Trinity Sunday

Trinity C Oaxaca MX

Psalm: Psalm 8

Old Testament: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Gospel: John 16:12-15

Epistle: Romans 5:1-5

1.

OT: Wisdom of God from before Creation

1.

Our editors have again tried to make our reading "G rated."
Please do read the context when you get home, to gain a
better understanding of the issues. But working with what we
have,

2.

We see in the last part that it was through true wisdom that
God created, and in the earlier part, that this wisdom is
evident, and cries out to the prudent observer, from all of
nature.

3.

Now, the common, Pagan, religion outside of the Biblical
faith had different tiers of deity. There were the heroes,
and the demigods, and the gods, and then there was the
"super-god" force which determined the ways of the gods. In
the 20^th c. a group of people decided to force that kind of
view onto Christianity. First, of course, they replaced the
Holy Trinity with a generic "God" figure, Then somebody
found a useful coincidence that if they took a 3,000 yr old
Hebrew word for wisdom, translated it to 2,000 yr old Greek,
and used that word in 20^th c. English, it would register as
a woman's name, so obviously..(???) there was this goddess
helping God figure out how to make things! /(Not so in
Genesis..!) /

4.

Paganism boils down to the idea that Man, or Society, is
/the/ standard by which the Universe, including all deity,
must be judged. If society accepts or rejects XYZ, or
over-indulges in JKL, then so must their deity. Religion, is
a way to use deity to manipulate one's circumstances to
one's own advantage. I think history would confirm that such
religions developed and flourished the most in prosperous,
self-indulgent, civilisations such as Egypt and the Babylon.

2.

Ministry of the Holy Ghost as Spirit of Truth

1.

As we know, Christianity is not a system of myth and theory,
but life, lived with, in the very presence and company with
the living God, a life which the Church has most often
spoken of as salvation. We do not define God, or define
terms to him, but it is he as the Greater, and the One who
knows us, and loves us, better than we ourselves, who
defines the relationship, who saves and warns us from the
hazards, and calls us to become his children.

2.

Jesus here describes this relationship, which he carries on
with us through his Spirit:

1.

First in this passage Christ promises that his Spirit
would "lead and guide you into all truth." What can we
learn here? 1^St , he was speaking to, "you," in the
plural. In Mississippi we might say, "lead and guide
/you all./.." as he spoke to his disciples and, into
the future, their disciples, ..us, our disciples, etc.
How would the Holy Spirit do this?

1.

14:26, that he would remind the disciples of all
that Jesus had said to them. To us?

2.

1^st John 2 tells the Church that through the
Holy Spirit "we know all things." and in 1^st
Timothy we read the Church is the "pillar and
ground of the truth!"

2.

Why don't we have this certainty today? Perhaps it is
better to ask how we can actually know the things God
wants us to know.

1.

We do know that the Holy Spirit was promised to
the Apostles, and to the Church, and that
promise was kept, so we have writings of Church
Fathers who availed themselves of that Teaching
Promise.

2.

And we have the words and testimony of Christ,
from Genesis forward, from which the Spirit can
"bring to our remembrance" things from our
reading and hearing it

3.

We have James' letter, in which he writes,
(1:5ff), so that we can be sure of what God
wants us to know, and what he wants us to do as
we, _a._ ask Jesus Christ to transform our
hearts and minds according to his faithfulness,
_b._ ask from a faithful heart, and _c._
faithfully compare what we perceive God to be
saying with what he has already said both to the
Scripture writers and to the Church from the
start. God is faithful, and God does not change.
As Scripture does say, "the just shall live by
his faith, or, by his faithfulness."

3.

Yes, there is the Modern idea that we can know all
things certainly through our own rational efforts, and
another that says we are not capable of really knowing
anything, but as we saw in James, this is not about
mere rational certainty (based on our own "genius") ,
but a matter of real and living relationship. As Jesus
said, "my sheep hear my voice," we first need to, we
must, hear Jesus' voice,

3.

Access by faith into the grace..

1.

In light of these observations, we find a whole new field of
meaning as we read Scripture.

2.

As an example, (re-read Rom 5:1-5).

4.

And now to God....