Trinity Sunday

Seven years ago I took a training course in the army that happily offered five weeks off from admin and emails and a good deal of fresh air in God’s own county of Yorkshire.

Each day we’d run for ten miles around the hills carrying 35lbs and a rifle.

Being a chaplain, I was not allowed a rifle, but some Sapper had put together a cross made of two iron bars that weighed the same as a rifle.

I think some thought has gone into the construction of rifles and slings.

No thought had gone into the construction of this bludgeon which punched me in the back with every step.

But happily it was Lent and so added to the austerity of my devotions.

The worst day was a tab – a run called “the Land of Nod”, which just involved running up and down very steep hills again and again and again.

I remember falling so far behind the pace I didn’t know which hill to run up next.

It was crushingly dispiriting.

The course is all about keeping with the group, and if you can’t bear the pace it’s both mentally and physically awful.

In the afternoons we’d share water for cold baths then hot baths and sleep four to a room.

Shared suffering is a great aid to friendship.

During a weekend, halfway through I drove the most beautiful drive in the country, from Catterick to Blackpool.

I could almost have been in Wales.

That special work in which the master worker delights.

It was the 2PARA reunion weekend and during the dinner a wife of a senior officer asked me about P Company and whether I was going to pass.

Bearing in mind that 180 men began the course and we were down to around 80, I replied somewhat ambivalently.

I could tell immediately she thought I’d never pass, lacking optimism and positivity.

In my experience, healthy realism goes a lot further.

I passed on the yard of ale, the chaplain is normally required to drink, and headed back after taking a service in the morning.

Back at Catterick, we bore the trials together, I bore my cross, and at the end we got our berets.

The army throughout my short commission was a constant surprise to me in what I could bear.

Sleeping in winter in a field without a sleeping bag,

Not sleeping for three days,

Being bawled out by someone half my age for having water in my sink.

There are many things I would have said I could not bear now, but the Spirit was there for me.

It’s useful sometimes, when dealing with the Bible, to take a single word and look how it’s used, where it’s used, finding the connections that give the word it’s meaning within the text and tradition.

Our word this morning is bastazein (bastazein), and the English word that serves it very well is the verb ‘to bear’.

So we heard in the Gospel: ‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now’;

Which was a favourite line of the former Bishop of London Richard Chartres, during the sermon in the long Chrism Mass on Maundy Thursday.

‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now’;

Jesus is speaking to the disciples less prosaically, at the moment of trial.

And they are not yet ready.

This same word ‘bastazein, to bear’ is deployed at the key moment of the Gospel in chapter 19 as we are told that ‘bearing the cross by himself, Jesus went out to what is called the Place of the Skull’;

In Luke’s Gospel it’s the word used for Mary bearing Jesus in the womb, and for the disciple who must bear the cross and follow Jesus to be a disciple.

In Galatians and Romans we are told to ‘bear one another’s burdens’ and to ‘bear with the failings of the weak’.

In the book of Acts Ananias is told in a vision to ‘bear my name before Gentiles and kings and the people of Israel’.

So bearing is associated with suffering, and in particular suffering associated with discipleship – following Christ.

But it is the revelation of the glory of God.It’s Incarnational in Mary’s bearing of her Son;

It’s redemptive as Jesus bears his cross;

It’s ecclesial, a mark of discipleship, as we bear with one another;

And missional as we bear his name in the world.

‘Bearing with’ is really synonymous with discipleship.

St Paul’s attest to this in the crucial passage of Romans we heard earlier:

‘We boast in our sufferings’.

This is strong language from Paul.

He’s constantly attacking the boasters.

The Greeks boast of their gifts and try to outdo one another.

They’re a bit like Trump and his: “I can be the most presidential person ever”

Here Paul has in mind more those who boast in the Law and their own righteousness;

But it’s a similar thing:

While others boast in what makes them great, Paul turns it upside down boasting in his weakness,

Because there he sees the power of God.

While others point towards themselves, Paul is only satisfied when he is pointing to Christ, or his fellow Christians –

And so ‘suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope’

Because as we turn aside from ourselves we will find the Spirit;

‘hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.’

What is difficult is knowing what that will mean or look like.

We simply have the promise – that yes in this present moment it may seem too much to bear.

But the Spirit will not abandon us;

That where our resilience is ready to fail;

God is with us.

And it may be somewhere like the terror of a girl on her own bearing a child within her, like a man alone bearing a cross up a hill,

Like the running up and down hills that can define the monotony of life’s chores,

Or those particular hardships where we, breathless, fail and can do no more.

But we are a church.

And we are told to bear with one another.

To bear one another’s burdens.

To bear with the weak.

So I hope if you feel like you are bearing your cross at this time, you reach out to your church, because that’s what’s it’s there for.

And if you’re bearing up okay, then perhaps you have within you the gifts of the Spirit to bear up another.

St Augustine in his description of the Trinity famously spoke of the Spirit as the love between the Father and the Son.

An appropriate metaphor for Father’s Day, if you keep with it.

Father’s Day, that is, not the Holy Trinity, which is after all a matter of sacred doctrine.

We are keeping it this year, with the children’s mother going away and leaving the three of us to a boys’ weekend.

On these lines we might say it is the Spirit that raises the Son, that bears him up, through the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension.

In faith, then, it’s love also that bears us up.

That lifts us up where we belong, so to speak.

Let us then endeavour to bear one another up, and take hold of the Spirit when we fall, knowing that our weakness is our strength and that in our suffering is our hope.

Amen.