Sermon for Sunday (5/30)

John 16:12-15 (Then Jesus said) “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ¹⁴He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Good morning everyone. Today is Holy Trinity Sunday, a day of the church year set apart to focus on the mystery of God. So the temptation for a person in the pulpit would be to try to explain this mystery away. And in doing so commit a heresy or two…

So rather than explaining the Trinity, I thought I’d take a few digs at those people who came up with this doctrine. At first I figured it was probably some theologian with a hard name to pronounce coming up with all these confusing concepts… Only, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead, it seemed the people who came up with the doctrine of the Trinity were ordinary Christians, Christians who felt it was important to confess their faith.

These Christians were compelled by their everyday experience to confess the Father, to confess the Son, and to confess the Holy Spirit. From these very real experiences of their lives, the doctrine of the Trinity developed. So there went that idea. Once my first idea about trashing these theologians wasn’t an option, I thought I’d try to figure out how this doctrine confessed over a millennia ago, related to all of us here.

Only that wasn’t a viable option either, though. You see, I don’t really like this obsession with the “here and now.” It’s a little obnoxious to me. I often find myself wondering why absolutely everything needs to relate to our experience right here and right now.

In fact, Jesus seems to say everything cannot relate to the here and now. Jesus says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” Aside from the fact that Jesus has been on a looooong dialogue, and it seems impossible that Jesus still has much more to say. It is apparently clear to Jesus that there are still some things the disciples just couldn’t bear to hear him say.

Perhaps the disciples couldn’t bear to hear about how exactly Jesus is going to leave them; perhaps the disciples couldn’t bear to hear about the persecution they were going to face; perhaps they couldn’t bear to hear their martyrdoms. It seems unlikely to me that these disciples could have bared to hear all that. Could they bear to hear that God is going to die?

Could anyone? Could we?

There must be things we can’t bear to here in the here and now; and possibly ever. Poet Rilke wrote in a letter to prodigy, that Rilke wouldn’t answer a question the young poet asked. Rilke said he wouldn’t answer because even if he did have the answers, this young poet could not understand these answers. Rilke recognized there are some things we cannot bear. Instead we need to experience it…

Like those early Christians, and their experience of the Trinity.

There are many reasons why there are things we can’t hear just yet. Perhaps it’s because we’re too afraid: too afraid to admit how alone we feel at time, too afraid to admit the deep doubts we feel some nights, too afraid to admit our own fear… There must be so much keeping us from hearing the truth about our isolation, our fear and our doubt. What will it finally take for us to be able to bear the truth about these parts of our life?

And in the meantime, what are we to do? Should we hide these dark truths from one another? Should we ignore them? What are we to do with our own truths we cannot bear to hear about? Run, hide, and ignore? Perhaps…

Frankly that isn’t what Jesus suggests, though. Instead Jesus tells us we are to be led by the Spirit of Truth. The Spirit comes and we’re led to those dark truths; the truths we cannot bear and we’re too afraid to bear. In the midst of all the things Jesus doesn’t say because we can’t bear them, the Spirit leads us. We’re lead.

Jesus makes it clear that the Spirit is leading us to all truth. That’s the thing, even though we’re living in between Christ’s resurrection and his return, we’re lead to all truth. From the Spirit’s prompting, we’re lead to the proclamation of Christ. Jesus preaches, and the Spirit proclaims what the Spirit hears. And what the Spirit hears is what is to come. The Spirit hears what is to come about the cosmos, including what is to come about all of us and all our truths.

So what is to come?

What is to come is that all of our truths; all of them, the ones we’re afraid of, the ones we hide of ignore; they are not ultimately the truth about us, or at least they are not all the truth about us. These truths will not define us, because there is a greater truth. That truth the Spirit hears is that the Spirit is to take what is Christ’s, and to give it to you, to give it to us. That is the truth, that is what is to come. Instead of being defined by those dark truths, the Spirit comes and makes us into a new creature.

In this taking and giving of the Spirit, Christ is glorified. Christ is glorified because we get what is Christ’s. And what is it that Christ has after all? God’s very justice. When the Spirit gives us what is Christ’s, Christ is glorified because God’s kingdom is built among us.

All of that, that is the reality of here and now. God’s kingdom is breaking into ours, and we’re swept along in the miracle. We’re made into a new creature here and now. We will face truths we cannot bear, but we will not bear them alone, the Spirit will be with us. And not only that, we will not bear these things as mere humans. Instead we will bear these things with the very justice of God, because the Spirit will take it from Christ and give it to us.

That is how this doctrine relates to our here and now… We are made into new creatures lead by the Spirit, bearing more than we could have ever imagined. Now we have Christ’s very righteousness.

And in this new reality, Christ is glorified. In this new here and now we encounter the mystery of the Trinity, too. Just like those Christians so long ago.

So perhaps my qualms were misplaced. It seems this inexplicable mystery is a thing of everyday life, and it seems this mystery has a direct relation to the “here and now.”

God uses anything, becoming human and Spirit to break into our world and creates a new here and now we never thought possible. We are created anew, we are made into God’s very righteousness in the world, in the here and now. Confusing, scary and miraculous as it is, it is the truth and Spirit proclaims and leads us to it.

Amen.