Watch video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RbY5agp6sY
Program Transcript
Trinity Sunday—God Is Father, Son, and Spirit
Imagine standing at the center of a great dance. The movements are harmonious, flowing with beauty and grace. Each dancer moves in perfect unity with the others, creating something far greater than any individual could achieve alone. This is a glimpse into the mystery of the Trinity — a relationship of perfect love and unity between Father, Son, and Spirit.
The Holy Trinity is not a distant theological concept; it is the heart of our faith and the foundation of all creation. God, in his very being, is a community of love, inviting us to share in that love and reflect it in our relationships with one another and with all of creation. On Trinity Sunday, we celebrate the divine union of humanity with Father, Son, and Spirit — a mystery that draws us deeper into the love of God and into communion with each other.
The Trinity reveals a God who is relational. From the beginning, God’s love has overflowed into creation. The Father’s love is expressed through the Son, and the Spirit carries that love to all the earth. The divine relationship is not just something we observe; it is something we are invited to participate in. The Trinity shapes the way we see ourselves, others, and the world. It reminds us that we are not isolated individuals but part of a larger story of love and connection.
Psalm 8 beautifully captures this dynamic. It begins with awe at God’s majesty.“ Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!” And then it marvels at the way humanity is woven into this majesty. “What are human beings that You are mindful of them, mortals that You care for them?” The psalmist recognizes that God’s love and care extend to all creation, binding everything together in a divine relationship.
Today, as we reflect on the mystery of the Trinity, we are reminded of the union between God and humanity and of our calling to live as people shaped by that union. The Father, Son, and Spirit invite us into a love that heals, restores, and reconciles. Through the Trinity, we are drawn into a relationship with God and with one another that reflects the divine unity of heaven and earth.
The mystery of the Trinity is not something to be solved but something to be celebrated. It is a reminder that God is not distant but near, not singular but communal, not static but dynamic. As we marvel at the majesty of God revealed in creation, may we also embrace the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Spirit.
1 Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens.
2 Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
5 You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
8 the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
9 Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Let us rejoice in the majesty and mystery of our triune God — Father, Son, and Spirit — who unites us with himself and with one another in love.
Program Transcript
Trinity Sunday—God Is Father, Son, and Spirit
Imagine standing at the center of a great dance. The movements are harmonious, flowing with beauty and grace. Each dancer moves in perfect unity with the others, creating something far greater than any individual could achieve alone. This is a glimpse into the mystery of the Trinity — a relationship of perfect love and unity between Father, Son, and Spirit.
The Holy Trinity is not a distant theological concept; it is the heart of our faith and the foundation of all creation. God, in his very being, is a community of love, inviting us to share in that love and reflect it in our relationships with one another and with all of creation. On Trinity Sunday, we celebrate the divine union of humanity with Father, Son, and Spirit — a mystery that draws us deeper into the love of God and into communion with each other.
The Trinity reveals a God who is relational. From the beginning, God’s love has overflowed into creation. The Father’s love is expressed through the Son, and the Spirit carries that love to all the earth. The divine relationship is not just something we observe; it is something we are invited to participate in. The Trinity shapes the way we see ourselves, others, and the world. It reminds us that we are not isolated individuals but part of a larger story of love and connection.
Psalm 8 beautifully captures this dynamic. It begins with awe at God’s majesty.“ Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!” And then it marvels at the way humanity is woven into this majesty. “What are human beings that You are mindful of them, mortals that You care for them?” The psalmist recognizes that God’s love and care extend to all creation, binding everything together in a divine relationship.
Today, as we reflect on the mystery of the Trinity, we are reminded of the union between God and humanity and of our calling to live as people shaped by that union. The Father, Son, and Spirit invite us into a love that heals, restores, and reconciles. Through the Trinity, we are drawn into a relationship with God and with one another that reflects the divine unity of heaven and earth.
The mystery of the Trinity is not something to be solved but something to be celebrated. It is a reminder that God is not distant but near, not singular but communal, not static but dynamic. As we marvel at the majesty of God revealed in creation, may we also embrace the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Spirit.
1 Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens.
2 Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
5 You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
8 the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
9 Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Let us rejoice in the majesty and mystery of our triune God — Father, Son, and Spirit — who unites us with himself and with one another in love.
Psalm 8:1–9 · Proverbs 8:1–4, 22–31 · Romans 5:1–5 · John 16:12–15
Today is the first Sunday after Pentecost, also known as Trinity Sunday. We’re celebrating the union of God and people and all of creation. The Byzantine monk, Symeon the New Theologian, summed up Trinity Sunday’s purpose by saying that the Holy Trinity encompasses humanity and binds us together, influencing the way we relate to God and each other. Our weekly theme is God Is Father, Son, and Spirit with readings focused on the mystery of the Trinity.
This theme is reflected in our call to worship, Psalm 8, asking in awe about the purpose of humanity in relationship with God. It acknowledges the honor bestowed on human beings and wonders, “What are [human beings] that you should be mindful of [them]?” Proverbs 8 emphasizes our access to Wisdom, personified in Proverbs as a woman (Proverbs 1:20-21), the first of God’s creations. Romans 5:1–5 discusses the life-giving, empowering nature of our relationship within the Holy Trinity and the way it impacts everything about us. Our sermon text, found in John 16:12–15, takes us back again to the Upper Room after the Last Supper. We’ll learn how Jesus’ farewell discourse prepared the disciples for the confusion they were going to be facing in the near future by affirming that not knowing or understanding everything was OK.
How to use this sermon resource.
Don’t Know? No Problem!
John 16:12–15 NRSVUE
In the US, we have several clichés for not understanding something. See if you’ve heard any of these:
“That’s as clear as mud.”
“It’s going over my head.”
“It’s not clicking.”
“It doesn’t compute.”
“I can’t make head or tails of it.”
Most of them are funny. Have you ever made a joke when something didn’t make sense to you? It feels uncomfortable not to understand, so we may attempt a joke. But when we don’t understand, it can be a little scary. If you’ve ever traveled in a foreign country without knowing the native language, you’ve experienced the unsettling nature of being unsure what the signs say, what train to take, or where to get off public transit. It can cause you to feel disoriented and vulnerable.
Our sermon text on this Trinity Sunday helps us understand that it’s OK not to know for sure what’s next. It’s OK to be vulnerable. We’ll learn how prayer is more like a divine, joy-filled dialogue than a holy download, and how the Persons of the Trinity can comfort us at different points in our Christian journey. Let’s read John 16:12–15 together.
Context of John’s gospel
It’s important to consider that the four Gospels present different aspects of Jesus’ ministry, using Jesus’ experiences and life to convey what God’s salvation is for us, rather than trying to harmonize the Gospels. Dr. Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Associate Professor of New Testament and Christian Ministry at Campbell University, in a podcast, The Bible for Normal People, suggested that we can gain “a more nuanced and comprehensive picture of salvation” by noting each gospel’s unique contribution.
For example, we typically take John 3:16 out of context to persuade people that “God loved us and sacrificed Jesus for us and if we just believe, we can go to heaven” (Bashaw). To Bashaw, using John’s word in this manner doesn’t fully do justice to the symbolism we find in John’s gospel. She asserts that while John does write about the love of God, he doesn’t confine his discussion of eternal life to be in the future after we die. Instead, Bashaw argues that “the emphasis John places on belief is … more experiential than intellectual: belief in Jesus manifests in love and results in following Jesus and experiencing the love of God through him and the Spirit.”
We can miss the significance of the cross and crucifixion in John’s Gospel. Jesus lays his life down as the Passover lamb; this is the ultimate atoning sacrifice. In laying down his life, Jesus is revealing more about himself as our Redeemer. John’s purpose in his Gospel is to reveal the truth about who Jesus is. Jesus’ life, ministry, and death are all part of his identity, and reveal who God is. The cross is the ultimate victory. Bashaw calls it Jesus’ “glorification, a victory that is the ultimate expression of his love for God and for ‘his own’ as well as a beacon showing God’s love for the world.”
As we review chapters 13–17 in John, we can see that love is the overarching theme. John 13 talks about Jesus’ love for his disciples and his new command to love others as he had loved them. John 14 discusses the gift of the Spirit and its connection to love, while John 15 offers the metaphor of the vine and the branches as a means of illustrating love’s flow. John 17 concludes with the story of divine love in the world coming to life through believers everywhere.
From this context, we can consider Jesus’ farewell discourse in chapter 16 as a means of encouraging the disciples to love and to trust the process of prayer and discernment because the presence of the Holy Spirit would guide them. At this eleventh hour, Jesus wanted to reassure them that God would always be with them, despite any challenges they faced. Jesus wasn’t offering certainty but presence always. Let’s think about the vulnerability of uncertainty, the dialogue of prayer, and the comfort we gain from each of the three Persons of the Trinity.
The vulnerability of uncertainty
Jesus told the disciples that he had lots to share with them in their remaining short time together, but they could not handle it (John 16:12). Grief was clouding their ability to comprehend, and Jesus knew that. So, he encouraged them by saying in essence, “It’s OK not to know everything right now.”
In fact, we find ourselves in a predicament similar to the disciples. We can’t comprehend God’s presence or position in a world where much seems to have gone awry. It’s scary to be vulnerable and to live within the confines of impermanence and uncertainty. However, like the disciples, we’re not left to ourselves. Jesus says the Spirit of Truth accompanies us through whatever we’re facing. Let’s read the next two passages from The Message Bible:
I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t handle them now. But when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won’t draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen and, indeed, out of all that I have done and said. John 16:12–13 The Message
This implies a life of slow growth, not knowing everything all at once but insight being revealed as needed. This type of wisdom is based on our concrete experiences in our unique cultural and historical context. This means that while the basic wisdom remains the same, its expression and guidance might differ from generation to generation or culture to culture. This is where we trust the mystery of God’s goodness and presence.
The Dialogue of Prayer
Perhaps when we worry about praying “effectively,” we’ve turned to formulas as a means to create outcomes rather than attending to our relationship with the Divine. John 16:13–15 explains how the Spirit conveys the hearts of God the Father and Jesus:
But when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won’t draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen and, indeed, out of all that I have done and said. He will honor me; he will take from me and deliver it to you. Everything the Father has is also mine. That is why I’ve said, “He takes from me and delivers to you.” John 16:13–15 The Message
Notice that the Holy Spirit works within our context, “mak[ing] sense out of what is about to happen” (v. 13). This makes the guidance and comfort relevant to us, not obscure. Prayer becomes a dialogue between Father, Son, and Spirit, and us. Being in this continual dialogue makes our conversation with God fluid and kind and present to what is going on in our world.
There’s an old story about a bishop of a large territory who decided to visit every single parish. This took place before planes and automobiles, and he had to travel on horseback, so it took a number of years. He thought he had visited all of them until someone mentioned a small chapel that was on a remote island. He used a boat to reach the island, and when he got there, he found that it was inhabited only by three old men. The bishop greeted the men and began to talk to them about their faith. “Tell me about how you pray,” he asked them.
And the old men replied, “We stand together, hold hands like this, and then we say, ‘You are three; we are three; have mercy on us.’ ”
“Oh, no, that won’t do,” the bishop said. “Don’t you know the Lord’s prayer?”
“No, we don’t,” the men said. “Teach it to us.”
The bishop complied and taught them the prayer, and then he said goodbye and left on his boat. As he headed back to the mainland, he noticed a spark of light coming across the water from the island he had just left. As it drew closer, he could see it was the three hermits. They were holding hands and running across the top of the water. “Dear bishop,” they cried, “we’ve forgotten the Lord’s prayer. Can you teach us again so we can pray effectively?”
“Never mind,” the bishop told them. “I think your version of prayer is working just fine.”
This story illustrates that rather than formulas and special wording, prayer is intended to be a dialogue, and often dialogue means listening more than speaking. Listening is an invitation for mystery and not knowing. It’s an invitation to trust and abide in the true Vine, in Love. And that’s enough.
Comfort from the Trinity
Each Person of the Trinity offers us the opportunity for comfort and to feel known. For example, we can catch a glimpse of the love God the Father has for us through our own experiences of parenthood, loving another person, or loving a pet. We can better understand and be comforted when we suffer by reflecting on Jesus’ suffering, knowing he empathizes with us because he suffered pain, too. We can be inspired through Jesus’ example to love those whom we might not choose to love on our own. Through the Holy Spirit, we participate in bringing the dream of God to reality on earth as we ask for and listen to the Divine guidance. We can’t yet know everything that we must do or go through in the future; it is too much for us to bear. We need the Spirit of Truth to guide and carry the burdens we will face one step at a time.
We see Jesus using the word “bear” in John 16:12:
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. John 16:12 NRSVUE
The same word for “bear” is used in other parts of the New Testament, usually referring to the ability to bear a physical weight. For example, it is used in John 19:17 to refer to Jesus bearing the cross, and again when Mary Magdalene mistakes Jesus for the gardener and asks where he has taken (borne or carried) Jesus’ body (John 20:15). Jesus was reassuring the disciples that even though they couldn’t accept what he needed to tell them or about the events that were soon to happen, the Spirit of Truth would be able to bear it for them and give them the guidance they needed when they needed it. The Spirit does that for us today, too.
While Western tradition usually demonstrates the Trinity with the illustration of a triangle, the Eastern tradition has typically used a circle to convey the flow or dance of the three Persons of God. Theologian Scott Hoezee puts it this way: “The Father pours out everything onto the Son. The Spirit then takes all that from the Son to pour out these riches on all other people. Each person in God exudes enthusiasm for the other two (and the three together display a zestful enthusiasm for us all).”
On this Trinity Sunday, we can celebrate the dance of love by the holy Trinity: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, knowing that we don’t have to bear the uncertainty of things we cannot handle alone. We have the Spirit of Truth, the Cosmic Christ, and God the Father loving us and guiding us all home.
Call to Action: Pray this week’s Collect (a short prayer) from the Book of Common Prayer shown below and invite the triune God to reveal the beauty of their triune love to you.
Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity; Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory. O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
For Reference:
https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/what-the-gospels-teach-us-about-salvation/
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermon/you-are-three-we-are-three-trinity-sunday-c-june-12-2022/
https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2019-06-10/john-1612-15-2/
John Rogers—Year C Trinity Sunday
June 15, 2025 — Trinity Sunday
John 16:12-15
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Program Transcript
John Rogers—Year C Trinity Sunday
Anthony: Our next pericope of the month is John 16:12–15. It is the Revised Common Lectionary passage for Trinity Sunday on June 15. And it reads,
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
Trinity Sunday is another opportunity for proclaimers of the gospel to talk about the Trinity, but not as some dusty old doctrine or a mathematical conundrum, but the reality and relational substance of life. John, let me ask you this. What do you make of the Trinitarian dynamics found in this particular text?
John: I think especially as I read verse 13, “when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears.” I hear in this that there is a reliance on the parts of the Trinity with one another.
And I’m in this Sunday school class right now at our church in Durham, North Carolina that is going through pretty much all the movements of Trinitarian theology in the fourth century with the Council of Nicaea and people getting kicked out, coming back in, kicked out, coming back in, one statement here, another statement there, conversations around substance and ousia and hypostasis. And I found myself in that class on Sunday, and I really respect the people that are leading it. But a lot … what has come up a lot in this class is, what is it about the Trinity that is saying to us about who God is?
And when I think about that, and I think about your question, and here we are on Trinity Sunday. It’s … we’re probably best left with leaving it, as it seems quite biblical, but yet it feels like it falls in a maybe category of mystery that we want to be careful not to over-define it.
Anthony: Oh, for sure.
John: And I feel like this — I had somebody in in seminary once described it to me as — this dance. And again, I think we struggle with the oneness and the separateness of the Spirit. But I just love that it seems like here what we’re getting from Jesus and the Gospel of John is like, there’s an interchange in reliance on each part of the Trinity with one another, and however they’re tied together, whatever substance they are of, with one another. And I don’t want to be nailed as a heretic today on this podcast. But I think that’s the beauty of what Jesus is speaking to them and leaving with them, is that “I have a lot more to say to you. The Spirit would unveil that to you. And just be in a place of receiving that.”
Anthony: Yeah. I appreciate what you said about the beauty of the relationship. And sometimes you hear the Trinity discuss in such a way that it’s like a riddle to be solved instead of a relationship to be enjoyed …
John: Yeah.
Anthony: … to enter into. The fact that in Christ we get to enjoy unfettered relationship with the Father in the communion of the Spirit. It’s a beautiful thing that is, as you said, a mystery.
And thank God that he’s a mystery. Like we should still be in awe of the, just the awesomeness, and the bigness of our God. That’s one of the takeaways that I see here. John, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to make this a bit personal. Would you be willing to share maybe an event, a season in your life, where you experienced the Spirit guiding you into truth, maybe in surprising and unexpected ways? And how did that experience shape your understanding of God?
John: Yeah. I’ve been, and I mentioned it in my introduction to myself earlier on, I’ve gone through a couple of pretty big medical events in my life. And one recently, gosh, back in September of 2023. I went into a heart cath. lab thinking that they were just going to say, “Nothing needs to be done, head on home” to, “Oh my goodness, this is not good. You need to stay and we’re going to do surgery on Friday.” Having triple bypass heart surgery as a 50-year-old man because of some impact of a radiation field back in my twenties with my Hodgkin’s diagnosis.
And for three days I had to wait for my surgery; from that point of finding that out on a Tuesday, I was having surgery on a Friday. And everything down to having your, all your whole body shaved down so that you’re ready for surgery, all the tests run, all the pulmonary functionality tests run —everything.
Come Friday morning they wheel me down the hall. And I think everybody I knew in my life, and it’s weird … and it’s weird when people look at … I don’t know if you’ve had this happen to you in your life, Anthony, but when people look at you in a way that they think it might be the last time they see you.
Anthony: Oh wow.
John: And I just had to deal with that. My father-in-law, I still remember him walking in to see me the night before. And he came back in my room several times because he couldn’t leave. And I knew what he was doing. And so, what happened on Friday morning when they took me to surgery around five o’clock in the morning, is my pastor … and it’s weird being a pastor and having a pastor is such a gift, but one of our pastors at our church showed up around 5:30 in the pre-op area. And if you’re familiar with pre-op, I mean it’s a lot going on at 5:30 in the morning on a Friday when a lot of surgeries happen. And he walked in and he said, “John, can I pray with you?”
And what I was saying to him is, I said, “David, I keep hearing the word.” And it helped that I was reading a book about God’s loyalty and God’s faithfulness, hesed, that I just found myself repeating that word all morning. And it wasn’t like some, I don’t know some hypnotic effect of just say this word a lot and then you’ll believe it and live into what the word actually means.
I had every reason in that moment to be in full on panic. I was the husband of a wife I deeply adore and love getting to be in life with and in ministry with. I have three kids. I have a ministry that is growing and people that I feel like I’m engaging. And there was a conceivable chance that I was not going to come out of that surgery. No matter how great a candidate I was, no matter how young they thought I was to be having this surgery, how early they caught it. But I felt like that the Holy Spirit in that moment was saying, “John, I’m loyal to you. And my faithfulness is not any less faithful if you do not survive this surgery.”
Anthony: Amen.
John: And you know what I think, Anthony. I feel like that, often, whether we call it prosperity gospel or something else, we often have this transactional understanding in the back of our head that, Lord, I’m just serving you. I’m like, I love you. I wake up every day, and why in the world do you want to give me, like, a coronary bypass procedure? I should be protected from things like that. But what I felt in that moment was not the transaction of my God, failing me.
And I know it’s not everybody’s story, but it’s my story. And my pastor said that you’re the only one I’ve ever heard reciting a Hebrew word hesed when they’re going into surgery. And I can imagine it like it was yesterday and it was nothing short of the power of the Holy Spirit, that I think in one place I’m asking the Spirit to give me clarity in the way I read Scripture.
And that’s happened time and time again. But the way that this fruitfulness of wanting to receive the Holy Spirit to get the benefit of it, that’s not what I want, but what God desires for me. And I just can’t explain it. And my mother is in one of our small groups and she said to the group a couple of months later, when I’d come back for the first time, when we’re asking a question around of what do we see and admire in other people and like where we see the Spirit at work in the world.
And to hear my mother say it, and my mother has stage four cancer, and she had to be admitted in the hospital later that day when I was going into surgery because of her own pain that she was managing. And we’re both coming back to this small group and hearing my mother say, “I noticed something about my son that was unexplainable and was only under … could only be understood as one thing, that … the Spirit of God that is often unleashed in a way with a Pentecostal fervor, right? … that the Spirit was unleashed in a way that was more Quaker-like, right — that ‘I’m going to give a hush of peace that will allow you to enter into that surgery regardless of what was going to happen.’”
Anthony: That’s … thank God for that. First of all, I’m thankful that he brought you through, but I so appreciated what you said before; even if he hadn’t …
John: Yeah.
Anthony: … God is faithful. He’s good — hesed — that faithful love is true regardless. And so often we do get into this mindset — it’s just based on the situation, the circumstances of my life. No, Lord, we are above all people blessed.
John: Yeah.
Anthony: We are so blessed, but I am thankful that he has brought you through to be able to share that for others, including your father-in-law, to see …
John: Yeah.
Anthony: … to see the trust that you had in him —that bears witness to the goodness of God. So, I really appreciate you sharing that with us.
John: And one last thing I would say, Anthony, is that often, like when I used to think about, especially like on Trinity Sunday, and like we think about the roles of each, and still on the heels of Pentecost, we think of the Spirit as this kind of violent wind.
This fire feels, oh, it’s going to loosen my tongue and I’m going to speak in an unknown language. It feels wild that there, what I’ve noticed about, like the Spirit is, the Spirit can be very gentle and tender, and like our first text when we were thinking about like this invitation of, “Come to Me.”
Anthony: Yes.
John: That there is a place of invitation that the Spirit is, that what the Spirit is doing is gentle and kind.
Anthony: Yeah. Almost a wooing, right?
John: Yeah.
Anthony: Come and see, taste and see, that the Lord is good. Come with me. Let’s go.
Program Transcript
John Rogers—Year C Trinity Sunday
Anthony: Our next pericope of the month is John 16:12–15. It is the Revised Common Lectionary passage for Trinity Sunday on June 15. And it reads,
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
Trinity Sunday is another opportunity for proclaimers of the gospel to talk about the Trinity, but not as some dusty old doctrine or a mathematical conundrum, but the reality and relational substance of life. John, let me ask you this. What do you make of the Trinitarian dynamics found in this particular text?
John: I think especially as I read verse 13, “when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears.” I hear in this that there is a reliance on the parts of the Trinity with one another.
And I’m in this Sunday school class right now at our church in Durham, North Carolina that is going through pretty much all the movements of Trinitarian theology in the fourth century with the Council of Nicaea and people getting kicked out, coming back in, kicked out, coming back in, one statement here, another statement there, conversations around substance and ousia and hypostasis. And I found myself in that class on Sunday, and I really respect the people that are leading it. But a lot … what has come up a lot in this class is, what is it about the Trinity that is saying to us about who God is?
And when I think about that, and I think about your question, and here we are on Trinity Sunday. It’s … we’re probably best left with leaving it, as it seems quite biblical, but yet it feels like it falls in a maybe category of mystery that we want to be careful not to over-define it.
Anthony: Oh, for sure.
John: And I feel like this — I had somebody in in seminary once described it to me as — this dance. And again, I think we struggle with the oneness and the separateness of the Spirit. But I just love that it seems like here what we’re getting from Jesus and the Gospel of John is like, there’s an interchange in reliance on each part of the Trinity with one another, and however they’re tied together, whatever substance they are of, with one another. And I don’t want to be nailed as a heretic today on this podcast. But I think that’s the beauty of what Jesus is speaking to them and leaving with them, is that “I have a lot more to say to you. The Spirit would unveil that to you. And just be in a place of receiving that.”
Anthony: Yeah. I appreciate what you said about the beauty of the relationship. And sometimes you hear the Trinity discuss in such a way that it’s like a riddle to be solved instead of a relationship to be enjoyed …
John: Yeah.
Anthony: … to enter into. The fact that in Christ we get to enjoy unfettered relationship with the Father in the communion of the Spirit. It’s a beautiful thing that is, as you said, a mystery.
And thank God that he’s a mystery. Like we should still be in awe of the, just the awesomeness, and the bigness of our God. That’s one of the takeaways that I see here. John, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to make this a bit personal. Would you be willing to share maybe an event, a season in your life, where you experienced the Spirit guiding you into truth, maybe in surprising and unexpected ways? And how did that experience shape your understanding of God?
John: Yeah. I’ve been, and I mentioned it in my introduction to myself earlier on, I’ve gone through a couple of pretty big medical events in my life. And one recently, gosh, back in September of 2023. I went into a heart cath. lab thinking that they were just going to say, “Nothing needs to be done, head on home” to, “Oh my goodness, this is not good. You need to stay and we’re going to do surgery on Friday.” Having triple bypass heart surgery as a 50-year-old man because of some impact of a radiation field back in my twenties with my Hodgkin’s diagnosis.
And for three days I had to wait for my surgery; from that point of finding that out on a Tuesday, I was having surgery on a Friday. And everything down to having your, all your whole body shaved down so that you’re ready for surgery, all the tests run, all the pulmonary functionality tests run —everything.
Come Friday morning they wheel me down the hall. And I think everybody I knew in my life, and it’s weird … and it’s weird when people look at … I don’t know if you’ve had this happen to you in your life, Anthony, but when people look at you in a way that they think it might be the last time they see you.
Anthony: Oh wow.
John: And I just had to deal with that. My father-in-law, I still remember him walking in to see me the night before. And he came back in my room several times because he couldn’t leave. And I knew what he was doing. And so, what happened on Friday morning when they took me to surgery around five o’clock in the morning, is my pastor … and it’s weird being a pastor and having a pastor is such a gift, but one of our pastors at our church showed up around 5:30 in the pre-op area. And if you’re familiar with pre-op, I mean it’s a lot going on at 5:30 in the morning on a Friday when a lot of surgeries happen. And he walked in and he said, “John, can I pray with you?”
And what I was saying to him is, I said, “David, I keep hearing the word.” And it helped that I was reading a book about God’s loyalty and God’s faithfulness, hesed, that I just found myself repeating that word all morning. And it wasn’t like some, I don’t know some hypnotic effect of just say this word a lot and then you’ll believe it and live into what the word actually means.
I had every reason in that moment to be in full on panic. I was the husband of a wife I deeply adore and love getting to be in life with and in ministry with. I have three kids. I have a ministry that is growing and people that I feel like I’m engaging. And there was a conceivable chance that I was not going to come out of that surgery. No matter how great a candidate I was, no matter how young they thought I was to be having this surgery, how early they caught it. But I felt like that the Holy Spirit in that moment was saying, “John, I’m loyal to you. And my faithfulness is not any less faithful if you do not survive this surgery.”
Anthony: Amen.
John: And you know what I think, Anthony. I feel like that, often, whether we call it prosperity gospel or something else, we often have this transactional understanding in the back of our head that, Lord, I’m just serving you. I’m like, I love you. I wake up every day, and why in the world do you want to give me, like, a coronary bypass procedure? I should be protected from things like that. But what I felt in that moment was not the transaction of my God, failing me.
And I know it’s not everybody’s story, but it’s my story. And my pastor said that you’re the only one I’ve ever heard reciting a Hebrew word hesed when they’re going into surgery. And I can imagine it like it was yesterday and it was nothing short of the power of the Holy Spirit, that I think in one place I’m asking the Spirit to give me clarity in the way I read Scripture.
And that’s happened time and time again. But the way that this fruitfulness of wanting to receive the Holy Spirit to get the benefit of it, that’s not what I want, but what God desires for me. And I just can’t explain it. And my mother is in one of our small groups and she said to the group a couple of months later, when I’d come back for the first time, when we’re asking a question around of what do we see and admire in other people and like where we see the Spirit at work in the world.
And to hear my mother say it, and my mother has stage four cancer, and she had to be admitted in the hospital later that day when I was going into surgery because of her own pain that she was managing. And we’re both coming back to this small group and hearing my mother say, “I noticed something about my son that was unexplainable and was only under … could only be understood as one thing, that … the Spirit of God that is often unleashed in a way with a Pentecostal fervor, right? … that the Spirit was unleashed in a way that was more Quaker-like, right — that ‘I’m going to give a hush of peace that will allow you to enter into that surgery regardless of what was going to happen.’”
Anthony: That’s … thank God for that. First of all, I’m thankful that he brought you through, but I so appreciated what you said before; even if he hadn’t …
John: Yeah.
Anthony: … God is faithful. He’s good — hesed — that faithful love is true regardless. And so often we do get into this mindset — it’s just based on the situation, the circumstances of my life. No, Lord, we are above all people blessed.
John: Yeah.
Anthony: We are so blessed, but I am thankful that he has brought you through to be able to share that for others, including your father-in-law, to see …
John: Yeah.
Anthony: … to see the trust that you had in him —that bears witness to the goodness of God. So, I really appreciate you sharing that with us.
John: And one last thing I would say, Anthony, is that often, like when I used to think about, especially like on Trinity Sunday, and like we think about the roles of each, and still on the heels of Pentecost, we think of the Spirit as this kind of violent wind.
This fire feels, oh, it’s going to loosen my tongue and I’m going to speak in an unknown language. It feels wild that there, what I’ve noticed about, like the Spirit is, the Spirit can be very gentle and tender, and like our first text when we were thinking about like this invitation of, “Come to Me.”
Anthony: Yes.
John: That there is a place of invitation that the Spirit is, that what the Spirit is doing is gentle and kind.
Anthony: Yeah. Almost a wooing, right?
John: Yeah.
Anthony: Come and see, taste and see, that the Lord is good. Come with me. Let’s go.
Small Group Discussion Questions
- Human beings crave certainty, and we don’t like feeling vulnerable. Can you imagine the way the disciples might have been feeling in the upper room after Jesus explained the events that would soon take place? Can you share a personal experience where you felt uncertain and vulnerable, unsure of the next step?
- The sermon suggests that the Holy Spirit reveals guidance to us as we need to know it. Do you agree? Have you experienced this?
- What are your thoughts about prayer as a dialogue that involves mostly listening? What experiences have you had with this modality of prayer?
- Have you ever considered how the different Persons of the Trinity can provide comfort because we can connect with them each differently?
