Delievered by Rev Dr John Evans
on Sunday 30 May, 2010
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15
Today is Trinity Sunday. A full stop, perhaps an exclamation mark, to the sentence which describes this God we worship throughout the Christian year. This is our God – a triune God: God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer or more traditionally Father, Son and Holy Spirit. From Advent and the coming of Christ; his baptism; passion; death and resurrection; and last Sunday, the coming of the Holy Spirit. Today is a celebration, of this our God. Our readings certainly bring to the fore God the Creator – in the psalm and even the reading from Proverbs. In the gospel, Jesus again speaks of his relationship with the Father and the coming of the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, who will guide us into all truth – indeed is an understanding of who Christ is for us today; while at the same time Jesus declares “All that the Father has is mine”.
Within God, there is a mutual indwelling: of God the Father, Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit. There is here a story within God – of course revealed to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. This perhaps sounds strange and odd, however, as that passage from the farewell discourse of Jesus shows – we too are swept up into this life of God ourselves. If you like – Trinitarian life is not just the life of God. It is our life as well. It is the very life of the Church itself.
Just listen to the Uniting Church’s self understanding of being the Church, as set our in our founding document, the Basis of Union.
“The Church as the fellowship of the Holy Spirit confesses Jesus as Lord over its own life,; it also confesses that Jesus is Head over all things, the beginning of a new creation, of a new humanity. God in Christ has given to all people in the Church the Holy Spirit as a pledge and foretaste of that coming reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation.” (Par. 3)
That is who we, this congregation, are: a fellowship of the Holy Spirit confessing Jesus as Lord. We are a sign, a mark, of a new creation – a new way of living, a new humanity. We are to point to the reconciliation of all things; indeed this is the purpose of the church to serve that end; to be reconcilers. . . to offer that hope that God will be all in all. We are a part of God’s purpose; and God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is a part of who we are.
Trinity Sunday is about our life together too.
