You can search from the first to the last page of the Bible, and nowhere, nowhere do you find the word trinity. The Holy Trinity is not mentioned anywhere. How come? When we talk about the Blessed Trinity, we’re talking about what we call systematic theology. That is to say, the definition of a clearly delineated proposition. That’s not what you get in the Bible. What you get in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, is relational theology. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all through the New Testament. And there are hints of the three persons of the Blessed Trinity here and there in the Old Testament. The people who wrote the Old Testament would not have been able to discern those hints because they were so fixated on the idea that God was only One that any other concept would not compute.

But what you find in the New Testament, both of the writings of St. Paul and the other apostles, and the Words of Jesus himself, is talk about how we relate to each person and how each person relates to each other person. Jesus almost always speaks of God as Abba, a term of endearment for the father or the patriarch, of a clan, or the head of a family. Abba. He talks about My Father all the time. In John’s gospel he says, “The Father and I are one.” He says, “The Father and I will send the Spirit.” St Paul talks frequently about the power, the action of the Spirit within the Christian community. And so, there are two different ways in which the doctrine of the Trinity is relational in the scriptures. First of all how the persons of God relate to each other. And secondly, how they relate to us, and we relate to them.

So I asked you to pay very close attention to the very first line of the first reading, where Luke gives us a time signature. “When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled.” The word, Pentecost, simply means fifty. So why didn’t he just say, “After fifty days?” Because this is redundant. “When the time for the fifty days was fulfilled,” doesn’t seem to make much sense. But St. Luke wanted us to be clear about what Jewish feast was being celebrated at that very moment. Jesus came to Jerusalem, probably with a large entourage. St. Luke tells us that, among his disciples were at least seventy, in addition to the so-called twelve. Those seventy were almost certainly all men. So in the entourage would’ve been the wives of the majority of them. Certainly the women whose names are mentioned as watching the crucifixion from a distance. Almost certainly his mother would’ve come to Jerusalem for the Passover. And probably the women whose names are mentioned as going to the empty tomb. All in that group as they came, and they had to find lodging for the feast. It would’ve been like going to Daytona during the car races. The place is mobbed. Some of them perhaps had encampments outside the walls of the city.

And so after the devastating events of Good Friday, they would still be in the city for the feast of Passover, which began to be celebrated on the night they buried Jesus. And, after the stunning experience of the Resurrection, most of them probably would’ve stayed on. St. Luke is the only one who tells us that Jesus continued to appear over the course of forty days - an artificial number. It means to suggest that Jesus was preparing His people for something. In John’s gospel we are never told when Jesus ascended into Heaven. In Luke’s gospel, we’re told He ascended on the very night of the Resurrection. Now here, Luke is telling us the exact opposite story. That Jesus hung around for forty more days. So, if Jesus ascended into Heaven after forty days, then something else happened on the fiftieth day. Ten days later.

Those of you who like to go to a casino now and then, know that most of the time you don’t win. Every now and then, if you’re lucky, you come home with a couple of bucks more than you left with, but most of the time you made a huge donation to New York State. But most of you would never dream, as you drive or ride to the casino, of praying to God that you have a good day. And yet, here we have, in our first scripture reading, praying to God, and then using the most common form of gambling in the first century, to choose a replacement for Judas. How come?

I told you to listen carefully to the numbers that are placed into the first reading. The first number comes up so quickly that you were probably still getting settled into your seat, when it passed you by. There are a hundred and twenty people gathered. Where were they gathered? They couldn’t possibly all be in the upper room, where the Pentecost event is going to take place; they wouldn’t have fit. These hundred and twenty people are probably the disciples mentioned so often in the gospels. Saint Luke puts a number on the disciples - seventy or seventy-two - depending on which manuscript you go by. So, when you count disciples in the first century, you only count men, because only men can be witnesses. But most of them were married, so part of the hundred and twenty were their wives. It certainly included the women who watched the crucifixion from a distance. And the women, some of them the same, some different, who, according to different gospel stories, went to the tomb. So why Matthias and Justus? Strange thing about Matthias and Justus. One of them gets chosen by lot, and the other one not, but this is the last time that either name appears in the church’s story. Matthias gets chosen, and disappears from scripture. It almost didn’t matter which one was chosen. The criteria, though, is what matters. This is what St. Peter said was the criterion, “Those who accompanied us the whole time that the Lord Jesus came and went among us, beginning from the baptism of John, until the day on which Jesus was taken up from us.” The reason why, is because they must become witnesses. Witnesses. Not apostles, witnesses. We tend to put the same category being a missionary, and being a witness. The twelve apostles were not viewed, in the early church, primarily as missionaries. They were viewed primarily as witnesses.

All of you here this morning who are parents, especially on this lovely Mother’s Day, all of you who are Moms, here’s a question for you. Would you die for your children? It’s almost a rhetorical question. Almost everybody will automatically say, “Yes.”

Now here’s another question, a little more awkward. Do you have a favorite? I know you do. We’d all like to say “I love all my children, equally.” Well, yes you do, but someplace way back here, there’s a favorite.

In the forty-ninth chapter of Isaiah, Isaiah pictures God as saying to the Israelites, “I will never forget you, my people. I’ve carved you on the palm of my hand. Can a mother forget her children, a child within her womb? Yet even if she should forget, I will not forget.” It’s one of the few places in the Old Testament - and there are some - where God has pictured as mother rather than father.

At a certain point in seminary training you have to learn how to give a homily, and how to interpret the scriptures to give that homily. And so, the professor assigned us to preach on a parable of the Lord Jesus, because they’re fairly easy to preach on. One enterprising young man got up and said to all of us gathered to listen, “What Jesus was trying to say, here in this parable…” And the whole classroom burst into laughter. Except the professor, he didn’t think it was so funny. And the young man didn’t realize what was funny about it. “What Jesus was trying to say,” as though Jesus doesn’t say it very well, and needs an interpreter.

And that’s the case with today’s gospel. The extended metaphor of the vine and the branches is so plain, so easy to understand, that it does not bear commentary by any of us mere mortals. I’ll say just three things. Within the parable, there are words of comfort, words of encouragement, and words of warning.