Festival of Holy Trinity (Revised Common Lectionary) | 06.15.25 | John 16.12-16 | Carl A. Voges |

The Passage

“I have yet 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 authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.  He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.  All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”                                        [Revised Standard Version; The New Oxford Annotated Bible]

“Your way, O God, is holy; who is so great a god as our God?  You are the God who works wonders and have declared your power among the peoples.”        [Psalm 77.13-14]

  In the Name of Christ + Jesus Our Lord

Today’s homily opens with a question from Psalm 4 – “You mortals, how long will you dishonor my glory; how long will you worship dumb idols and run after false gods?  The question startles because it accounts for all the hells occurring in the world’s life and it refreshes because it turns us to the only God which exists!  This God, THE LORD God, emerges from today’s Gospel.  The passage is brief, but is brimming with power as it unpacks the realities of the Lord’s Life.

This passage comes from the middle of the Farewell Conversation that Jesus is having with his disciples on the night of Maundy Thursday.  In that holy, yet fierce, night Jesus transformed the Passover Meal into his Holy Eucharist, and then was forcibly arrested for a rushed trial.

In the passage we see that the Spirit given us at our Baptisms is THE Guide to the realities of Jesus’ Life: He guides us into complete Truth (a Greek word describing eternal Life); He tells us of the things to come (such realities break in now and at the End-of-Time); He glorifies the Son since all he tells us comes from the Son himself (such telling originates and continues with the Son’s Father).

First, the Holy Spirit guides us into complete Truth.  The verb, “guide,” is the same word used in the book of Revelation to describe how the Lamb leads the saints to living water (a person cannot make their way to that water on their own, they need a Guide).  Only after the Son’s crucifixion, resurrection and ascension is there a fuller understanding of what happened and what was said during Jesus’ ministry.  The Spirit will guide Jesus’ followers to the full Truth of what he revealed in his ministry of three years.  Such guiding involves much more than a deeper intellectual understanding of the Life running from the Father, Son and Spirit; this guiding involves the way of Life which flows from Jesus’ teachings.

Second, the Holy Spirit will tell us of the things to come, the things streaming from the Life which Jesus is bringing to the world.  Back in Isaiah, this declaring of the things to come is THE privilege of the LORD God, a privilege that the world’s gods do not possess.  Such privilege flows from the Lord’s authority, an authority seen unique and clearly in the Son’s Cross.

If we wonder about such a declaration from Isaiah, consider what happens when we throw our lives in with those thousands of world’s gods:  The pursuing of pleasure alone does not give way to durable satisfactions; The pursuing of income alone does not result in less anxiety and more security; The pursuing of power alone does not make everything calm and right; The pursuing of one’s self does not secure one’s identity and meaning!

The realities to come always have to do with the LORD God’s actions of rescuing, sustaining and creating, both now and at the End-of-Time!  The realities to come are always imbedded in the Trinity’s Holy Writings along with the Sacraments of Baptism, Forgiveness and Eucharist.

Third, the Holy Spirit will glorify the Son.  Throughout his ministry, the Son glorified the Father by revealing him to the world’s people through the works of that ministry.  The Spirit, in turn, glorifies the Son by revealing him to his followers, continually through the mysterious workings of the Scriptures and Sacraments.

The Son recognizes that the world has glory.  Remember the wilderness temptations after Jesus’ Baptism where its glory was paraded before him?  Remember, too, how the world’s glory dangles before our lives on a daily basis?  Let us recall, though, how Jesus turned his back on the temptations presented to him.  And, although it is carried out with much difficulty, Jesus enables us to turn our backs on such glory as well.

The only glory with substance and meaning in this world is that given to the Son, the glory which flashes brilliantly from his Cross.  During the Son’s ministry this glory was revealed in his miraculous signs.  The mightiest display of the Father’s glory (glimpses of which were already seen in the Old Testament) is the Son’s crucifixion and resurrection!

The Spirit now publicizes the crucified, risen and ascended Son who shares and reflects the Father’s glory to all the Lord’s people!

All of this responds to the opening question from Psalm 4 – “You mortals, how long will you dishonor my glory; how long will you worship dumb idols and run after false gods?

Today’s Gospel makes it quite clear that the Holy Spirit is revealing the only and authentic God which exists!  The Son’s Spirit is THE Guide to the realities of the Holy Trinity’s Life!

Such realities stream out from the Forgiveness of our sins.  It is sin, the natural desire to have all of life wrapping around ourselves which dishonors the Lord’s glory, which worships dumb idols, which runs after false gods!  It is the sin that creates and maintains the hells on this earth, inside and outside our lives!

Thankfully, the LORD God has stepped into such hells and confronted its realities with the Son’s Cross!  He reveals their cruelty and swamps us with the realities of his rescuing

Forgiveness, realities which pour out steadily from the Church’s three Creeds!

As participants in the Church’s liturgical and sacramental tradition, we are accustomed to confess our understanding of the Holy Trinity through the Apostles’ Creed (the one spoken when we were baptized), the Nicene Creed (the one spoken when we take part in the Eucharist) and the Athanasian Creed (the one we are confessing today!)

What is striking about these three Creeds is that they ground the Life and Work of the Holy Trinity in the Forgiveness of sins.  From Martin Luther’s Large Catechism we learn that [1] The Father loves us without condition as he creates us!; [2] The Son loves us in our sinfulness so intensely that he became a man to live, suffer, die, rise and ascend for us!; and [3] The Spirit loves us with full force through his sacramental work in our lives now and, beyond our deaths, in eternity!

What is so stunning about this Forgiveness is that it reminds us we are baptized to live in the Holy Trinity, not in the gods of this world!  As the Holy Spirit breaks our lives free from sin and immerses us in the Trinity’s Life, he reveals the Son as our Rescuer along with the Father who sent him to this world to be its Redeemer.  This breaking and immersing is fierce and frightening work, but it always leads to our redemption and salvation!

Beginning with the month of June, the Lord’s baptized people have six months to plunge into the incredible realities of the Life that Jesus brought to this world.  Having been brought into the Life of the Holy Trinity and imbedded in their holy places, we are in significant conversations with parishioners and pastors during these months.  These vital conversations will not only be with the LORD God and among us, but also with those individuals whose participation in the Church’s life is either sporadic or non-existent.

The world’s life is attractive, but is also terrifying; it promises, but cannot always deliver; it satisfies, but only on temporary basis – to put it bluntly, world’s life can be hell-like!  It is the Church’s task, then, to faithfully proclaim the Life of the Holy Trinity so that the attractive and terrifying life of this world can be pierced and its people rescued from its numbing and horrific realities.

As we celebrate the Trinity’s Festival today, we are deeply grateful that the Father, Son and Spirit have and will continue to immerse us in their eternal Life, stirring and sustaining us in their Life on a daily basis!

Now may the peace of the LORD God, which is beyond all understanding, keep our

   hearts and minds through Christ + Jesus Our Lord

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Pr. Carl A. Voges, STS, Columbia, SC; carl.voges4@icloud.com