“Let’s do some ironing” a reflection for Trinity Sunday
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”
On first reading of these words a sense of frustration bubbles up within me. How come I can’t know the many things God wants to say to me today? I can deal with it. I can take it and by the way what exactly are those ‘things?’
Surely I should know, surely I have a responsibility to know, and dare I say it …I have a right to know… and yet… the Masters words and their meaning are quite clear. Not yet.
It would be irresponsible and possibly damaging for me if I were to know those ‘things’.
So we might look back and think about some of the painful things we have learned over the years. If we are honest and had known how adventurous and challenging and yes how painful the journey was going to be, then maybe we would not have signed on at all.
We would have typed a quick letter declining God’s very generous offer of the role of a cross carrying, foot washing, endlessly forgiving servant. We would have packed sun tan lotion and bathers and headed for an apartment on the Gold coast.
But we didn’t type that letter and here we are, sometimes years later, still signed up and showing up. We also realise that if we had given up we would have missed out on some of the most sumptuous and exquisite ministry both given and received. Moments of unlooked for, indescribable beauty and exquisite love. The undeserved moments that found us simply because we were open to the possibility.
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”
So I wonder what else God might have in store for us in the future. When we are ready He will whisper these things to us and lead us into situations and encounters that we could never have dreamed of. Things that we cannot bear on the 12th of June 2022, but will be ready for next week, next month or even next year.
So today’s gospel is really about all time.
This is our experience, that we need time to understand what Jesus said, for it is often not a question of theoretical knowledge, but of things of the heart: the meaning of love, of suffering, the presence of God in our life, in others, in the Church.
So the Masters words are liberating and refreshing. It’s OK not to have all the answers given to us on a platter yesterday. It’s OK to go on questioning and asking and listening and praying and waiting. Today’s gospel is not just about the present, its about having confidence and trust and faith into the future.
The world will keep turning as it always has from the beginning of time. The church always finds itself trying to understand and live its faith in the midst of social, cultural, and global circumstances that change rapidly.
The Holy Spirit will keep on leading, challenging, nudging and prodding us. As we totter along through time, all we have to do is be open to the hints that he feeds us even when and especially when, we might find them unpalatable.
It might have been tempting for John to devalue any new understanding of the Christian message that emerges when Jesus is no longer visibly present.
But no, John places firm confidence in the Spirit as continuing the ongoing presence and revealing of Jesus within the Christian community. For John, the church does not need to fear learning and practicing its faith in Jesus in the midst of a changing world marked by Jesus’ physical absence. The Spirit “will declare to you the things that are to come” In other words, the Spirit makes possible a “deep understanding of what Jesus means for us here and now in the year 2022, without betraying the core truth of Jesus’ original teaching in the year nought.
The trick is to be totally focussed on the present, whilst being open to what will find you in the future. And here’s a story about how to do that.
Imagine yourself doing the ironing. Right now, doing the ironing is the most important thing in the whole wide world. It’s all you are and it’s everything you are doing. You are not hanging out the washing, or typing an email or chattering with Mr. Guffoops about chooks and the footy. Right now, at this very moment, you are doing the ironing. You are not thinking about anything else.
New things do await you. New things will happen; exciting and disappointing escapades will find you. Nothing surer. But at this very second you are completely absorbed in just doing the ironing.The things that God has to say to you will come in His time, not yours.
‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.’
Perhaps we will be most ready to bear them, when the ironing is pressed, folded and stored tidily away.