Trinity Sunday

Trinity Sunday C: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8;

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

The Rev'd Cameron Partridge

June 15, 2025

Good morning, St. Aidan’s. Welcome to Trinity Sunday, the feast centered on the celebration of God whom we worship as both one in substance and three in Person: God the divine Parent; God the Son; God the Holy Spirit. The Trinity as a doctrine emerged through reflection upon the witness of Scripture, how to make sense of the various references to God as one even as we hear how God has made Godself known to us: as the divine Creator of all things, the one whom Jesus called his Father; as Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh who dwelt among us, walked our path, healed and liberated, died and rose; as the Holy Spirit who descended upon the first followers of Jesus as we heard last week, and who remains present among us to lead us into all truth, as we hear in our gospel passage this morning. Ways to understand and speak of this mystery, that God is one in three, and three in one, emerged in the early centuries following Jesus’ death and resurrection, and today’s Feast Day was officially instituted for the Western Church in 1334. Its popularity in Northern Europe and the British Isles inspired many churches to be named after the Holy Trinity, and the time between now and All Saints Day to be referred to as the Sundays after the Trinity, as is still the case for the Church of England, rather than the Sundays after Pentecost. [1]  

The readings appointed for this Feast Day in Year C begin by offering us a gift of grounding in praise of God’s creative power and mystery. Our Psalm invites us into a posture of praise: “how exalted is your Name, O God, in all the world” (Psalm 8:1). The Psalmist then asks on our behalf, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, what are we that you should be mindful of us? your children that you should seek us out?” (8:4-5) In response to the vast scope of creation, our own lives are set in a wider context. Every time I read such words, I find myself breathing out, leaning back, allowing my hunched shoulders to relax. Our passage from Proverbs also invites to dwell upon God’s creative presence. This time the emphasis is upon divine Wisdom, present in creation at all times and in all circumstances. The voice of Wisdom through whom all things were made, associated by Christians with the Word who became flesh (as expressed in the opening chapter of the Gospel of John), calls out in our reading: “Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth – when [the Creator] had not yet made earth and fields, or the world's first bits of soil” (Proverbs 8:25-26). Wisdom, we hear, was always present together with, alongside the divine Creator. “I was daily [the Creator’s] delight, rejoicing before [the Maker] always,” in the “inhabited world and delighting in the human race” (Proverbs 8:30-31). In these words of praise, we are given a glimpse of vast divine perspective, mysteriously differentiated and anchored in awe.

Both our reading from the Apostle Paul and from the Gospel of John offer angles on the work of the Holy Spirit in us, supporting us as we make our way in this world, anchoring us in the midst of storms. Our passage from John marks the last time we will hear from this gospel on a Sunday for some months – the Gospel of Luke will take us into the fall. As has been the case over the last several weeks, our passage from John’s gospel shares the wisdom Jesus sought to give the disciples just before his death and resurrection. He knows they are perplexed and struggling. He knows they will suffer, unable fully to take in the horror he would undergo as well as the risen life he would reveal to them. He also knows that there is a limit to what they can take in. I have long been moved by Jesus’ words in our passage, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12). Lord knows Jesus could say things that were difficult to bear. Christ the Good Shepherd was also the table flipper. He was not always meek and mild. And Lord knows that in situations of stress our ability to take in anything of substance, let alone deep and challenging words is further limited. The disciples were at capacity – they did not have to say no more, Jesus! for him to understand.

And this is where a distinctive role of the Spirit comes in. Jesus wants the disciples, he wants us, to know of the presence of the Holy Spirit who would, who does, convey his words, his consolation, his inspiration, his heart to us in all times and all places. The biblical scholar Sandra Schneiders explains,

Just as Jesus received everything from God [the Parent] and shared it with his disciples, so the Spirit receives everything from Jesus and shares it with Jesus’ disciples (16:13-15). In other words, the Spirit will be the interior presence of Jesus within his disciples, maintaining their union with him, leading them moment by moment, as they are able to bear it, into all truth, and uniting them to the [divine Parent].[2]

I love Schneiders’ emphasis on the interior experience we have of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is, in John’s distinctive perspective, the presence of Christ, of God the Son, within us. Last week we celebrated the Spirit’s descent among the disciples at Pentecost in a dramatic rushing of wind. John’s gospel does not have this scene but instead locates it on the day of the resurrection in the upper room when the risen Christ breathes on the terrified disciples and says, “receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). It is a moment of new creation. It is, as this morning’s gospel emphasizes, a moment of deep consolation and strengthening as well.

Paul’s letter to the Romans speaks of a “grace in which we stand” (Romans 5:2) – a famous phrase that I have carried with me for much of my life of faith. What is it to stand in grace? It is in significant measure to be upheld by the Holy Spirit, grounded in the knowledge and love of God who is so much more vast than we can possibly fully fathom, and who yet has come among us, walked our path, stays with us in our struggle, sustains us when we are weary, supports us in abiding love. Paul speaks of “God's love [that] has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). This pouring has a certain sequence for Paul. That unfolding acknowledges the reality of suffering from which can emerge a certain endurance, character, and finally a hope (Romans 5:3-4). Not, I would hasten to add, because suffering is inherently good or justifiable. Rather, suffering is a fact, a reality of human existence both shared and differently experienced and metabolized by each of us. But God’s presence with us in suffering, alongside us, indeed through the Holy Spirit within us, strengthens us, assists us with perspective and wisdom, and gifts us with hope through the outpouring of divine love. This is the grace in which we stand, the grace of divine presence upholding us, transforming us together in the midst of struggle.

This gift of the Spirit comes to us in our individual experiences in important ways, and it is crucial in our particular lives of faith to seek out the presence of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, as Paul also shares in his letter to the Romans, the Spirit “intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” when “we do not know how to pray as we ought” (Romans 8:26). This is the Spirit carrying our hearts back to God the Parent and God the Son. But crucially, the gracious gift of the Holy Spirit comes to us collectively, specifically in community and not only on our own.

I felt this particular working of the Spirit yesterday as I gathered and walked with some of you through the streets of San Francisco, even as millions of people across this country marched peacefully for No Kings Day. It was a day to press back against the repressive, indeed monarchical actions of this administration in the wake of the imposed deployment of the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles last week; the increasing erosion of civil liberties through deportations without due process and the banning of entry into this country; this country’s continued complicity in the killing of innocent Palestinians in Gaza; and the targeting of trans and gender nonconforming people through a whole host of avenues. All of these concerns were lifted up in various ways by the marchers yesterday, including through creative signs such as those we created here a week ago Friday. Before the march a DioCal group gathered in front of San Damiano Friary. We connected, prayed, and sang before we joined the massive crowd that began to flow down Dolores Street toward Market and the Civic Center. I loved all of it – walking and talking, praying and singing, meeting new people along the way, giving away our signs and seeing others share theirs.

As I reflected at the day’s end, I was reminded not only of the passages appointed for today but also another from the epistles – the letter to the Ephesians, a portion of which we sometimes pray together as a canticle at Evening Prayer on Wednesdays in this rendering from the Sisters of Saint Helena:

I pray that, according to the riches of God’s glory,

you may be strengthened in your inner being

with power through the Holy Spirit.

May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith,

as you are rooted and grounded in love.

I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints,

what is the breadth and the length and height and depth

of the love of God for us, and that you may know the love of Christ

That surpasses knowledge,

and be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:16-19).[3]

That strengthening in our inner being happens not only individually but collectively, in community. The Holy Spirit pours herself out into us and among us as we gather and encourage one another, as we walk together. This grace in which we stand emerges again and again. It is revealed among us through the power of the Holy Spirit who carries our prayer into the very heart of God even as our own words fall short. And so this morning I give thanks for the triune God: the God who made us, who has come among us in Jesus Christ to liberate and heal us; who sustains us and leads us into all truth in the Holy Spirit. And I pray that the Spirit would continue to strengthen us at our very core that together, as we face the days to come, the grace of God may sustain us and we might be filled with all the fullness of God. Amen.

[1] Philip Pfatteicher, Journey into the Heart of God: Living the Liturgical Year (Oxford University Press, 2013), 288, 293

[2] Sandra Schneiders, Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1999, 2003), 60. Italics mine.

[3] The Saint Helena Breviary (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2006), 225.