Sermon: Above, Beside, and Within (2017)

Delivered at Brandon United Methodist Church in Greenville, South Carolina on June 11, 2017, Trinity Sunday

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Above, Beside, and Within

Philip said to [Jesus], “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”  Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?  Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.  How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?  The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.  Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.  Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.  I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.  This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.  You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.  In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.  On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.  They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”  Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?”  Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.  Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.

“I have said these things to you while I am still with you.  But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.”

John 14:8-26 (NRSV)

We believe in the one true God

We believe in Father, Spirit, Son

We believe that good has won

From “Manifesto” by The City Harmonic

It was not until I started preaching and paying closer attention to the weekly Scripture readings from the Lectionary that I realized how many special days are on the Church calendar.  Like most people, I was familiar with the high holy days of Christmas and Easter, and, coming from a liturgical tradition, I was familiar with the seasons of preparation that precede them, Advent and Lent respectively.  I had been introduced to other special days like Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, Pentecost, and All Saints' Day.  What I did not realize is that there are so many special days commemorating events in the story of Jesus.  On the Sunday after Epiphany, we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus; on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, we remember Jesus' Transfiguration; and, on the Sunday before Pentecost, we celebrate Jesus' Ascension into Heaven.

Today is Trinity Sunday, another lesser-known holy day on the Church calendar.  Today we remember that God has been revealed to humanity in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The word trinity is not found anywhere in Scripture; however, we do find hints of a Triune God.  For example, in the Gospel of Matthew, the ministry of Jesus is bookended with references to the three persons of the Trinity.  After Jesus is baptized, the heavens open as He emerges from the water.  The Holy Spirit takes the form of a dove and descends upon Him, and the voice of God the Father is heard, saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”¹  After Jesus is resurrected from the dead, the Disciples meet Him in Galilee, and He commissions them to continue the work He started, saying, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...”²

The first recorded use of the word trinity to describe God was by the 3rd-century theologian Tertullian.³  The Church's doctrine of the Trinity was formalized as a creed at the First Council of Nicaea in 325, and this creed was revised at the First Council of Constantinople in 381.⁴  The Nicene Creed states, “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.”  The creed states, “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father.”  The creed states, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets”⁵

What makes the doctrine of the Trinity particularly difficult to explain is that fact that it is so easy to say something heretical, in other words, something contrary to the established teachings of the Church.  For example, one might think that, if the Father is God, and if the Son is God, and if the Spirit is God, then perhaps God takes on different forms at different times.  This idea is called modalism, and it is generally regarded as a heresy.  The problem with modalism is that it denies that the Trinity is three distinct persons.⁶  With that in mind, one might think that, if the Father is not the Son, and if the Son is not the Spirit, and if the Spirit is not the Father, then maybe we actually worship three distinct Gods.  This idea is called tritheism, and it too is generally considered a heresy.⁷  The problem with tritheism is that Christianity is a monotheistic religion.  Though we speak of a Triune God, we agree with our Jewish brothers and sisters who proclaim, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”⁸

It seems to me that explaining what the Trinity is not is a lot easier than explaining what the Trinity actually is.  The doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery and a paradox.  God is one, yet, at the same time, God is somehow three.

Perhaps it would be simpler to consider the Triune God's relationship with humanity and the ways that humanity has experienced Triune God.


God Above Us

The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that God is above us.  The parental title of the first person of the Trinity, the Father, reminds us that God is our divine, loving parent and that we are all children under God's authority.  God is our creator and our provider: God gave us life and every blessing we enjoy in life.  In the words of one beloved hymn, “All I have needed thy hand hath provided.”⁹  God is also our sovereign Lord and the ruler over all creation.

When I say that God is above us, I mean not only that God reigns above us but also that God is above our intellect.  As God says through one prophet, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways...  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”¹⁰  When Job wants to argue with God, God says to him, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?  Tell me, if you have understanding.  Who determined its measurements – surely you know!  Or who stretched the line upon it?”¹¹  The psalmist David reflects on God's complete knowledge of him and on God's continuous presence with him and says, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.”  He reflects on how carefully and thoughtfully God knit him together and proclaims, “How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!  How vast is the sum of them!  I try to count them – they are more than the sand.”¹²  Indeed, our knowledge of the divine is but a drop in an ocean.

One of the Ten Commandments forbids the creation of idols or images of gods to worship.¹³  Some would go so far as to say that it also forbids images of the one true God, for such images cannot adequately represent God.  In the Book of Exodus, it could be inferred that the golden calf the Israelites wrongly worshiped in the wilderness was created to represent the God “who brought [them] up out of the land of Egypt.”¹⁴  I wonder the same commandment might also apply to our mental images of God.  If we finite humans cannot fully comprehend an infinite God, then we would do well to hold our own conceptions of God with humility, lest we too be guilty of creating idols in our minds.  The French philosopher Voltaire once observed, “If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.”¹⁵

Ultimately, God is a mystery.  I think that maybe the mystery and otherness of God can be frightening to us.  C.S. Lewis writes that the fear of God is less like the fear of a tiger and more like the fear of a ghost.  If a tiger was in the room, we would be afraid because of what we know about it, but, if a ghost was in the room, we would be afraid because of what we don't know about it.¹⁶  The latter kind of fear is not a totally inappropriate response to God, for we must never let ourselves think that we've figured God out.  On the other hand, I think the conflicting messages we hear about God can be a source of anxiety.  Some people speak only of God's grace, mercy, and love, while others speak primarily of God's anger and judgment, and the two groups often seem to be at odds with each other.  Whom are we to believe?


God Beside Us

In the Gospel of John, we read that, hours before Jesus is arrested, He tells the Disciples that He will soon leave them to return to the Father.  He reassures them that they will someday join Him and that they already know the way to where He is going.  The Disciples still have a lot of questions about the Father and about how to go where Jesus is going.¹⁷  At one point, the disciple Philip bluntly says, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”  If there were as many competing messages about God in their day as there are in ours, we cannot blame Philip for making his request.

What if the infinite God decided to describe God's self in a way that we finite humans can understand – or perhaps I should say, in a Word we can understand.  What if God somehow left behind the glory of Heaven and took on the flesh and blood of humanity to walk beside us?¹⁸  What if, in the words of Eugene Peterson, God “moved into the neighborhood” with us?¹⁹  This is essentially what we learn from an ancient Christian hymn found at the beginning of John's Gospel.  We read,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen His glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth...  No one has ever seen God.  It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made Him known.²⁰
The Greek term translated into English as word is logos.²¹  It is this word logos that John uses to describe second person of the Trinity, the Son, who is made known to us in Jesus Christ.

Jesus says to Philip, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?  Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”  Earlier in the conversation, Jesus said, “If you know me, you will know my Father also.  From now on you do know him and have seen him.”²²  Jesus Christ is God Incarnate, in other words, God in the flesh.  When we are confused and frightened by the conflicting messages we hear about God, we are invited to look to Jesus to see what God is truly like.  In the words of Brian Zahnd, “God is like Jesus.  God has always been like Jesus.  There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus.  We have not always known what God is like - but now we do.”²³

The Church teaches us that Christ is fully God and, at the same time, fully human.  In the Gospels, He is called both Son of God and Son of Man.  In Christ, we see that God is fully capable of empathizing with us, for we know that God has literally walked a mile in our shoes.  In Christ, we know that God has experienced the beauty, the messiness, and even the pain of being human.²⁴  To say that Christ is fully human is to say that He entered fully into the human experience, but it is not to say that He is just like us.  Christ is fully human, but we are not fully human.²⁵  We have been broken by sin, and, as a result, we often do not live as God created us to live.  Christ came to Earth as part of a divine plan to save a broken creation, and I believe that part of His mission was to show us how to be fully human.  Interestingly, in the Common English Bible, wherever Jesus would refer to Himself as the Son of Man in other translations of the Bible, He calls Himself the Human One, reminding us that He is the one who is truly human.


God Within Us

When the Disciples hear that Jesus will soon leave them, they are naturally anxious about carrying on without Him.  Jesus says to them, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.”  If you are familiar with the story of Jesus up to this point, then you know that this is no small order to fill.  Jesus has no intention to leave the Disciples to carry out such works all by themselves.  “I will not leave you orphaned,” He says.

Jesus begins to speak of One whom He will ask the Father to send to the Disciples.  Different translations of the Bible use different words to describe this Presence.  The New Revised Standard Version uses the word advocate; the older King James Version uses the word comforter; and the more recent Common English Bible uses the word companion.  The original Greek word used to describe this Presence is paraclete, which describes someone “called to one's side.”  Alternately, it could mean “counselor,” “intercessor,” or simply “helper.”²⁶  Christ tells the Disciples that this Paraclete will dwell within them.  He is referring, of course, to the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.  Jesus tells the Disciples that the Holy Spirit will remind them of everything He has already taught them and that the Holy Spirit will continue to teach them after He has gone.  Later in the conversation, He will say, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth...”²⁷

In the Acts of the Apostles, we read that one day, after Jesus has ascended into Heaven, the Disciples are gathered together in their meeting place when they hear the sound of a mighty wind.  Suddenly tongues of fire appear in the room and land upon each of them.  The Disciples run into the street, speaking languages they did not previously know, and a crowd of people from many different nations gathers around them to hear their message.²⁸  That day of Pentecost is sometimes called the “birthday of the Church,” and the same Holy Fire that appeared that day has powered the Church ever since.

St. Paul uses some fascinating metaphors to describe the Church in his letters.  He writes that the Church is the Body of Christ.  Individual followers of Christ work together like parts of a body, of which Christ Himself is the head.²⁹  Perhaps you have heard someone say that we are Christ's “hands and feet.”  Paul also writes that the Church is the Temple of the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit of God dwells in and among us.³⁰  These metaphors remind us that, as the Church, we are called to carry on the work of Christ and that we can do so through the power of the Holy Spirit.

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There is much I do not understand about the doctrine of the Trinity.  What I can say about this challenging doctrine is that it teaches us that God is ultimately beyond human comprehension but that God is, by no means, distant from humanity.  God reigns above us as Creator, Lord, and Parent in ways we cannot even begin to understand.  God came to walk beside us, experiencing what we experience and showing us how to live.  God dwells within us, guiding us and sustaining us day by day.  Perhaps the doctrine of the Trinity teaches us not only who God is, but also who we are as well.  In the Father, we see that we are not merely creations of God, but beloved children; in the Son, we see what it means to be truly human; and in the Spirit, we see that we are never alone, for God is always with us.

Thanks be to God.


Notes:

1. Matthew 3:13-17 (NRSV)
2. Matthew 28:16-20 (NRSV)
3. Wikipedia: Trinity
4. Wikipedia: Nicene Creed
5. Quotes were taken from the Nicene Creed as printed in The United Methodist Hymnal.  no. 880
6. Wikipedia: Sabellianism
7. Wikipedia: Tritheism
8. Deuteronomy 6:4 (NIV)
9. From “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” by Thomas Chisholm
10. Isaiah 55:8-9 (NRSV)
11. Job 38:4-5 (NRSV)
12. Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 (NRSV)
13. Exodus 20:4-6
14. Exodus 32:1-5
15. Wikiquote: Voltaire
16. C.S. Lewis.  The Problem of Pain.  ch. 1
17. John 13:33-14:7
18. Philippians 2:5-7
19. John 1:14 (The Message)
20. John 1:1, 14, 18 (NRSV)
21. Blue Letter Bible: logos
22. John 14:7 (NRSV)
23. Brian Zahnd.  “God Is Like Jesus.”  BrianZahnd.com, 08/11/2011.
24. Hebrews 4:15
25. Peter Rollins.  “Salvation for Zombies.”
26. Blue Letter Bible: paraklētos
27. John 16:12-13 (NRSV)
28. Acts 2:1-11
29. 1 Corinthians 13:27-28, Colossians 1:18
30. 1 Corinthians 3:16

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