Hearing the Spirit

Trinity Sunday John 16:12-15
Pentecost Year C May 30, 2010
The Rev. Brett P. Backus

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”

Today's Gospel message is about Listening. It is about our learning to truly listen to the constant movement of and guidance provided by the Holy Spirit, God, in our every day lives.

So, today is Trinity Sunday, and I am not sure how many of you know this, but because of the difficulty of the subject matter of this day, the doctrine of the Trinity, tradition in clergy circles dictates that the low person on the totem pole or the newest clergy on the block should always get assigned to preach on Trinity Sunday. So, while I am sure that it probably is, I must admit that I currently find myself wondering whether or not it was simply dumb luck or pure coincidence that brought me here before you all to preach this morning!
Now, the tradition that I just mentioned is of course a playful one. However, I want to point out that it also contains some seriousness in that such a tradition also reminds us of a simple truth. Belief is hard to explain. It is often difficult to explain our beliefs, theology in general, and the doctrines of the Church, because they are not matters of scientific fact. They are after all, beliefs and not facts. That is the true reason why so many preachers throughout the past week absolutely dreaded the idea of preaching today and found themselves desperately clamoring to find something relevant or half way decent to say to their congregations this morning about the Trinity. Actually, this difficulty factor is also the very reason why I, on the other hand, am choosing this morning to just completely avoid the subject of the Trinity altogether! No, I am just kidding. Well, in part!
The truth is that I am not going to talk about the Trinity this morning, at least in the way that most probably expected, not because it is something difficult to talk about, which it is, but because I honestly did not hear Jesus speaking to me about the Trinity in this morning's Gospel. What I heard from Jesus as I prepared for this sermon was this, “I still have many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now.” In other words, Listen. Listen. You see, in today's Gospel, Jesus is preparing His disciples for His departure, His death, resurrection, and ascension, but He is telling them also that there is much more to the story. This is not the end. While this was easy enough for me to see in our Gospel lesson today, I must admit that in preparation for this morning I found myself wondering what exactly then do Jesus' words mean for all of us a couple of thousand years later? Listen.
You see, we are all a part of the continued story of Jesus, and of God's work in the world. Each and every one of us has played, is playing, and will continue to play a role in the unfinished and continual plan of God for this world. While Jesus' words in this morning's Gospel told His disciples that there was much more to come, much more to be told, His words in our Gospel today show us all, Jesus' present day disciples, that He is indeed speaking to us now through the Holy Spirit. Today, we are those who bear and who will continue to bear that which Jesus was not ready to give His disciples in their time. Our Brothers and Sisters who came before us continued the work of God in this world and wrote new chapters to the story, just as we are charged with doing the same now. Through today's Gospel lesson, Jesus is calling us to listen to God in our lives. Listen to God the Father, found in both the blessings and trials of our lives. Listen to God the Son, found in His recorded words in our Holy Scriptures. Listen to God the Holy Spirit, found abiding in and around us infinitely. Jesus is calling us all to Listen.
As I was reading and praying over this Gospel and wondering what I could possibly say to you all about the Trinity, I realized that Jesus' main message was, as I have already mentioned, for His followers to listen to the movement of the Spirit in their lives. So, of course, I began to think deeply about this and began to consider whether I do enough listening to the Holy Spirit in my personal life. I was thankful as I thought about certain things I have shared with you before, about various times when I am certain that God, or the Spirit was guiding me, about how I initially resisted coming to this place to serve you all, but how the sense of call, or in other words, the movement of the Spirit, was so strong that I could not deny it. I thought about this church family, and how it is evident to me that we as a community have been discerning and indeed listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit among us as we have recently stepped out in faith in several ways in order to better serve our community and God.
Then I thought about our greater Church, the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, the Body of Christ as a whole, and how though we may not really be locally divided in our own denomination, we certainly are divided both nationally and internationally, and divided in all ways interdenominationally. I found myself questioning whether or not we can honestly say that we are listening to the Spirit on a corporate level? Sadly, it seems that the answer would be no. Then, in the midst of these thoughts, I had a kind of strange experience. Something clicked for me and fell into place. The Trinity. Interestingly enough, in some weird way, in attempting to both lift up and obey what I see as the central point of this morning's Gospel lesson, listening to the Holy Spirit, I was somehow brought back to the Trinity. The very doctrine and allusive belief that we celebrate and honor here today.
However, this time around, I began to see the Trinity in a different light. You see, what I realized ultimately, was that the Trinity is not simply some hard to understand highly theological church doctrine that was awkward to try and explain. Rather, at its core, its most easily understood form, the Trinity is a highly accessible and extremely helpful symbol of and example for both our denomination and the entire Christian world. You see, the Trinity is perfect Balance. It is a seamless and effortless Unity or Union of differences. It is a perfectly achieved harmony between three separate and different things or beings. It is a complex and intricate dance wherein, somehow, the three distinct forms or faces of God, are also made One.
Listening to the Spirit in this morning's Gospel lesson brought me to this point. It seems to me that the most important thing for us to hear on Trinity Sunday is not a discourse on how we can better understand the doctrine of the Trinity itself, but rather how understanding the true meaning and example of the Holy Trinity can guide, form, and indeed transform both us and the entire world. Contained within this complicated idea and belief is a huge and important lesson that we all as Christians could stand to learn. Balance, Unity. Balance between oppositions, factions, and poles. Unity in difference.
Interestingly, this is nothing new to our Anglican theology and identity. The balance and unity of the Trinity as a model is and has always been part of our core Anglican identity, and examples of this kind of intricate balance and unity are in fact woven everywhere throughout our past, though sadly it would seem that many in our particular tradition and indeed in our greater Christian religion have unfortunately had this part of our history and identity wiped from their memory. So, acknowledging what I feel was the driving point behind Jesus' words in this Gospel lesson, a plea for us to look for and listen to the Holy Spirit, and recognizing the particular doctrine that we celebrate today, I want to submit to us all the following idea. When we respond to the call of Christ this morning and attempt to listen more intently to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives, and we reflect on the beauty and complexity of the Holy Trinity, perhaps this is precisely the message that we are to hear. A call to Christian balance and unity. A call to return to our roots. Perhaps this is what the current generation of Jesus' disciples, each and every one of us, is called to bear.
I invite all of us today to imagine whether it is possible, and what the world would actually be like if not only we at Ascension got this right, but if the entire Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, and the entire Body of Christ were to succeed in modeling, or even if we just committed to simply trying to model, the Holy Trinity as a way of coexisting, different, and yet in a perfectly harmonious reality. Is this not a true need in our present situation throughout Christendom, and is this not a challenge worth accepting, a burden worth bearing? Is this not how God intended us to be? The Holy Trinity, three in One. The Body of Christ, united in difference. The entire world, extremely different yet somehow the same, coexisting in peace. Perhaps the only real message we need to hear is to simply humble ourselves and to be willing to listen more often?
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”
Listen. Amen.

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