The Holy Trinity
June 3, 2007
Sermon by William Mattessich
The Holy Gospel according to
“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. He will
glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what
is mine and declare it to you.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Good morning.
When I first read this week’s Gospel passage, to be honest, I wasn’t
totally sure what it was about. I could
tell that it was before Jesus descended into heaven and that he was telling his
disciples how the world was going to be after that. Then Pastor John pointed me in the direction
of what I should have seen all along, which is that this passage is about the
Spirit. So I decided to share my
reflections on the Holy Spirit, some of which Pastor John has helped me
realize.
Jesus is telling the disciples that the Spirit will
give us the world and lead us to the truth.
But who or what is this mysterious Spirit? Is it another omnipotent being doing God’s
will, like his ambassador? Is it some
generic, unseen force that will sweep the earth, putting everything in its
place and doing the bidding of believers?
The Holy Spirit isn’t something you can lock
down. It doesn’t fit the traditional
sense of a noun, and it can’t be rationalized, as many other things can. Jesus says in this passage the Spirit does
not have its own authority and that it is not its own being. He says it will take what is his and give it
to us. He does use the word “he” more,
but I think it’s more for dramatic effect than actually calling him another
being. Trying to define the Spirit to us
is very difficult. It would be like
trying to define a word like “color,” or the feeling of warmth.
But what do we know about the Spirit? We know that the Spirit is one of the
Trinity, so it’s fitting that this reading comes on Trinity Sunday, because
it’s the one we understand the least, and so it’s the one that people neglect
and overlook the most. The word for
“spirit” comes from the word for wind and breath. This tells us that the Spirit is something
unseen that can be felt and make changes.
And it’s something we could not live without.
It gives us drive to do things, hence the word
“inspire.” It can make us stronger and
more resolved, for instance, when someone is spirited. Without the Spirit, we could not survive, and
neither could the church.
Some people believe that they can pray to the Spirit
to do things, like help them win the lottery.
And athletes might say he or she felt the Holy Spirit helping them to
win a race. Football teams, at some
colleges, will pray to the Holy Spirit to help them win a football game. Is this what the Spirit is? Is it a pass-way to everything we
desire? Does the Spirit pick
favorites? Oh, yeah, that’s why everyone
lives a life without hardship and Notre Dame wins every football game. The thing to remember is that for someone to
win that football game someone else has to lose.
We are all God’s children. God does not have enmity with any of us. He can relate to and understand
everyone. God is not around to elevate
some above others, nor to make everybody a winner. In fact, the Bible tells us that he actually
looks in favor upon the weak and the needy and the unfortunate. The Bible doesn’t promise us all perfect
lives on earth. But the Bible does
promise that we are all saved from death and that winning or losing does not
have anything to do with that.
Some people say that they talk to God and Jesus and
that they talk back. And I don’t know if
that’s true, but it seems that’s not exactly what the Bible says. It says that God is everywhere and nowhere,
that he is seen and unseen. But also it
seems to indicate that Jesus and the Lord are in heaven together, wherever that
may be. In this passage, Jesus expressly
indicates that he will not, in fact, be here much longer to talk to them
directly. In my mind, it doesn’t really
support the argument that Jesus is next to me at the supermarket, making the
line at the express lane move faster.
We can’t know Jesus and God like we know one
another. The only way we can know God is
through the Spirit, since Jesus is no longer with us, healing and
teaching. And, as far as I know, God
hasn’t directly told anyone to spread his word for a very long time.
So what is it that Christians still have to hold
onto? Why do millions of believers
across the world still try to live their lives the way the Bible tells
them? And why is there a ministry
teaching the Word? I don’t think this
can all be achieved merely thorough an old book.
My grandfather passed away a few weeks ago. He was a kind, hardworking man, and he was
strong in his faith. I was fortunate
enough to get to know and love him as I grew older and he entered the last
years of his life. I realized, when the
family was all gathered during the week of the funeral, that I was sad. But I didn’t feel like he wasn’t there. I had the same feeling inside me that I
always had when I would look at a new roll of film from our last trip up north,
or when I would come downstairs to find my mom on the phone with him. I felt like he was still there and like our
family was still whole.
A lot of the characteristics of my own personality,
and the rest of ours, come form him.
This could be described as my grandfather’s spirit. He was forever imprinted in all of us, and it
was like he is still here. This is what
the Holy Spirit is. It’s not a generic
force of change and good will. It
motivates us, but it doesn’t force us to do good deeds and live by the
Word.
The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. And the Spirit of Christ is the whole
foundation of our faith as Christians.
Jesus is still here through his Spirit.
He’s a part of all believers, and his Spirit has kept faith alive. He says in this passage that the Spirit is a
part of him. The church’s job is to
spread the Spirit to others so it may stay alive. The Spirit can be seen not just by what we
say and what we believe, but also in our actions. Doing good deeds is a way of sharing the
Spirit with others. There is no need to
find or control the Spirit of Christ, because it’s in all of us. But what we can do is correctly acknowledge
the Spirit and what it does for us.
How does the Spirit help us? It is easy to see the Spirit doesn’t just give
us everything we want. It doesn’t even
give us things we want for other people.
The Bible doesn’t tell us that God and the Holy Spirit exist to give us
pleasure on a whim. The Spirit helps us
to find something that we might not, in fact, always want, which is truth. And there is no way I can actually describe
the truth because it, like the Spirit and many other things that are of God, is
not one known and specific thing.
There are some truths that we know for sure, that
come from the Bible. These include that
God is love, and that God loves us and wants us to love each other, and that to
know God we have to love. We know that
we are all given eternal life and that we’re saved by mercy and grace. But there are many truths, which are
different for everyone. It’s our own
journey in life to find our truths.
There are moral truths, which is how we know if we’re doing the right
thing. But these are the easy ones. There’s also the truth of knowing who we are
and where we are in the world, and this is a much harder truth to come to terms
with. The Spirit can help us find these
and other truths.
But we’re not guaranteed to like these truths the
Spirit shows us, and in many cases we will deny the ones we don’t like. Remember that the Spirit is the Spirit of
Christ. And Jesus was not always the
most fun guy for everyone to be around.
He did things like tear up marketplaces, and he told the self-righteous
and upper-class members of society that they weren’t all that great. Many people turned their back on the word
Christ was preaching, because they refused to acknowledge some of his more
painful truths. And this can still
happen today with his Spirit.
But if we accept the Spirit into our lives, we can
find the truth and come to terms with it.
And when we know the truth, we can know God.
Thank you.