Submitted by Jan on Tue, 17/05/2016 – 20:08
Trinity Sunday, 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2nd Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 3
Year C (2015-2016)
Bible Book: John
Chapter: 16
Verse: 12 – 15
My observation is that there are many people who speak of the Trinity without fully understanding God the Holy Spirit. How many times is the Holy Spirit mentioned in our prayers, let alone in sermons? Some people may argue that by mentioning God, we are covering God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As much as that is true, why do we specifically mention the Father and the Son in most of our prayers and sermons? Listen to your own prayers and those of others and you will understand what I am talking about.
Different people will give different answers, some of them theologically sound. But the question still remains, why mention the Holy Spirit less often than the Father and the Son? I think that one of the reasons is our lack of understanding of the person of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s work. There are many people today who do not address the Holy Spirit as a Person the way they do with God the Father and the Son. We have often treated the Holy Spirit as a lesser person in the Trinity.
John 16:13 challenges us to start looking at the Holy Spirit differently. Jesus says it is the Holy Spirit who reveals the truth about God.
Have you ever been in a situation where you asked someone to give you direction to a particular place and the person said they did not know the direction to the place you are asking? How did you feel when the person gave you the direction? What difference does it make if the person does not just give you the direction but offers to take you to the destination? Obviously, the relief and joy is unexplainable! Apart from revealing the truth about God, the Holy Spirit leads us into all the truth the Spirit reveals about God! Hallelujah! If we fully understood who the Holy Spirit is and what the Spirit does, we would start treating the Spirit differently.
What are the dangers of not understanding the Holy Spirit and not treating the Spirit accordingly? There are many dangers. One of them is that we are bound to do things that are not in line with the truth about God. We might be leaders in the different religious spheres and indeed served for many years but our understanding of the truth about God is dependent on the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who reveals this truth. It is the Spirit who takes what God the Father says and gives it to us. The passage further says that the Holy Spirit does this with the intention of glorifying God the Father. It is difficult for anyone to glorify God the Father without listening to the Holy Spirit.
Have you at times wondered or been puzzled by what even some people who we regard as “great leaders of God” do or say strange things? It could be that the strange things they say are not given to them by the Holy Spirit. In this era of HIV and AIDS, is everything we hear from people, including our church leaders, about the infected and affected really coming from the Holy Spirit?
To think about: Holy Spirit, reveal to me the truth about HIV and AIDS. What is God’s truth about the infected as well as the affected? How does God want me to react?
Written By: Rev. Lloyd Khanyanga, Executive Director, Family Life And AIDS Education Ministry (FLAEM), Malawi, trained ‘Churches, Channel of Hope’ Facilitator and CABSA Country Representative.
Author: Khanyanga L (Rev)
Language: English