Choral Morning Prayer, Rite I | Trinity Sunday | May 31, 2026

SERMON – Trinity, N.H. Trinity Sunday, 5/31/26

I can recall carrying on a serious theological discussion with my sister when she was in college and I was about 12. It must have been a pretty one-sided interchange. She told me that she believed in God, and knew a lot about Jesus from reading the Bible, and he was, after all, a real person. But the Holy Spirit! Or Holy “Ghost,” as it was referred to in our Presbyterian Church. She didn’t experience, sense, or otherwise believe in the Holy Ghost. At 12, about all I could do was indicate that I shared her confusion.

Like a lot of theological distinctions, our language can further cloud our thinking. We use the word “spirit” in different ways. “That team has spirit; let’s cheer them on!” “What a spirited horse that is!” “Will spirits be served at our party?” Even more muddling are the terms “spirituality” and “spiritualist.” Polls indicate that many Americans hunger for a spiritual dimension to their lives, though we seem to be all over the lot in what we’re seeking. One writer recently identified Americans’ sought-after spirituality as “the peculiar atmosphere of contemporary public life—claustrophobic, faintly hallucinatory, where what we know as real feels like sand shifting under our feet…A Pew survey found that 30 % of Americans consult astrology, tarot cards or fortune tellers at least once a year. New age practices are even more popular among some demographics.” To others of us, spirituality may suggest the occult, communicating with ghosts. And spiritualists, whose services were sought after in the C19th, are generally regarded with skepticism today. So what is this Holy Spirit that invests itself in the lives of Christian folk, and what difference does it make?

The Creed tells us that the Holy Spirit is the giver of life, proceeding from the Father and the Son. It also asserts that the Spirit has spoken through the Prophets, so we regard it as inherent in God’s work and word from the Genesis of our Judeo-Christian history. Later, the Spirit plays an essential role in the Church’s beginnings: both before and following his resurrection, Jesus’ followers were left bereft and bewildered. They’d been helping their leader bring about a new Kingdom; now it seemed sure to collapse without him. But Jesus says wait! Have faith! I will not leave you comfortless, for I leave you with my spirit, an advocate and counselor—the Spirit of Truth. Jesus was trying to get his followers prepared for his not being physically present to them. Instead, he will be present within them as they fulfill his teaching, as they keep alive the love he demonstrated in so many ways. And so it is with you and me. We come to know Jesus as he resides in each of us and in our interactions with one another and with others in the wider world.

The Holy Spirit was essential in the creation of one of our sister denominations. In the early years of the C18th, a group of Christians that later became known as the Moravians were given sanctuary on the estate in Saxony of Count Nicholas Von Zinzendorf. For years the group had been conflicted by controversy over theological issues. One Sunday they began to resolve their differences, and Von Zinzendorf, realizing they were making progress and wanting to keep the conversation going, sent food down to the shed where they were meeting. The food detained them, kept them there working things out, and in the view of later Moravians, allowed the Holy Spirit to help them find unity. The resolution gave rise to the creation of the Moravian Church. To this day,

Moravians celebrate the Lovefeast in recognition of the Holy Spirit’s bringing them together over a meal. I sometimes wonder whether Christians from all over the U.S. might come together over a humongous lunch in, say, St. Louis or Kansas City. Maybe that’s what’s needed! Whatever our Christian affiliation, we can thank God that it’s the Spirit’s working through us that leads us to reach outward; we meet the world outside our tight small groups and help those who can benefit from our Christ-like actions, through the giving of our time, talent and treasure. Today’s Epistle refers to that action as the “communion of the Holy Spirit.”

You and I became Christians through our faith in Jesus. We are confirmed in the belief that calling ourselves Christian commits us to modeling our lives on Jesus and what he taught us. Saying this seems altogether obvious, even unnecessary. And yet, in these latter days, God’s Spirit is facing stiff headwinds, at least in this country. One of the most important things Jesus says over and over is that as we work to make ourselves great, we run a very serious risk of diminishing ourselves. Devoting our lives to becoming powerful and prosperous, our spirit ends up shriveled. As we put others down, it’s our well-being that is threatened. Striking back at those we consider enemies hurts only ourselves, as gradually we become our own enemy. Why do some people who say they are Christians find these nuggets of Jesus’ teaching so illusory, so hard to crack? We don’t need a theological degree to parse these truths; we just need to comprehend what’s in the Good News Bible. And that’s good news! It contains Jesus’ way of living life fully and joyfully. It’s through his parables, healing events and ultimately his sacrifice on the Cross and his rising again that make Christianity known to us.

Unless we understand what Jesus was saying, we can allow ourselves to make greatness, wealth, and power our goals, while trying to make other people smaller. Doing so doesn’t just appear to be un-Christian, that is, unlike Christ; it in fact is.

God offered Jesus the Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, as the means whereby human beings can discover and keep rediscovering the truth, the way and the life. God’s Spirit keeps alive in each of us the potential for embracing that truth, that way and that life. To me the amazing thing is how easy it is to understand. In Matthew, Jesus assures us that his yoke is easy, his burden light. Thank God the Spirit is there to guide us as we yoke ourselves to Jesus’ teaching and accept the burden of our understanding. You might think of the Holy Spirit as a reminder and enabler, reminding us of God’s love for us and of the truth that Jesus taught us, then enabling us to live by that truth. However, as we know only too well, even though reminded and enabled, we still err and stray like lost sheep, like prodigal children; but the very good news is that home is always there to return to, with God the Father meeting us with outstretched arms and a gentle hug, and assuring us once again that we are alive in the Spirit. AMEN.