Trinity

Preparation

    Please begin by reading Romans 5:1-5 in your Bible. If you do not have one at hand, we have provided that text for you at the end of this reflection.

Reflection--The Octave of Whitsun 

   In the early church, this Sunday was observed as the Octave of Whitsun. Say what?

    Whitsun is an archaic name for Pentecost. The “Octave” in ecclesiastical usage was the eight day after a feast day. So, the Octave of Whitsun is the eighth day after Pentecost. By the late middle ages, it had come to be a time for celebration of the Trinity—God the Parent, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. It’s still known as Trinity Sunday.

    Today’s passage from Romans fits the Trinity Sunday setting because it mentions all three persons of the Trinity. It refers to God, to our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the Holy Spirit. But how our lesson fits into its fairly obscure historical setting is not what is important. What is really important is the nuggets of truth we find in it.

    This passage is really the gospel in a nutshell. In a few brief sentences, it tells us that we have peace with God through Jesus as our mediator and that God pours God’s love and grace into our hearts through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We get to that place of love and grace through faith. Nothing more and nothing less than our faith in Jesus. That’s what that business of being justified by faith means.

    And not only can we be brought to a place of love and grace now, but we have real hope for the future. As Paul puts it, we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. When we have lived out our lives faithfully here, we can anticipate eternity in the glory of God’s presence. The great prophet Isaiah says that “the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” It’s a great future.

    But what about the here and now. Sometimes the here and now doesn’t feel a lot like love and grace and joy. Sometimes here and now feels like suffering and loss. What gets us through?

    It’s here that Paul has what some might call one of the strangest passages in all of the New Testament. He indicates that not only may we experience suffering, but that we can even be proud of it. “We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Another one of those “say what?” moments.

    When you’ve been around as long as I have, you will have seen a lot of suffering; some of it intense. Faces of many people come into my mind. Some of them now gone from life, some still here. These are the faces of people I’ve known whom life has dealt hard blows—injury, severe illness, loss of financial security, betrayal by loved ones, even slow and painful death. And as we all know, these tragedies fall of “good” people as often as they do on “bad.”

    As I look back on all that, the truth of Paul’s words bear out. I’ve seen some experience suffering with anger and bitterness; lashing out at everyone and everything and dying in misery. I’ve seen some experience suffering with incredible grace; not only enduring through it all but being a blessing to everyone who had the privilege of being around them. What was the thing in their lives that made all the difference, the thing that got them through it all?

    What got them through was that thing we call faith. A true, deep faith gives us a bedrock on which to stand. That bedrock is the peace we have with God through our faith. A peace that permits the Holy Spirit to pour God’s love into the deep places of our hearts where it sustains us in any storm. What an incredible gift! Think about that gift this Octave of Whitsun.

revclay

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Romans 5:1-5

    Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

    And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. [NRSV]