Sunday 30th May - Trinity Sunday (gold/white)
Theme: Father, Son and Holy Spirit
Readings: Proverbs 8:1-4,22-31
Romans 5:1-5 John 16:12-15 Ps 8
Theme: Father, Son and Holy Spirit
Readings: Proverbs 8:1-4,22-31
Romans 5:1-5 John 16:12-15 Ps 8
Collect:
Holy God,
faithful and unchanging:
enlarge our minds with the knowledge of your truth,
and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love,
that we may truly worship you,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Comment
Jesus had so much he wanted to teach his disciples, but they were not ready for it. If he had taught them plainly about his Divine nature, or about the Holy Trinity, they could not have coped. They were not even ready to believe he was going to die, let alone understand the reason for it. Some truth can only be received when we are ready for it.
However, the Holy Spirit was given to lead us into the truth, one step at a time, as and when we are ready.
Jesus says that the Spirit makes known to us ‘what is mine’, or ‘what is of me’. The Spirit’s special task is to reveal Jesus to us, to help us truly know who Jesus is, what he has said and done, and why. The Spirit does not do that purely for our intellectual satisfaction. He wants us to know Jesus personally, he wants to lead us into the true way of living by helping us to follow Jesus, to obey Jesus and to become like Jesus in our character and behaviour. In doing so, the Spirit is at the same time revealing the Father to us, for the Father and the Son have the same character and are working hand in glove with each other for the same ends. Jesus is the perfect reflection of the Father; so if we get to know Jesus we get to know what the Father is like. More than that:
the Father is ‘in’ Jesus, somehow bound up with him, so that getting to know Jesus means that we are actually getting to know the Father.
Too often in our thinking we make wrong distinctions between Jesus and the Father. You hear people talking about God as a God of wrath and judgement, and contrasting him with Jesus who is gentle and loving. Such thinking is way off the mark. If we think of the Father, or God, as any different in character from Jesus, we don’t really know what he is like.
(We also forget that Jesus spoke more about judgement and hell than any body else in the Bible – indeed, he is going to be the Judge. He loves us and wants us to live in the real world, and these things are realities we need to be aware of.)
On Trinity Sunday we remind ourselves above all that God is love. What the Holy Spirit teaches us more than anything else is about the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God. Paul reminds us that the love of God poured into our hearts by the Spirit gives us hope even in suffering. The passage in Romans 5 is not designed to teach us about the Holy Trinity; it is designed to teach us about that love of God – and how, through the activity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we now can have peace with God, a peace that is not dependent upon our circumstances or our understanding or even our obedient service, but upon our relationship with God. However, in this passage we do see the Holy Trinity at work. It is worth examining it a little more closely.
First, we see a single aim: for us to live in the presence of God for ever. God is deeply in love with each one of us, and wants us to be with him – not just in the sense that he is everywhere and therefore we cannot help being in his presence, but in a conscious enjoyment of a personal relationship with a God who loves us. The fulfilment of that aim lies in the future, when we will enjoy the ‘glory of God’ – not just the sight of God (the Bible tells us we will see him as he really is), but also some kind of a participating in his glory when ‘the righteous shall shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father’ (Matthew 13:43). However, there is already a partial fulfilment in the present, for already we are accepted and beloved by God, and he lives in us by the Spirit.
We also see a different role for each of the three Persons of the Trinity. God the Father is the one with whom we are now at peace through Jesus the Son of God, and it is his love that is poured into our hearts by the Spirit. Jesus taught us to call God, ‘Father’; when the Bible talks about God it is often God the Father who is referred to. The Son of God is the one who has brought us into this relationship with the Father. He made it possible by his death and resurrection and his enthronement as our King, and when we put our trust in him and become his people we also become the Father’s children. The Spirit is the one who works in us, making God and his love real to us, changing our hearts and minds, empowering our obedience, and helping us on our difficult journey to life. The Three truly work as One.
Questions
1) How do you relate to the Father? to the Son? to the Holy Spirit? to one God?
2) How does the teaching about the Trinity help make sense of the Bible?
Holy God,
faithful and unchanging:
enlarge our minds with the knowledge of your truth,
and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love,
that we may truly worship you,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Comment
Jesus had so much he wanted to teach his disciples, but they were not ready for it. If he had taught them plainly about his Divine nature, or about the Holy Trinity, they could not have coped. They were not even ready to believe he was going to die, let alone understand the reason for it. Some truth can only be received when we are ready for it.
However, the Holy Spirit was given to lead us into the truth, one step at a time, as and when we are ready.
Jesus says that the Spirit makes known to us ‘what is mine’, or ‘what is of me’. The Spirit’s special task is to reveal Jesus to us, to help us truly know who Jesus is, what he has said and done, and why. The Spirit does not do that purely for our intellectual satisfaction. He wants us to know Jesus personally, he wants to lead us into the true way of living by helping us to follow Jesus, to obey Jesus and to become like Jesus in our character and behaviour. In doing so, the Spirit is at the same time revealing the Father to us, for the Father and the Son have the same character and are working hand in glove with each other for the same ends. Jesus is the perfect reflection of the Father; so if we get to know Jesus we get to know what the Father is like. More than that:
the Father is ‘in’ Jesus, somehow bound up with him, so that getting to know Jesus means that we are actually getting to know the Father.
Too often in our thinking we make wrong distinctions between Jesus and the Father. You hear people talking about God as a God of wrath and judgement, and contrasting him with Jesus who is gentle and loving. Such thinking is way off the mark. If we think of the Father, or God, as any different in character from Jesus, we don’t really know what he is like.
(We also forget that Jesus spoke more about judgement and hell than any body else in the Bible – indeed, he is going to be the Judge. He loves us and wants us to live in the real world, and these things are realities we need to be aware of.)
On Trinity Sunday we remind ourselves above all that God is love. What the Holy Spirit teaches us more than anything else is about the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God. Paul reminds us that the love of God poured into our hearts by the Spirit gives us hope even in suffering. The passage in Romans 5 is not designed to teach us about the Holy Trinity; it is designed to teach us about that love of God – and how, through the activity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we now can have peace with God, a peace that is not dependent upon our circumstances or our understanding or even our obedient service, but upon our relationship with God. However, in this passage we do see the Holy Trinity at work. It is worth examining it a little more closely.
First, we see a single aim: for us to live in the presence of God for ever. God is deeply in love with each one of us, and wants us to be with him – not just in the sense that he is everywhere and therefore we cannot help being in his presence, but in a conscious enjoyment of a personal relationship with a God who loves us. The fulfilment of that aim lies in the future, when we will enjoy the ‘glory of God’ – not just the sight of God (the Bible tells us we will see him as he really is), but also some kind of a participating in his glory when ‘the righteous shall shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father’ (Matthew 13:43). However, there is already a partial fulfilment in the present, for already we are accepted and beloved by God, and he lives in us by the Spirit.
We also see a different role for each of the three Persons of the Trinity. God the Father is the one with whom we are now at peace through Jesus the Son of God, and it is his love that is poured into our hearts by the Spirit. Jesus taught us to call God, ‘Father’; when the Bible talks about God it is often God the Father who is referred to. The Son of God is the one who has brought us into this relationship with the Father. He made it possible by his death and resurrection and his enthronement as our King, and when we put our trust in him and become his people we also become the Father’s children. The Spirit is the one who works in us, making God and his love real to us, changing our hearts and minds, empowering our obedience, and helping us on our difficult journey to life. The Three truly work as One.
Questions
1) How do you relate to the Father? to the Son? to the Holy Spirit? to one God?
2) How does the teaching about the Trinity help make sense of the Bible?