For The Things We Cannot Bear

June 16, 2019 - Holy Trinity Sunday

Hope Lutheran Church

Rev. Mary Erickson

Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

For the Things We Cannot Bear

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

For a long time, I’ve entertained a whimsical image of what happens when we go to heaven. When we first arrive there, we can go to various seminars which explain the world’s mysteries. For instance, there’ll be a seminar revealing who shot JFK. At last we’ll know! Another one will address exactly how caterpillars metamorphose into butterflies. And there will also be sessions focusing on theological matters. For sure, one will explain the Trinity. How can God be both three persons and yet one?

The Holy Trinity surely is a wonder. Every year we set aside one Sunday in our church calendar to marvel at the mystery and majesty of Almighty God.

The Bible never uses the term “Trinity” or directly addresses God’s trinitarian nature. Our understanding of God as three persons in one comes from our experience of God. God has been revealed to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

On Holy Trinity Sunday, we reflect on this great mystery. And every year we consider a Biblical text which mentions God as Father and also Jesus and the Holy Spirit. This year our text is from John chapter 16. The passage comes from the evening when Jesus will be arrested. Before they go to the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus and his disciples meet in an upper room.

You get the feeling that the disciples sense something ominous is approaching. A storm is rumbling on the horizon. Their beautiful fellowship and electrifying ministry with Jesus are about to take a fateful twist. The disciples are scared and confused.

While in that upper room, Jesus has a long discussion with his friends. Our reading is a small excerpt from this conversation.

In his conversation, Jesus has told them many, many things. And as we begin our reading today, he says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” Such a profound statement! There certainly are things we cannot bear.

You know how that works at home! Sometimes you have to pace how you’re going to reveal everything that’s going on! The engine light in your car has turned on; the dog’s going to have a huge vet bill; the school principal called about your kid. If you spring all of this at once, someone will surely blow a sprocket! It’s more than the soul can bear. What we need is portion control. A little bit now, a little bit later, and then some more tomorrow.

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” The things we cannot bear. There are different reasons why we can’t bear them.

It might be that we currently don’t have the capacity to receive and absorb this new reality. Life has worn us down. The harsh realities of living and a dearth of compassion have dried us up. Our soul has become hardened and calcified. We’re like parched earth. From lack of human kindness and consideration, we’ve formed a hardened surface. That crust is a protective measure. It preserves the precious and diminishing waters remaining deep within.

The crust may protect us, but the problem is that when the rains do come, our hardened exterior is unable to open up and receive this blessed nourishment! So the rain runs off and drains away. We’re not able to bear it.

Our views can be calcified and hardened. We form our opinions, and then we live with them. We’ve chiseled them into stone. Our views on race, our judgements of others, our sense of how the world operates. We’ve made our deliberations. The jury has concluded and the judgement has been cast.

But God is always about doing something new! The world doesn’t stay the same! God entered this world as a little baby, and something new was unleashed. The Early Church was confronted with Gentiles, and something new had to unfold. The old rules no longer supported the Spirit’s unfolding. At one time, the notion of slavery was just fine in our country. But the winds of the Spirit brought about a new way of thinking. God’s Spirit is breathing new life into this old, old world.

How can we bear this new thing? What we need is the tender and slow rain of divine compassion. We need the Holy Spirit to gentle into us. We need God’s Spirit to slowly open and gradually fill our pores and our ears so that our hardened crust will soften up, so that we can drink in these divine waters. We need that Spirit Word to form a new pathway into our hearts and minds. And that Spirit promises to guide us into all the truth.