Trinity Sunday

The Gospel according to John
Chapter 16: 12-15

Theme: Our pilgrimage in Christ is never done. We are always being called to further insight and inspiration.

We are still in those hours of reflection that Jesus shared in the upper room. It is as if Jesus saw the shadowed walls of that room dissolve, allowing him to look across time and generations to all those - ourselves among them - who would come to these words and find grace in them.

"I still have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now". What a challenge is here. Our Lord seems to be telling us that Christian experience has no horizon. To say this makes us feel a kind of awe and wonder. Our Lord is promising to call us to further discovery until the end of time. In his own earthly time Jesus himself pushed at the boundaries of his contemporaries, forcing people to think and to imagine beyond the narrow categories of their spirituality. In our time Jesus continues to do this, his holy spirit pushing us towards new ways of responding to the change and turmoil of our own age.

"When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth". Again we are being told that the adventure is only beginning. It was only beginning for those long ago disciples around that table, yet it is also true that it is only beginning for us two millennia later. If God be truly God then there is no end to what can be learned, discovered and lived. I think of this whenever I hear or sing the verse in the hymn "Amazing Grace" that says - "When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun; we've no less days to sing God's praise, than when we first begun".

Jesus continues. "All that the Father has is mine". I find that for me this statement of Jesus speaks to something exploding around us in recent decades - the immense variety of ways in which our world today pursues its spiritual questing. For many of us that world of many faceted spirituality is fascinating. Yet as Christians we also need to remind ourselves that, if we search the riches of Christian spirituality down the centuries, we come to realize that it has treasures far beyond our ability to exhaust.

In one of his letters Saint Paul wishes the early Christians to realize that in Christ they possess all things. In this shared moment in the upper room Jesus promises that we can find in him all we need in our search for God.

This is the Good News for this week.