Trinity Sunday John 16:12-15

SHAP 2023.

St. Peter’s Watsons Bay

It is a joy to be with you again this morning. 

Thank you for your prayers and your fellowship, and thank you for welcoming Paul, and Jeff, and Bruce to St. Peter’s in my absence.

And on that note of fellowship – our fellowship as a community of faith has ‘taken a hit’ these past few weeks with the deaths of beloved saints from across our wider parish – Sally Humphrey, Ron Fine, David Armstrong-Smith and of course, dear Noela Morris.

Here at St Peter’s many of us feel Noela’s loss keenly; viewed ‘Christianly’, it is a death in our family – we’ve ‘lost’ a sister-in-Christ.

Death and separation are painful to be sure…and they raise all kinds of questions and emotions to do with being left alone; an uncertain future; identity; love.

‘Who am I now that he or she is gone?’ is a phrase I hear from those who have lost ‘significant others’.

I mention all that on this Trinity Sunday because those are the kinds of emotions that Jesus’ friends are experiencing in the section of the Gospel of St, John, set down for today.

It is sometimes referred to as Jesus’ ‘farewell discourse’. 

And that is because Jesus is leaving his friends.

He’ll go to death via the cross…and their hearts, not surprisingly, are ‘troubled’, John reports in chapter 14:1.

‘Will we be left alone?’; ‘is our future uncertain?’; ‘who are we without Jesus?’,  are the kinds of feelings and misgivings they were likely to have experienced, don’t you think?

And have you not felt that way?

We gather to worship and honour a Jesus we cannot now see:

A Jesus who no longer appears to be physically present in a world that, for all intents and purposes, is unravelling.

And that is not an overstatement, is it?

Hopefully, after 15 months, we’ve not become desensitised to the appalling war in Ukraine…or to the fact that billions are being expended in its furtherance; I read this week that it is costing the Russian economy alone somewhere between 500 million and 1 billion dollars per day to stay in the game.

In our global village as we speak, more than 40 million people – mainly women and children, are being traded and trafficked as slaves.

Never before has that quantum been so high.

And 103 million people across our globe are now afforded refugee or displaced person status…90% of whom have been forcibly displaced due to wars, insurgencies, violence, and oppression.

And according to the World Health Organisation – in the first year of COVID 19 alone, global prevalence of anxiety and depression jumped a massive 25%: One major explanation for the increase is the unprecedented stress caused by the social isolation resulting from the pandemic. Linked to this were constraints on people’s ability to work, seek support from loved ones, and engage in their communities. 

Did you know that 7 million people have died from COVID related illnesses in the last three years – and is isn’t over yet as hundreds continue to die daily as a result of the pandemic?

An unravelling world is a reality for us in 2023.

And in his mercy and grace, Jesus speaks to our pain, and our sense of helplessness right here in John 16.

First, even though he is leaving his friends – physically, he makes it very clear that their relationship will continue. 

How so?

He tells them there in verse 12 that he has more to share with them. 

He is still interested in them. 

They matter to him. 

But right there and then, they have no further capacity to process what Jesus will teach them.

The phrase literally means that the time is not right.

This is not platitudinous drivel from a well-meaning soon-to-be-executed friend.

No.

Jesus will continue to protect, support. and invest in his friends.

Once again, how?

Well, second, in John 14:18 the Son of God, the Lord Jesus, promised his friends that he would not leave them as ‘orphans’ – rather he would come to them (v.18) and be with them in and through the ministry of the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit.

And do you see here in verse 13, the Holy Spirit – or the Spirit of truth, will come personally to Jesus’ followers, and he (the Spirit) will guide them, and lead them in the truth of Christ (verse 14) !

You see, the Holy Spirit will glorify Jesus (verse 14). 

That means he’ll enable us to grasp more fully the love of Jesus; the compassion of Jesus; the power of Jesus; the majesty of Jesus; the sheer awesomeness of Jesus; he makes known to us what Jesus has spoken to him.

And that includes, third, the revelation that Jesus makes in verse 15 – that all that belongs to God the Father, also belongs to God the Son.

That is why Jesus is worthy of honour and glory; that is why his disciples fall to ground and worship him as he ascends into heaven – Luke 24:52: 

All that belongs to God, belongs to Jesus.

Do you see?

And God the Holy Spirit (verse 15), will come to Jesus’ friends and he will enable them to grasp more fully the intimate and dynamic relationship between the Father and the Son.

Beloved, here is the point:

It takes nothing less than God-in-Trinity, to draw you to himself, to redeem you from sin’s rule, to bring you to new birth, to empower and equip you for service and witness, to enable you to grow in knowledge and holiness, and to lead you through this life into the eternity which he has gone ahead to prepare.    

Our prayer for each other – in this season of turmoil and fear, needs to be that of St. Paul for the church in Ephesus – and we hear if, in part, in our Epistle reading. 

And with this I close:

¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches, God the Father may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

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