Eucharistic Gospel Reading for Trinity Sunday: Year C
“Jesus said to the disciples, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” (John 16: 12)
God’s Wisdom may not be in us, but God’s love is in us. Many biblical writings report this; from Jeremiah 31:31-34, to what we have in Romans 5:5 for today. God has already done this wonderful thing to bring us closer to God. We just have to rely on it and trust it. As the writings say, we have God’s love through the Holy Spirit. As we learned last week (Pentecost Sunday) the Holy Spirit of God has come among us. This Holy Spirit works through the gathered community, the Church. This is why we must come together, yes, as an organized religion. Jesus did not say go and do your own thing, but rather, he said, “follow me.”
We are a creedal people. My own personal creed is Trinitarian. While I still adhere to the tenets of our Nicene Creed, I needed to fashion words that more closely articulate my personal theology. And, here it is, “I Trust in the Creating Word through the Holy Spirit of the Incarnate Word, in whom I live and move and love and have my being, and to whom I must give an account.”
I try to be intentional about worshiping God in spirit and truth. This was foretold by Jesus when he said, “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks;” (John 4:23). Jesus prepares us to receive what he wants us to know, and then tells us only what we can handle at the time. “Jesus said to the disciples, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” Jesus will inform us of what we need to know, when we are ready.
This remembrance of Trinity Sunday informs us that God meets us where we are. Some of us may need an All Powerful God to move the waters so that we can get to safety. We may need a companion God while on the road to Emmaus to break bread with us. Or, we may need the Great Spirit of God to visit us in our dreams, or through the voice of another to guide us on our way (as revealed in our Gospel lesson for today), and move us away from divisiveness, in order to have us to do God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. In all of these cases we are “on the move” with One or another quality of the Trinity.”
Here is a little note about Father’s Day. Joseph, husband to Mary the Mother of Jesus, is the best example of fatherhood I think there is. We do not have one word from his mouth in all the Gospel accounts, yet, we witness his steadfast obedience to God. He keeps Mary who is pregnant but not by him. He follows God’s instructions to take the family to Egypt and then to bring the family back to Israel again. He is a carpenter by vocation who provides for his family and is obedient to God. As he is a quiet man so I imagine him to be one-who-ponders also.
As we listen to what the Spirit is saying to us, let us live to love, and to serve, and to teach others to love and to serve, while pondering anew what the Almighty can do. John
Let us pray: (For fathers in remembrance of Joseph)
O God, who from the family of your servant David raised up Joseph to be the guardian of your incarnate Son and the spouse of his virgin mother: Give us grace to imitate his uprightness of life and his obedience to your commands; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
onewhoponders 