TRINITY C, June 3, 2007

This is Trinity Sunday. It is a time when we are reminded about the central tenant of our faith. It is also a reminder that we have very little understanding of that tenant, namely, that God is Three in One. Because we truly do not understand the Trinity and yet because we truly want to live out our faith as fully as we can, what we begin to realize sooner rather than later is that wisdom is a virtue that one must want to acquire and develop. A wise person knows that it is not enough to know what to do. One must also act wisely. One must be sound in one’s judgment about what to do, about what to say, about everything.

Even though, as the psalmist reminds us, we are a little lower than angels and that God, in the end, always protects us, that does not prevent us from doing foolish things. We open our mouths and speak without thinking, speak words that come back to haunt us. If we had only been a little wiser and not blurted out the first words that came to our mouth without first passing through our brains, we would have fewer pieces to pick up today. If only, if only, if only – words that a wise person learns how to say less and less with the passing of time.

But wisdom, like every virtue, also takes time to cultivate. We are not born wise. We are born just the opposite. Wisdom is developed only after we recognize the consequences of our foolish and hasty decisions and observing others, usually our parents, doing the same. That is not to say that we should be deliberately foolish just to learn the value of wisdom. That would be totally foolish! Rather it is to say that wisdom, again like all virtues, is learned more in failure than in success. We learn the value of patience after we have suffered the consequence of impatience. We learn the value of honesty after we have suffered the consequences of being dishonest, and so on with all the virtues.

A wise person of faith also knows, as Paul reminds us in the second reading, that just because we have faith, just because we believe we are saved when we die, all of that in and of itself does not and will not spare us our share of suffering. We will still continue to sin, to do that which we know is foolish and wrong. Faith is no guarantee that we will always be wise or that we will be exempt from suffering the consequences of another person’s foolishness.

In fact, it seems, especially when we read the lives of the saints, that the more faith one has, the greater that faith is put to the test through pain and suffering. Paul is a classic example of that truth. His words to the people of Rome come from firsthand experience. He knows whereof he speaks when he reminds us that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope.

We know all this to be true. We know personal faith in God and a personal feeling of the assurance of our eternal salvation are no guarantee that we will not have to suffer for that faith and endure much pain before we experience that salvation. Yet, there seems to be something inside us that rebels against the notion that pain and suffering are good both for the body and the soul and that no matter how strong our faith, we should not be an exception to the rule. We want to be that exception and sometimes think we should be. But we never are.

Paul knows that to be the case. That is why, I think, he does not even address that issue with the people of Rome. He simply reminds them that their faith is justification enough and that because of their faith eternal life is theirs. Then he goes on to talk about life in the here and now. That life, he says, will be one of suffering, if not always, certainly at times. So, when suffering does come, he says, use it as an opportunity to grow as a person, if nothing else.

Sometimes that is all any of us can do. We have to use the suffering that comes our way, whether that suffering is the result of our own foolishness or the result of bad genes or simply the result of bad luck, to grow as a wise person of faith. When we endure in faith, knowing God will give us all we need to get through the difficult time, we will grow as a person and will learn that we always have a reason to hope: God will see us through next time as God did this time as God did last time as God always does.

Our faith and the wisdom that infuses that faith is what sees us through life, and sometimes it is only our faith that gets us through the difficult times. We can only imagine what life would be like were we not to have faith, were we to try to make sense out of what seems like nonsense. I have tried to imagine it. It is not a pretty picture.

I suspect all this is akin to what many people say come many a Friday. They want to say, "Praise the Lord! I made it through the week, or I will have if I can just get through today." Sure, the week wasn’t that bad. Even those proverbial "Weeks from hell" have their redeeming qualities, if only that they come to an end. Come the end of the week, we realize that we are the wiser because of it. The weekend brings resurrection and new life so that when Monday comes, it is time to start all over, refreshed, renewed, alive again.

The wise person of faith knows that God will not allow us to get weighed down with more trials and tribulations and hardships than we can handle during any week. God’s grace is sufficient for us just as it was for Paul. God does not overwhelm or overload us with too much of anything, even with knowledge about the Trinity.

In the scene in which today’s Gospel reading takes place the disciples wanted to know everything about everything. Jesus’s response was that they would, in due time, in God’s time, not in their time. If they did not like that answer, that was too bad. They would have to be satisfied with that answer because that was the only answer they would get. In due time, when the time was right, when they needed to know, then God’s Holy Spirit would somehow make known to them what needed to be done, but not before then.

I know the feeling. Many times events occur and I want to know why. I want to know what to do next. I want to see the whole picture right now, and very clearly. I want the wisdom to understand. When, in my frustration I call upon God to let me in on the big picture, God probably smiles and says, "In due time, Bill, you will be. In due time." Okay, I don’t actually hear God saying that. I simply have a hunch that is what God is saying to me – and to anyone like me who wants to know too much too soon.

When the need to know arrives, I/we will know. That may simply be for our own protection. Perhaps if we really did know the big picture all at once, we wouldn’t go down that road, a road God wants us to go down and which God will lead us down. I suspect Jesus didn’t know the big picture out there in the wilderness, didn’t see the cross or even the resurrection. If he had, he might have simply gone back to Nazareth and continued being a carpenter. It was only bit by bit, piece by piece that Jesus gained the wisdom to see and understand what was in store, step by step along the road to Calvary and Easter Sunday.

The same was true for Paul and for all the saints. So, too, with us. Faith, wisdom, understanding come in bits and pieces, but they come nevertheless and in God’s good and due time, not ours, even as they often comes at the expense of our own pain and suffering. They also come with God’s grace.