Trinity B (2022)
We are benefiting from the development of vaccines.
This has not been ‘the work of one person’; quite the opposite,
it has been a product of a whole culture of scientific exploration:
long chains of understanding,
human searching and creativity, pursued over centuries.
(I’d like to draw this out, for it is truly awe-inspiring,
but I don’t have time and have something else to speak about.)
Yes, individuals have made important contributions,
but, ultimately, science is a collective endeavour of humanity.
In science, we recognise God’s Holy Spirit
working through and with the human spirit,
as scientists collectively seek to understand the natural world,
with life-saving vaccines as one outcome.
The search for the truth about God has the same characteristics:
it is a collective endeavour that involves centuries of insights
from the Holy Spirit working through and with the human spirit.
Three persons:
Abba, Father;
The Word of God, the Father’s only Begotten Son,
the crucified Lord;
the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, God’s breath of life.
This is the ‘everyday’ of all our prayer,
and of our listening to the New Testament.
Three persons, yes – and, One God;
not three gods in perfect agreement, but one God.
This oneness seems to me to be the emphasis of today’s feast.
The Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament,
give insight into the developing understanding of ‘God’.
Early ideas are of a tribal god,
a god that is one among many gods, but is ‘ours’,
a god whose ‘job’ is
to preserve the tribe in the face of its enemies.
Later, the idea took hold that there is one God:
– other gods were just figments of imagination –
and that God is truly holy, truly other,
cannot be domesticated, confined or depicted,
and is ‘in charge’ of everything.
Nonetheless, this holy God came close to the chosen people,
and was, in a mysterious way, their God.
In a handful passages, following the logic of ‘there is one God’,
all nations are understood to be called to worship that one God,
made known to them through God’s chosen people.
This, in broad outline,
was the general understanding of God among the Jewish people
at the time of Jesus.
It is an understanding that will be refined:
refined by encounter with Jesus risen from the dead,
refined by remembering what he said,
refined by encounter with the Holy Spirit at work,
refined by trying to make sense all this, and talk about it.
The three persons are mentioned often in the New Testament:
God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit,
each appear in today’s gospel and today’s reading from Romans.
However, whether, and how, these three persons are divine,
and how this relates to God being One,
was controversial for several more centuries.
Looking back,
we see the power of Jesus’ promise in today’s gospel,
being fulfilled through those centuries.
The Spirit of truth will lead you to the complete truth.
‘You’ is plural here:
it is the community that is led, individuals play their part,
but the promise is to the community.
Eventually, in the 5th century,
the community coalesced around the Nicene Creed
that we will say today at Mass,
and which we have not said here for 2 years!
Saying the Creed together is a powerful expression of our identity.
Today, as let’s enjoy saying it together,
let’s rejoice in the centuries of work by the Holy Spirit
through and in the human spirit that it symbolises.