Year C 2025
John 16:12-15
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
Abide in the Trinity Mystery
Who doesn’t love a good mystery? Today we struggle with one of the great mysteries of our faith-the Trinity. Christians though the centuries have had to struggle to understand what the Trinity means. The history of the church is filled with heated conversations of those seeking to gain insight into this mystery. From Church Father Irenaeus in the second century to Augustine in the fifth century, the church produced with great difficulty basic formulas and commentaries that have since then shaped our Christian thought on this matter. It was in 381 AD at the council of Constantinople that the Trinitarian formula of the the one God existing co-equally in three Persons, Father, Son & Holy Spirit, was first formally adopted. All of the Ecumenical Creeds-the Apostles, Nicene and Athanasian, express this formula.
The texts for this festival day celebrating the Trinity invite us to explore more deeply this mystery of the nature of God’s self-revelation, so that we may better understand God and may better understand the gift of faith that is within us. Last Sunday, on the Day of Pentecost, the texts and our discussion focused on the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. This theme continues today in our Gospel text from John, “When the Spirit of truth comes, the Spirit will guide you into all the truth.” Jesus was speaking to his disciples just after he had washed their feet at the last supper, broke bread and before his arrest, and crucifixion. They were about to face seemingly insurmountable challenges, and he wanted his closest friends to know that God would never abandon them, that the Holy Spirit would be their companion and guide forever, God would be with them.
In the Trinity, we see a God who is with us always, who never abandons us and who shows us perfect love. We see this perfect love in Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. In Jesus, we see everything there is to see about God’s love. We see a person who entered our world in the humblest, most ordinary way possible and showed us the kind of servant ministry to which we are called. In him, we see a God who was willing to endure the cross so that we might see the wide embrace of God’s love for all people. In Jesus, we see the triumph of God’s love over death in the resurrection. Jesus tells us in the gospel of John in these chapters 14-17 that this love of God and others is only possible through a continued connection with him, he says to his disciples, “Abide in me as I abide in you.” And he prays, “That they may all be one. As you Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
This abiding and the love that Jesus commanded that night in the great commandment to love God and neighbor was an invitation to live with him in the Trinity of love. He asks that those who believe in the Good News may live in the unity of love that already exists within God’s own life.” The late Henri Nowen in his commentary on Andrew Rublev’s icon of the Holy Trinity and you have a picture of it in your bulletin, he writes of this unity or circle of love into which our eyes are drawn in the icon as we contemplate the mystery of God. There is no better picture that presents this circle of love and the Trinity symbolically, than Rublev’s icon of the three mysterious visitors to Abraham and Sarah described in Genesis chapter 18. A council of the Russian Church in 1551 declared that Rublev’s composition is inspired by God.
The word “icon” has been used for centuries to refer to images of holy subjects painted on wood. This ancient tradition of icon painting follows a set of rules and only after study and prayerful reflection do icons begin to speak to us. When they do connect, they speak to our inner heart that is searching for God. They communicate theological truths and provide in pictures what scripture provides in words. Rich in symbolism and meaning they attemp to give us a window into the divine rather than through earthly scenes. The basic geometric form of Reblev’s composition is the circle, uniting the three figures in a flowing pattern. The three visitor are depicted as angels, signifying that they belong to heaven rather than to earth. Their faces are essentially identical representing the equality of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity.
In the foreground of this icon there is an open space that we occupy while a conversation takes place between the three figures. We are part of the circle of belonging, part of the conversation as we consent to remain in the holy space. Nouwen writes: “Through the contemplation of this icon we come to see with our inner eyes that all engagements in this world can bear fruit only when they take place within this divine circle.” This icon expresses visually what John communicates in this section of his gospel; the Christian community is strong only when it dwells in a love rooted in the Trinity. Abiding in this house of love opens us up to a way of living with hopeful hospitality in this not so easy to live in world, and when we do our neighbors will notice and will want to join us there.
To help us feel God’s love for the world, Paul tells us today that we have this love already it was poured into us by the living presence of God’s Spirit given to us. Therefore now that we have been justified by faith in Christ, we are doing what Wisdom does in the Proverbs text, we are sharing God’s love for God’s world, and feeling God’s joy in what God has made. We need Wisdom’s presence and voice. Wisdom’s root is feminine in Hebrew and is a helper to God. She was present as God created the world. Many in the early church came to believe that the figure of ‘Wisdom’ was a reference to Jesus. To follow the way of ‘wisdom’ is to live in the world as we should, as the Trinity intended. Wisdom offers, the knowledge of how to live with joy as a child of God in the world that the three mysterious visitors to Abraham and Sarah made in the beginning.
Jesus’ prayer that covers four chapter in John has given us a glimpse into the inner workings of the mystery of the Trinity. The Father gives all to the Son; the Son gives his life in love for the Father and the world. The Spirit, who has empowered the Son all along, goes on to make the Son known, speaking only what the Son has said, and so leading us into all the truth of who Jesus is. Thus, the Holy Spirit brings Jesus to us, and in so doing reveals to us who the Father truly is. Let us with joy sing songs of praise to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Let us give thanks that this three in one God loves us more than we can image and let us give praise for God’s everlasting presence in our lives and in our world, to help us gladly widen the circle of belonging, and in so doing delight the heart of God.