June 16, 2019 - Holy Trinity Sunday
Hope Lutheran Church
Rev. Mary Erickson
Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15
For the Things We Cannot Bear
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
For a long time, I’ve entertained a whimsical image of what happens when we go to heaven. When we first arrive there, we can go to various seminars which explain the world’s mysteries. For instance, there’ll be a seminar revealing who shot JFK. At last we’ll know! Another one will address exactly how caterpillars metamorphose into butterflies. And there will also be sessions focusing on theological matters. For sure, one will explain the Trinity. How can God be both three persons and yet one?
The Holy Trinity surely is a wonder. Every year we set aside one Sunday in our church calendar to marvel at the mystery and majesty of Almighty God.
The Bible never uses the term “Trinity” or directly addresses God’s trinitarian nature. Our understanding of God as three persons in one comes from our experience of God. God has been revealed to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
On Holy Trinity Sunday, we reflect on this great mystery. And every year we consider a Biblical text which mentions God as Father and also Jesus and the Holy Spirit. This year our text is from John chapter 16. The passage comes from the evening when Jesus will be arrested. Before they go to the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus and his disciples meet in an upper room.
You get the feeling that the disciples sense something ominous is approaching. A storm is rumbling on the horizon. Their beautiful fellowship and electrifying ministry with Jesus are about to take a fateful twist. The disciples are scared and confused.
While in that upper room, Jesus has a long discussion with his friends. Our reading is a small excerpt from this conversation.
In his conversation, Jesus has told them many, many things. And as we begin our reading today, he says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” Such a profound statement! There certainly are things we cannot bear.
You know how that works at home! Sometimes you have to pace how you’re going to reveal everything that’s going on! The engine light in your car has turned on; the dog’s going to have a huge vet bill; the school principal called about your kid. If you spring all of this at once, someone will surely blow a sprocket! It’s more than the soul can bear. What we need is portion control. A little bit now, a little bit later, and then some more tomorrow.
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” The things we cannot bear. There are different reasons why we can’t bear them.
It might be that we currently don’t have the capacity to receive and absorb this new reality. Life has worn us down. The harsh realities of living and a dearth of compassion have dried us up. Our soul has become hardened and calcified. We’re like parched earth. From lack of human kindness and consideration, we’ve formed a hardened surface. That crust is a protective measure. It preserves the precious and diminishing waters remaining deep within.
The crust may protect us, but the problem is that when the rains do come, our hardened exterior is unable to open up and receive this blessed nourishment! So the rain runs off and drains away. We’re not able to bear it.
Our views can be calcified and hardened. We form our opinions, and then we live with them. We’ve chiseled them into stone. Our views on race, our judgements of others, our sense of how the world operates. We’ve made our deliberations. The jury has concluded and the judgement has been cast.
But God is always about doing something new! The world doesn’t stay the same! God entered this world as a little baby, and something new was unleashed. The Early Church was confronted with Gentiles, and something new had to unfold. The old rules no longer supported the Spirit’s unfolding. At one time, the notion of slavery was just fine in our country. But the winds of the Spirit brought about a new way of thinking. God’s Spirit is breathing new life into this old, old world.
How can we bear this new thing? What we need is the tender and slow rain of divine compassion. We need the Holy Spirit to gentle into us. We need God’s Spirit to slowly open and gradually fill our pores and our ears so that our hardened crust will soften up, so that we can drink in these divine waters. We need that Spirit Word to form a new pathway into our hearts and minds. And that Spirit promises to guide us into all the truth.
Another reason we find ourselves unable to bear anything else is because we already have enough on our plate. In fact, so much has been heaped on our plate that it’s falling off and running over. Our psyches are filled to capacity! We cannot bear one more thing.
Corrie ten Boom wrote a book called "The Hiding Place". In it, she tells how her family kept a hidden room in their house in Nazi-controlled Holland. There they hid and protected Jews from extermination. As the screws tightened around them, Corrie had a conversation with her father. She confided that she was afraid of what could potentially happen to her family if they were discovered. They would be arrested and harshly punished, maybe even executed.
She told her father that she didn’t know if she had the strength to endure all of that. The thought of it was too much for her to bear.
Corrie’s father wisely counseled her. “Corrie, when you need to take the train into Amsterdam, when do I give you the money to pay for the ticket? Do I give it to you three weeks before you go?”
“No, Papa, you give it to me right before I need to take the trip.”
“That’s right, Corrie. It’s the same with God. God doesn’t give you the strength today for what you will need to endure tomorrow. God knows when you will need it, and God will supply it to you at just the right time.”
Corrie and her family were, indeed, arrested. They were sent to live in concentration camps. Her father and her sister died there. But the wisdom of her father’s metaphor supplied the hope and strength she needed to sustain her through all that would come.
When we don’t have the ability to bear one more thing, God’s Spirit will guide and strengthen. At just the right time, God will supply us with the strength and courage and wisdom necessary for each day’s needs. Like manna, God’s Spirit sustains one day at a time.
A third reason we find ourselves unable to bear any more is because you can’t just leapfrog from A to E. We need to pass through B and C and D before we can even conceive of E. They are necessary detours. These experiences mold and shape us!
God is in the process of molding us into what we will be! We may not be able bear things today, but God isn’t finished with us yet!
Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way!
Thou art the potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after thy will,
While I am waiting, yielded and still.
St. Paul had no idea what was coming his way. At one point, he was just a coat boy. Saul, as he was known then, kept an eye on the wrappings for the lynch mob as they stoned Stephen to death. As he stood there that day, protecting the clothing from any bloody splatter, in no way could he imagine that he would become God’s chief evangelist to the Gentiles! His mind couldn’t bear that! He couldn’t get from A to E. No, he needed to go through B and C and especially through D, Damascus! But by the time the Spirit was through with him, Saul became an altogether different man. He became Paul. And Paul could bear more than Saul could ever dream of.
Paul came to know this truth in his bones. The road is long and winding. And those necessary detours mold and shape us. They expand the broadness of our minds. They increase the capacity of our hearts to care, to recognize our brother in the stranger and alien.
Paul knew this first-hand. He had lived it! In his long journeys, he came to know that suffering produced within him an endurance, an ability to bear what he thought he could never bear. But he wouldn’t have realized that endurance without the suffering. He couldn’t leapfrog to the strength of this new endurance without first suffering.
And that endurance, that endurance formed within him a character he had never before had! It made Paul a better person. It increased his faith. It sharpened his wisdom. And his new character kindled the flame a hope that could not be extinguished.
From A to B. From B through C. And going through D on our way to E. Suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces Character. And Character produces Hope. And hope…hope does not disappoint us!
• Hope sees through the darkness of today into the brilliance of God’s tomorrow!
• Hope leaves us expectant and waiting for what’s going to come!
• Hope softens our crusty exteriors so that we can drink in the Holy Spirit’s new imaginings!
• Hope creates the space for new possibility, for what God is about to accomplish in our world today!
Friends, for the things we cannot bear, the Holy Spirit of truth is working a new thing in us. God is making all things new. And that includes us.
