READINGS

John 16:12-15

HOMILY

Usually, this is a Sunday where the subject matter - the Holy Trinity - is or seems to be an excuse for extraordinary speculations or else frank confessions of the whole thing such a complete mystery  that it's scarcely worth talking about.

Today is the day when we celebrate what we have learned about God and why it makes such a difference for us, why it is a subject of praise, adoration, and glory.

The doctrine of the Trinity is far from being some kind of immensely complicated intellectual abstraction, is an account of how God is close to us.

Let me just explain this very briefly following really the pattern which we've been seeing in John's Gospel.

1. The notion of God.

You might say (supposing that you believe in God at all) that there's something bigger than all this, it's just there.

We don't know anything about it, it's utterly other than us.

All we have to go on is this creative world.

And that doesn't give us a very clear idea of what God is about.

And if there's one sentence that's true we cannot know what God is of ourselves we have no criterion for God.

This is why the next step is so important.

We have no criterion for God, which means that any of us at any time can say that such and such a set of weather conditions are assigned that God is in favour of this or that or the other. 

We say that God is entirely outside our framework of knowing.

That means that the most powerful of our criteria get to describe what God is.

That means typically the criterion of kings and conquerors and murderers and winners and losers.

God is simply used by the powers that be it's simply the reflection of human power.

However (and this is an absolutely key point), the Christians say that we have a criterion for God.

We don't just say that that criterion is our criterion, a human criterion, but we say that God's criterion for God took on the life of a human being, the second person of the Trinity is God's criterion for God.

The ancient world referred to as the logos, the word what it means is God's criterion for God.

This is how God understands God's self.

Then comes and lives among us as a human in the midst of a poor colony of the roman empire a very  long time ago in the midst of a whole variety of important religious and political discussions.

God can't have a criterion for God's self which is anything less than God or it wouldn't be God's criterion for God's self.

It would be a criterion for something else.

God's criterion for God's self is a God that criterion has come among us as a human, but any human sign symbol is radically capable of different interpretations.

For instance, Jesus going up to God to giving himself up to death on a cross could easily be interpreted as God punishing Jesus for being a seditious blasphemer.

God accepting Jesus as a blood sacrifice to pay off some terrible wrath in God's heart.

Any human symbol is capable of a multiplicity of meanings so to understand God's criterion fully, you don't only need the criterion of the human life and death of Jesus, but the ability to interpret the criteria or else it would be God speaking his criteria to us and leaving us to work out what on earth it meant.

We'd be at the mercy of our systems of power and blame and vengeance and rivalry.

In order to give us meaning, God gives is not only God's criterion for God, but God's interpretation of God's criteria for God. 

That is the Spirit with which God does all this and, of course, God's interpretation.

Now God is someone in whom we live and move and have our being that has been breathed onto us God's  interpretation of what God was doing in coming amongst us and it's an interpretation of love.

God has shown us that God's creating everything, bringing everything into being had a criterion human flourishing and furthermore that that was a plan, a project with intelligence that shows the glory of God and that God's interpretive intelligence is given us in the Holy Spirit so that we can begin to interpret reality and come to discover what really is as we follow the example and life of  Jesus.

Learning to give ourselves away, learning not to grasp onto fake meaning holding back the possibility of learning what really is, but being found ourselves on the inside of the adventure of creation as daughters and sons of God.

If you have a notion of God that does not include the criterion and interpretation you don't really have a notion of God, but an ocean of an idol.

That's what makes the Trinity absolutely an astounding doctrine.

It means that the act of communication is real, it's a genuinely real other, sometimes referred to as the "other other" who is coming through to us giving themselves a criterion that is not ours to make.

We are more than we thought we could be: that's the sheer amazement and joy and delight of finding ourselves on the inside of this act of communication that is turning us into sons and daughters of the most High. n

Now, just in case you think I'm making it up, let's look at today's gospel text.

We have Jesus that's called criterion for God.

I still have many things to say to you now,  but you cannot bear them now.

Jesus knew perfectly well that God's criterion for God would produce such an interruption of all normal human ways of being that the process of learning thereafter would open up whole new worlds which would be at least initially radically incomprehensible.

Let's remember that God's criterion for God came amongst us in the midst of three possibilities of determining the criteria for God.

1) Imperial possibility represented by Pilate   2) Priestly and sacrificial possibility represented by Caiaphas 3) Textual possibility represented by the scribes and pharisees

God came among us as a serious blasphemer whose interpretation of the text was such as to leave completely flummoxed the guardians who saw in it the work of the legislator.

God's criterion for God explodes all are ordinary forms of meaning.

I still have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now.

We couldn't and we still can't.

It's still very difficult for us to step outside the ways in which our Gods, our idols, constrain us when the Spirit of truth comes. 

That's God's interpretation of God's criteria: that one will guide you into all the truth. 

It'll be interpreting why God sent us God's criteria for God and what that criteria looks like in our midst.

We're constantly able to live in the same dynamic of the criterion of God or what the father has is mine. 

Jesus referring to God as the father already  personalizing the great impersonal other, but saying that the entire meaning of God is available in God's criterion, which is me.

There are no extra bits of God floating around out there that I am not bearing witness to all.

There are several different ways in which in different gospels that same reality is referred to the father is not an extra person outside.

Observing with a different set of emotional reactions a different set of qualities no literally everything that is in the Father becomes visible in the son the Christ.

The son is the criterion for the Father, the image of the Father, the icon of the Father, the way, the humanly available way.

For this reason, I said that the Spirit will take what is mine and declare it to you.

In other words, God's interpretation of God's criterion for God is going to be what's operative amongst you, now building you up into an intelligence of all the things that I, Jesus, am showing you taking exactly from what I've been doing my words my actions so that you will understand that it wasn't paying the price for some terrible vengeance, but so that you will see that literally everything that I was doing was the image of the Father creating and bringing to being. 

Even creating this is an important point Jesus is not simply the saviour. Jesus is the creator.

The Father gives us the entire criterion for God's creation in Jesus.

Jesus is the criterion for creation which means that his going up to his death and his breathing out the Spirit is the closest analogy we get we get to what creation looks like.

The words Jesus uses are the birth pangs, which is a terribly terribly dangerous moment whereby a woman puts her life and health extraordinarily at risk in order to bring a child into the world.

It is someone being prepared to die in order to breathe out their Spirit so that everyone else can be brought to life.

That's the nearest analogy to creation.

It's a picture not of a hugely massively powerful maker from outside but of someone who's prepared entirely generously to do something that's going to be independent of them and then enable people to begin to flourish freely inside that so as to come to discover who they are.

It's this fantastic picture of the relationship, the sheer friendliness the warmth, the spaciousness of the love that is opening up what can seem to us a frightening and terrifying and vengeful and violent world and is that God is not associated with any of those things, but that there is this huge interpretation of love trying to well through us so that we are able to participate in it with peace and with joy.

SUMMARY

The Trinity is a account of how God is close to us.

We have no criterion for God, which means that any of us at any time can say that God is entirely outside our framework of knowing.

It is now a reflection of human power (like kings or emperors).

God's criterion for God took on the life of a human being. This is how God understand God's self.

God also gives God's interpretation of God's criteria for God.

That we are able at all to begin to try to work out that a word is spoken to us is because we are given both the criterion and interpretation.

Now God is someone in whom we live and move and have our being.

That interpretation is love.

God has shown us that God is creating everything, bringing everything into being, enabling a criterion of human flourishing.

God's interpretive intelligence is given us in the Holy Spirit, so we can being to interpret reality and come to discover what really is, as we follow the example and life of Jesus (learning to give ourselves away, not to grasp onto fake meaning), finding ourselves in the adventure of creation as daughters and sons of God.

The doctrine of the Trinity means that the act of communication is real (is a genuinely real 'other'), coming through to us giving themselves a criterion and interpretation that is not ours, as to make of us something much more than we thought we could be.

God's criterion for God explodes all are ordinary forms of meaning.

The entire meaning of God is available in God's criterion which is Jesus.

The Spirit will take what is mine and declare it to you.

God's criterion for God is going to be what's operative amongst you now, building you up into an intelligence of all the things that I, Jesus, am showing you.

Taking exactly from what I've been doing, my words, my actions, so that you will understand that it wasn't paying the price for some terrible vengeance, but so that you see that literally everthing that I was doing was the image of the Father creating and bringing to being.

Jesus is not simply the savior, Jesus is the creator.