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Preached - Trinity Sunday...June 3, 2007
Readings: Prov 8:1-4, 22-31; Ps 8; Rom 5:1-5; Jn 16:12-15
“We believe in one God, the Father…We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ…We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life….” These are familiar words to us, taken from the Nicene Creed. But if a person who has never gone to church before hears us reciting these statements, what do you think they’d say? Are we contradicting ourselves when we call the Father God, the Son God, and the Holy Spirit God? Can we say there is only One God when we seem to be calling three distinct persons God? Perhaps we are schizophrenic and out of touch with reality and logic, or maybe we just can’t count!? And what do we mean when we say in the creed that Jesus is “true God from true God and “light from light”? Come to think of it, what do the creeds mean at all? Parts of them kind of make sense, but other parts seem strange and confusing…
Perhaps reciting the creed brings us back to how we used to feel in school when we were forced to struggle through a subject area that we didn’t like. Can you remember a time when in school, or perhaps in a work training program, where you’ve said, “What does this have to do with real life?!” When I was in my last year of high school I was in Calculus for a few weeks before I decided to drop the course. I’d never dropped a course before but I had recently figured out what direction I wanted to go in university and thought I deserved a more relaxed final high school term. My rather eccentric teacher was heart-broken and asked why I was dropping the course—I told her I was going into the arts and wouldn’t need calculus. After all, what does calculus have to do with my life anyways?
She looked defiantly at me and said, “You will always need calculus.”
Do we need the creeds? Specifically today, on Trinity Sunday, do we need the doctrine of the Trinity? Can it be dropped as I dropped calculus some years ago? Many who have been exposed to the teachings of the church have tried to find ways around this teaching because it seems so contradictory, or perhaps even silly. FamousUS President Thomas Jefferson once accused Christianity’s teachings of falling out of step with what Jesus was all about:
“When we shall have done away with the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three; when all shall have knocked down the artificial scaffolding reared to mask from view the simple structure of Jesus; when, in short, we shall have learned everything which has been taught since his day, and get back to the pure and simple doctrines he inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily his disciples.” (13-14).
Jefferson says we should just go back to Jesus and his teachings—and this is a popular sentiment even today among anti-institutionalists who say the church has become corrupt and we must return to the simplicity of Jesus. Allison I discovered this week that this movement is alive and well (though of course those maintaining these views believe they are a part of a new and unique movement). If you are familiar with the facebook phenomenon, the web-based program that allows people to message each other and post information about themselves online, you can find a group that claims to be the “TrueChurch”. These individuals, like Jefferson, seem to deny the Trinity and claim that the church has lost its proper focus which should be on Jesus Christ.
I would agree with these people in part. We in the Church do need constant reminders of Christ’s works and teachings…often times we get distracted and lose our Christ-focus. But I would like to suggest that when we look at Christ’s teachings, and in fact at the whole of Scripture, we find what one theologian calls “footprints of the Trinity” (Pelikan). That is, when we open our Bible and read God’s story with his people we find indicators that this One God reveals himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let’s take a look at our readings this morning and see if we can’t find even just a few of these footprints…
In our first reading today we find the character, Wisdom, created at the beginning of God’s creation, present as God created the world, and who is a source of God’s delight as She rejoices before God and humanity continually. What does this teach us about the Trinity? Well, the main conclusion I think we should draw from this is that the Old Testament does tell of personas who are with God, or perhaps even in God. God alone is the creator, we know that…but if we say God is One does that mean the same that there is one (in a numerical sense) God? Actually, throughout the OT we find that while God is always taught to be One, that is, in perfect unity, that doesn’t mean that he is alone. Recall the words in Genesis, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” (Gen. 1:26) There is a ‘we’ in God…that is, though we ought to say that God is One, that is not to say that we cannot differentiate persons in God.
Perhaps an example from our own language would help us to think about this: When we say we have a favourite sports team—say, the Toronto Blue Jays—that is one team. There are individual players on that team who play different positions, who have different roles on the team, and whose names we can know—but in of themselves they are not a team. They are only a team, one team, when included all together. Something similar can be said of God: He is One, yet perhaps there is something or some-ones about God’s inner workings that we can differentiate or call something else.
Our reading from Romans does this—it differentiates God from God’s Son and God’s Spirit. “We have peace with God…” How? “…through our Lord Jesus Christ.” How do we know this? “Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit…” Hmmm…so we find salvation because of what Jesus did, and what the Holy Spirit continues to do. But every good Christian (and Jew for that matter) knows that it is only God who can save; it is only God who can make things right between himself and humanity. So to say that Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are doing the things that only God can do is in a way identifying them with God.
With me so far? Well, let’s follow the advice of Jefferson and take a closer look at Jesus’ teachings. Our gospel reading today is the last of Jesus’ teachings on the Holy Spirit before Jesus would be “handed over to suffering and death.” Jesus had been teaching the disciples, but now he would be sending the “Spirit of truth” to guide them “into all the truth.” The Spirit would be taking Jesus’ role in his disciples’ lives. How can he do this? Because that’s the way God works—three persons, three individuals working together in perfect unity to bring about our salvation. Jesus says the Holy Spirit will speak to the disciples whatever he hears from Jesus. And whatever Jesus has to convey, whatever Jesus owns, he receives from the Father. So the Father gives to the Son, who gives to the Spirit, who gives to us. (To keep with the baseball team analogy, perhaps it is like how a double play is turned—the ball is caught by the shortstop, who throws to the second baseman, who throws it to the first baseman to record two outs).
This may be one of those ‘difficult teachings’ Jesus so often talks about…but if we are to follow the advice of people like Thomas Jefferson and others who claim to be returning to the simplicity of Jesus, then we cannot leave out these essential teachings. Throughout his life Jesus points his disciples to God the Father…yet when the disciples worship Jesus, Jesus does not rebuke them. And before Jesus leaves he promises another person would come to them…a person who ‘speaks’, ‘leads’, and ‘teaches’. A person not unlike the Wisdom character we read about in the Old Testament who would lead God’s people into life.
The Early Church Fathers who wrestled through Jesus’ teachings came to formulate the creeds because they wished to maintain the central truths God had revealed to his people. And those truths do offer us hope…in fact, they can be exciting! Yes, I’m serious!
Darrell Johnson, author of the book, Experiencing the Trinity, shares some of his excitement over the Church’s traditional teaching on the Trinity. He concludes:
“The living God is not a solitary God. The living God is not an isolated God. From all eternity the living God has lived in relationship—indeed, has lived as relationship. At the center of the universe is relationship. From all eternity the living God has been a community, family. From all eternity the living God has been infinitely pleased as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…And this God draws near to us to draw us near to himself within the circle of his knowing and love of himself.” (61, 68)
How exciting is that?! In a world where our basic community unit, the family, suffers so much hardship and breakdown…in a world where neighbours may go years without knowing each other and where people stare into outer space on the bus rather than make eye contact…in a world where congregations refuse to work together to accomplish God’s mission…and in a world where nations are set against nations in perennial violence…God would draw us into a community of love and intimacy that is beyond our wildest dreams! The Creator of all is himself a unity-of-persons who love and know one another perfectly and whose very nature is to reach out in love to others.
God did not create us because he wanted creatures to worship him to stroke his ego—he created humanity to worship him so that we might be drawn into this circle of love. And within a relationship with God we are free to enjoy the love and intimacy we all crave. Dallas Willard writes,
“It is being included in the eternal life of God that heals all wounds and allows us to stop demanding satisfaction. What really matters, of a personal nature, once it is clear that you areincluded? You have been chosen. God chose you. This is the message of the Kingdom.” (Willard, as cited by Johnson, p.68)
The doctrines of the Church matter—teaching God as Trinity can be intensely personal and ought to fill us all with hope. The brokenness we’ve experienced in our lives will be healed…our questions will be answered…our life does have purpose. Because the great God of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit cannot help but know and love us, and draw us into his own circle love.
May we be open to the Spirit’s teaching us of God’s truths, may we be invigorated by the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, as we celebrate the fact of our salvation through Christ’s grace, and reach out beyond ourselves to invite others to join God’s community love.
Amen.
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