Trinity Sunday, 16 June 2019: Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth
“When the Spirit of truth comes,” said Jesus, “he will guide you into all truth.”
The truth is coming. He said. The truth is on its way. The truth is not a given, it is not handed to us on a plate so that we now have all the knowledge we’ll ever need, so that we now know all that we ever need to know. No - the Spirit comes to guide us into all truth. But one day the truth will be complete. One day there will be a revelation, an unveiling when all will fall into place. For the Spirit comes to guide us into all truth.
Two thousand years after Jesus, the Spirit is at work guiding us into all the truth. For there are truths we still haven’t been able to bear that the Spirit is waiting to guide us into. Religious truths; scientific and historical truths; economic and ecological truths; all kinds of truth. [1]
Perhaps the most difficult truth that the Spirit is yet to help us bear is the truth about why, so often, we turn our face away from things we know to be true; about what it is that causes us to deny truth so that we fail to act in response to it. Why our numbness in the face of reality?
I heard a truth today, oh boy. Across the world we daily grow nearly two and a half times as much food as the amount the average person needs to eat to be healthy. And yet around 800 million people go undernourished and a further two billion or so suffer some kind of ‘hidden hunger’, deficiencies in proteins or nutrients. [2] And I need help in understanding how this comes to be. I need guiding into all the truth about this; the truth about why it happens and the truth about how I as a person, how we as a community, can respond in compassion and equity. For another truth I hear today is the truth God spoke through Isaiah when he said to the devout ones like you and me:
Is not this the devotion that I want from you: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly. [3]
And another truth I hear again today, the truth which Jesus spoke, that whenever you feed the hungry one, give drink to the thirsty one, welcome a stranger and give clothing to the naked one, whenever you take care of the sick one and visit a prisoner, “I tell you, just as you do it to one of the least of these members of my family, you do it to me.” [4]
The times we live in demand that we yearn for truth, we never stop searching for truth, we struggle where necessary for truth. For the truth is coming. The truth is on its way. Whilst the Spirit is waiting to guide us into those truths we still find hard to bear, we may find ourselves on the wrong side of truth if it overtakes us.
The times we live in require us to ask the Spirit to guide us into truth. To live in response to it. To not be afraid to speak it. The world is too delicate, too precious, too valuable for us to stand aside or stay silent.
We have heard the truth of late from the mouth of a sixteen year old. Greta Thunberg, whose great gift is a prophetic clarity and persistence in the face of the burning forests of our rapidly-warming world. We heard her address the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, saying,
I often hear adults say: ‘We need to give the next generation hope’. But I don’t want your hope. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I do. Every day. And want you to act. I want you to behave like our house is on fire. Because it is. [5]
Now there’s a saying doing the rounds which goes, ‘Not knowing the truth doesn't make you ignorant. Not wanting to know the truth is what makes you ignorant.’ [6] So we should pay heed to the modern day prophets who the Spirit is using to guide us into truths which will make us uncomfortable, and may cause us suffering of sorts - if suffering means giving up our oil-powered, plastic-drowned lifestyles - for the deeper truth, as expressed by Paul in his letter to the Romans, is 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. [7]
It’s hard to get to the truth of things sometimes. And so many of us are hiding from the truth - especially about ourselves. But remember another thing Jesus said: ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ [8]
Look at St Paul, whose transformation from violent oppressor of Christians to the greatest earliest Christian missionary witnessed to what the truth of God can do when it comes to a person in power. The truth that Saul held fast to, for so long, had been handed to him by Moses - it was The Law; it was, he thought, all the knowledge he ever needed to know. But Saul was a devout man, and I think it very likely that made him always open to the Spirit's guiding him into truth. So when the Spirit came to him in that great revelation, that unveiling of Jesus on the road to Damascus, then all fell into place for Saul, soon to be Paul.
The truth that dawned on Paul was that through Jesus we each stand in God’s grace. He discerned the deepest of truths, that we are so absolutely graced, and that because we stand in God’s grace, we can live in hope - the hope of sharing God’s glory, the hope of being the people God intended us to be, able to play our part in shaping the world into the place God wants it to be.
The truth is coming. The truth is on its way. Every moment, every day the Spirit comes to guide us into all truth. The truth will challenge us and change us; but if we follow where it leads us then ultimately the truth will make us free. Let us embrace afresh today this wonderful search for truth.
Notes
[1] Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary: Trinity Year C, John 16:12-15, Reflections and Questions.
[2] Mike Berners-Lee, There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years. p.13-16.
[3] Isaiah 58.6-8 altered.
[4] Matthew 25.31-46 altered.
[5] Greta Thunberg, Our House is On Fire, in No One Is Too Small To Make a Difference, p.19-24.
[6] Unattributed. It’s a meme. You can find it all over the web, including here.
[7] Romans 5.3-5.
[8] John 8.31-32
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