do that important work. It
requires humility, and self-awareness, and it may hurt a little, or even a lot,
but as Jesus promises, this listening – to each other and to the Spirit – is
what makes truth be known, and from there, healing and growth can follow.
The
next place to turn for guidance in this difficult work is our reading from
Proverbs. We don’t hear from Proverbs very often in our lectionary, but this
text is really quite lovely. Part of the reason I love it is that it describes
the Holy Spirit’s role in creation, as God’s sort of assistant creator – but
here the Holy Spirit does not possess the masculine identity that characterizes
how many of us grew up knowing God. No, here the Spirit is described as “Lady
Wisdom.” This is actually a fairly common way to describe the Spirit, as
Wisdom, which is, in Hebrew, a feminine image. Here we see God as both male and
female, creating both male and female, creating a world that has differences
and different ways of understanding, and that very difference is what brings
about life. We also see a God who, even in the very act of creating, works
together in community. Bringing life is not an act that can be accomplished
by one alone; it is a task to be done as a community, working together,
delighting and rejoicing in one another’s work. When we are able to work
together, we can be one, even in our differences, just as God the Creator is
one with Christ and with the Holy Spirit. Genuine community is challenging, but
it is also creative, enriching, and productive.
Finally,
we turn once again to where we started, to this text from Romans, because while
all of this other stuff is good to work toward, none of it is possible without
what Paul expresses here in Romans. Paul begins this chapter saying, “Since
we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand.”
That’s a lot of dense, churchy words, so let’s break it down: the reason we are
able to do all this hard work that is required in a fruitful, productive,
loving community, is that we already have the gift and promise of God’s peace.
It’s not a gift we have to earn. We have that peace already, not because of
something we have said or not said, done or not done, succeeded or failed at,
or even what we might still do, but rather, because God is who God is, and God
does what God does. God loves us and accepts us despite our various shortcomings
(and let’s admit it, there are plenty of those – if there is one thing we all
have in common, besides God’s love for us, it is that we all make mistakes, and
we are all sinners in need of grace!).
But here’s the really
stunning news: because of who God is – one who justifies and loves and embraces
even the ungodly, even those who make mistakes – because of who God is, we come
to truly know the peace of God, and are empowered and encouraged to turn in
love to extend the same grace, mercy, acceptance, and forgiveness to those
around us, those with whom we are in community, those with whom we need to work
and live each day.
Accepting God’s
unconditional love for us can be difficult; extending that love, mercy and
forgiveness to others can be even more difficult. But as Paul also tells us, we
don’t need to know how just yet – the Spirit, Lady Wisdom, will show us how if
we listen to her and leave space in our hearts and between our words and before
our reactions for that same Spirit to move and breathe and do her thing to
guide us toward the truth. With the help of the holy communion, the Holy
Trinity, we, too, can grow in love for one another, becoming a holy community
who loves, cares for, listens to, accepts, and embraces one another, even as we
continually hold each other accountable to this holy call. May it be so.
Let us pray… Holy
Three-in-One, we face divisions in so many facets of our lives, and in our
passion for justice and righteousness, we don’t always remember to listen to
the pains and experiences of others. Pour your Holy Spirit of truth into our
hearts, so that even as we are assured of your peace and love, we are also
empowered to hear what is true for our brothers and sisters, and move forward
together as a community guided by and basking in the glow of your wisdom and
grace. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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