In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

“And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing eh persons nor dividing the substance.” Not three gods but one God in essence. And yet not one Person but three Persons. Tri-une. Three in One and One in Three. Got it?

“We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets….”

Today is the Holy Spirit’s day, Pentecost Day, a day full of grace and favor. It is the day the crucified, risen, and reigning Lord Jesus Christ breathed out on His church - 120 believers gathered together in a room. Pentecost means “fifty” in Greek. Fifty days. In the Old Testament, it was the harvest festival of the winter wheat, fifty days after the Feast of Unleavened Bread. In the rabbinic tradition, it celebrated the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai fifty days after the Exodus.

Jesus prays for the Church. He prays for those who believe through the apostolic Word by the Holy Spirit. He prays for you, each of you, as baptized believing members of His Body. The prayer that Jesus prayed in the upper room on the night He was betrayed, the prayer He prayed at the very table where He gave His disciples His own Body as Bread and His own Blood as wine, where He had stooped to wash their feet as an example of humble service, at that very table, He prayed for His apostles and for the Church. And that prayer continues to be prayed today, sustaining the Church and keeping it with the Father and the Son in the unity of the Spirit.

Faith in Christ is forward-looking. The past and the present point forward to the future, to the coming endless Day that was signified by the 7th day in Genesis. No evening, no morning, just endless day in the light of Christ, in the presence of the Father, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. You might say that our faith in Christ is anchored in the past, believed and lived in the present, and oriented toward a future that is bright and glorious. The Lord we worship is the One who was, who is, and who is to come, and He is the same, “yesterday, today, and forever.”

“Now you see me; then you won’t; then you will again.” You have to wonder what was going through the disciples’ heads as they sat at table with Jesus in the upper room on the night He was betrayed. Jesus told them that he had even more to say, more than they could bear. You can only take so much. Jesus is but 12 hours from His crucifixion and now it’s a bit like sipping a drink from a fire hydrant. But no worries about their recalling and understanding. Jesus promises them the Holy Spirit who will lead and guide them into all truth, thereby putting Jesus’ stamp of guarantee on the New Testament.