Father, Son and Holy Spirit

June 6, 2004 (Trinity Sunday)

by The Rev. Bruce Hall, Deacon

- Isaiah 6:1-8
- Psalm 29 or Canticle 2 or 13
- Revelation 4:1-11
- John 16:(5-11)12-15

Today is our name-day. Today we celebrate the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and reflecting over the course of the week upon the readings for today, I must confess that I have found it hard to get my mind around this mystery. It is too great for me. To consider how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to one another and to us, while a powerful riddle, is nevertheless a tremendous delight. Today, we celebrate that unity and mystery and, I think we may do so leaving here in the open curiosity of what the Trinity means to us and our lives with each other.

We are given powerful imagery in this morning's lessons from Revelation and Isaiah. In the Gospel lesson, we hear of Our Lord’s concern for his disciples on the night before He was to be executed. And through all three of these, we are given scenes, some dramatic, others quite ordinary, of people wanting to know “what comes next?”

In Revelation, John is invited “up” to witness “what comes next” as the successive visions unfold, and “in the spirit” sees something he might not otherwise have seen, can experience and encounter something that ordinarily would be quite distant from him. This seems to be accomplished not by his power or strength but by the power of “the spirit.” Likewise, in Isaiah, through the spirit, is witness to something happening. He is witnessing, like John, the tremendous power and sovereignty of God. He is in the presence of the Creator and sustainer of all things. Immediately this evokes within Isaiah recognition of the distance that lies between him and the purity before which he stands. His reaction is typical to other such encounters described in the Old Testament, which is to sense his own annihilation. “Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips” coming from a people of “unclean lips.” Isaiah knew the count at that point and is rightfully anxious. Being around the Holy evokes in us an awareness of our own shortcomings, of our own alienation from God and others, just as being around other persons who represent and reflect in their lives the love and holiness of God may evoke in us a sense of what we wish was better in ourselves. In such encounters we become more aware, we see something through the presence of others that we might not have seen otherwise. A good friend might tell us things that are uncomfortable, a good counselor, a trusted confidant, may even risk confronting us with things that we would prefer to keep at a safe distance but for our companion’s presence. But for Isaiah, this was a little more than uncomfortable because he sensed his own death. He feared that the cost of seeing something so holy was to be his own life. And then something very illustrative of how God relates to all of us happens—God move towards Isaiah.

“Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding alive coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. `The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”

God moves towards us as well. In those moments when we feel distant from God in recognizing our wrongs and sin or when we are completely oblivious to our need for Gods presence, God moves towards us.

The disciples seemed a little oblivious. On the night before Jesus is to be crucified He is sharing with them that he is going to leave them and return to the father. With Jesus using figures of speech, the disciples struggle to understand what He was telling them. I wonder if at that moment Jesus, in very human way, felt like he was running out of time to tell them all he had to say. Jesus knew what was ahead for the disciples and told them that they would be persecuted as he had been persecuted and declared that there was still more he wanted to say to them but that they were not yet able to bear it. He consoles them—and himself I imagine—with the promise that He would send them the Advocate, a comforter, to lead them into all truth. I expect the disciples were unclear about this as well, wondering what Jesus meant by this promise. In the scriptures just before today’s gospel and in the scriptures just following, Jesus is yearning and torn by the very human feeling of impending loss and separation. Yet, He shares with them what he can—what they can bear. This reading reminds me of the families that I work with day-to-day. These families are suffering and struggling to understand and come to terms with the nature of their pain and some times they are just not able to hear things that might be profoundly uncomfortable. Truth can be uncomfortable and painful. I think of families that are suffering, desperate to understand what will alleviate the suffering and what will make them whole, and yet at the same time are not yet in a place to bear all that they could realize. The mark of a good caregiver or friend is that they know when a person can hear something difficult to bear and when they can’t. How torn Our Lord must have been. How comforted He must have been. How befuddled the disciples must have been. How befuddled can’t we become in our own lives. Yet, we are not alone. The message of the Son was always the message of the Father. That message of love and sacrifice was His. The Son was the vehicle and in the absence of the physical presence of Christ through his ascension we have received the Holy Spirit. Celebrating the coming together of those three parts, features, faces—that mystery—is what we celebrate here today. We celebrate being able to see not through our own power but through the power of the Holy Spirit, a power that is not dependant upon us to see our own shortcomings and even in the face of recognizing our own sin, comes towards us in love. God hasn’t chosen to reveal himself only to the people of Israel or exclusively to the disciples, God seeks to reveal himself to each of us, in our particular and unique lives, in the present moment, and this is accomplished through the work of the Holy Spirit. What a tremendous experience it is to know that the Holy Spirit abides with us and that the Holy Spirit will help us to see clearly the unfolding of the continuing message of the Father’s love through Christ’s death and resurrection.

In a 21st century world hellbent on destroying itself, developing new and innovative ways to kill people, don’t we need to see more clearly? In our own nation, where we struggle with questions of justice and equality, don’t we need to see and hear truths even though they may be uncomfortable? And as we hold the hand of a loved one in a hospital room and fear their loss, don’t we need to see more than we normally do? The Holy Spirit is present to help us see beyond the immediate confines of our lives. The Spirit comforted the disciples in the early days of the church and empowered them for ministry and proclaiming the Gospel. The Holy Spirit is here for you too, to help you to see, to empower to minister, to help you experience that presence of God and the continuing message of Christ. And when that happens, when you and I, and everyone else, encounter God in that way, we experience a change in ourselves that allows us to recognize our reconciliation to God and, in response to His love, responding to God’s call to love others with the words “here I am, send me.”