Proverbs 8:1 – 4, 22 – 31 / Psalm 8 / Romans 5:1 – 5 / John 16:12 – 15
This
is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on
Sunday, June 12, 2022.
“THE HOLY TRINITY: GOD’S
GIFT OF SELF-REVELATION”
On
Trinity Sunday (today), one approach we might would be for us to consider how
God could be One God in Three Persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Or, we
might consider the history of the Church’s reflection on God’s revealing acts
as the Father sends the Son, and then the Holy Spirit is given.
Instead
of those approaches, let’s engage in reflecting on God’s gift of
self-revelation. For what we know about God comes from God’s own revealing
acts. God has been at the business of peeling back the layers of mystery which
surround Him since the very beginning of God’s interaction with humankind.
God’s actions to inform us about his nature, identity, power, love and care for
the world He created, and for us humans, whom He also created, can be viewed as
one great, big gift, given to us.
We
might begin with God’s gift of creation itself. The more we learn about the
created order, the more we realize how intricately interconnected it all is.
The sheer complexity of all of creation, and its beauty, must surely be the
work of the creator God. Humankind has observed this creative process and God’s
hand in it since the beginning of time.
As
human societies grew, God reached out in self-revelation in a number of ways.
For example, in Holy Scripture we read that God spoke to Abraham and told him
to leave his home and his relatives, and to go to a place that God would show
him. Later on, God appointed Moses to lead His people out of bondage in Egypt. Along the way to the promised land, God gave
His people the Law. Once in the promised land, God’s people depended on judges and
on prophets to discover God’s truth and God’s desires for them.
Then,
in the fulness of time, God sent His Son, Jesus the Christ, to reveal more
fully God’s nature. By the things Jesus did, the things He said, the miracles
He did, and – most especially – in His suffering, death and rising to new life
again on Easter Sunday morning, Jesus showed us that He, too, along with the
Father, has the power to create and to re-create. In answer to Philip’s demand
that Jesus “show us the Father”, Jesus says that, if you have seen me, “you
have seen the Father”. (John 14:9) God’s gift of self-revelation tells us that
God cared enough to enter the depths and the heights of human experience, His
divine nature taking up our humanity to the full.
At
last, God’s acts to reveal to us His nature is completed with the coming of the
Holy Spirit on the feast of Pentecost. There, the Spirit comes with discernable
signs, like the rush of a mighty wind, and tongues of fire which appeared above
the heads of each one of the disciples gathered on that day, and with the
ability, given to each one gathered, to speak a foreign language unknown to
them beforehand.
In
all of these things, it’s important to keep in mind that God’s nature is
unchanging, meaning that God’s identity has always been the same. What changes
over time is that God chooses to reveal more and more of His identity to us in
various ways and by various means.
What
do we do with this wonderful and enduring gift? Here, I think, re-gifting is
expected, even demanded. Put another way, we receive the gifts of God’s
revelation, and we benefit and are changed by those gifts. But these divine gifts
aren’t meant to be preserved as our own, private treasure. On the contrary,
sharing those gifts with others is expected of each Christian believer. We
affirm this in our Baptismal Covenant, when we promise to God that we will
“proclaim by word and deed the Good News of God in Christ”. (Book of Common Prayer, page 305)
AMEN.
