Sermon: Above, Beside, and Within

Delivered at Bethel United Methodist Church in West Greenville, South Carolina on May 26, 2013, Trinity Sunday.

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

Above, Beside, and Within

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to Myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going." Thomas said to Him, "Lord, we do not know where You are going. How can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you know Me, you will know My Father also. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him."

Philip said to Him, "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. Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard Me say to you, 'I am going away, and I am coming to you.' If you loved Me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over Me; but I do as the Father has commanded Me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us be on our way.

John 14:1-31 (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

When I started guest speaking at my church a few years ago, I had no idea that there are so many holy days on the church calendar. Though I only preach a few Sundays out of the year, it just so happens that my last two sermons were delivered on holy days. I delivered my previous sermon on the day we commemorate the Baptism of Jesus,¹ and, before that, I preached on Christ the King Sunday, the day we remember that Christ will someday return to reign over a restored earth.² I bring you another sermon on yet another holy day. Today, on Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost, we remember that God has been revealed to us in the Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. Up until a few weeks ago, I didn't even realize that Trinity Sunday existed.

So how am I, a lowly lay speaker with no seminary training, supposed to explain something as mysterious and mind boggling as the Trinity?

Though the word trinity is found nowhere in Scripture, hints about the "threeness" of God bookend the Gospel story. When Jesus emerges from the Jordan River following His baptism, the Holy Spirit takes the form of a dove and lands on Him, and the voice of the Father pierces the heavens, saying, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."³ After the Resurrection, as Jesus ascends into heaven, He commissions His followers to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."⁴

The first recorded use of the word trinity to describe the "threeness" of God was actually by the 3rd-century theologian Tertullian.⁵ The Church's doctrine of the Trinity was formally set down in a creed at the First Council of Nicaea in 325, and this creed was revised at the First Council of Constantinople in 381.⁶ The Nicene Creed affirms "one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen." The creed affirms "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." Finally the creed affirms "the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified."⁷

The Shield of the Trinity

What makes the Trinity particularly difficult to explain is that fact that it is so easy to say something heretical, something contrary to the established teachings of the Church. If the Father is God, and if the Son is God, and if the Spirit is God, then perhaps God takes different forms at different times. This idea is actually a heresy called modalism. The problem is that it denies that the Trinity is three distinct persons.⁸ So 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 Gods. This is another heresy called tritheism.⁹ Christianity is a monotheistic religion. Though we speak of "God in three persons," we agree with our Jewish brothers and sisters when they proclaim, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one."¹⁰ Well, maybe what we call God is actually three entities made one by a common love and purpose. This is yet another heresy called social trinitarianism. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not merely one in love and purpose but one in "substance, essence, or nature."¹¹ Somehow God is three, and yet somehow God is one.

Again I ask, How in the world am I supposed to explain the doctrine of the Trinity?

I think that the doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that God is above us. The title of the first person of the Trinity, the Father, reminds us that God reigns over us from the heavenly realm as a divine, loving parent. It reminds us that God is creator and provider. It is God who gave us life, and all the blessings we enjoy have come from God's own hands.

But when I say that God is above us, I do not only mean to say that God reigns over us; I also mean to say that God is far above our intellect. The prophet Isaiah captures this sentiment quite well:

For My thoughts are not your thoughts,

nor are your ways My ways, says the LORD.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are My ways higher than your ways

and My thoughts than your thoughts.¹²

When the psalmist David reflected on God's complete and total knowledge of him and on God's continuous presence with him, he said, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it." When he reflected on how God carefully and thoughtfully knit him together, he said, "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."¹³ Indeed, humanity's combined knowledge of the divine is but a mere drop in an ocean.

Some believe that the second commandment, the prohibition against creating idols, is not only a prohibition against creating images of false gods, but also a prohibition against creating images of God. It is implied in the Book of Exodus that the golden calf fashioned by Moses' brother Aaron for the Israelites was created to represent the God "who brought [them] up out of the land of Egypt."¹⁴ Finite human beings cannot fully understand an infinite God, so when we try to define God, we create something less than God. Perhaps we could call it an idol. The French philosopher Voltaire noticed such idolatry all around him, saying, "If God has made us in His image, we have returned Him the favor." Perhaps the people of ancient Athens had the right idea when they dedicated an altar "to an unknown god,"¹⁵ for we must admit that our God is largely unknown to us.

I think that maybe the mystery and otherness of God frightens us in the same way it frightened the ancient Israelites. When the Israelites were to meet God at Mount Sinai, they were terrified, and even Moses quaked with fear as he ascended the mountain.¹⁶ I think that sometimes we find ourselves terrified of God when we hear so many conflicting messages about God. Many are quick to proclaim God's love, mercy, and grace, while others never miss an opportunity to speak of God's judgment and wrath. What are we to believe?

Like the Disciples, we are called to proclaim God's message to the world, yet many of us feel that we aren't qualified to speak of God, especially when we don't have the right letters - PhD or MDiv - after our names. The twelve young men whom Jesus chose as His disciples weren't exactly masters of theology themselves. They had been shadowing their Rabbi for three years, and, in their last conversation with Him before His crucifixion, they still had questions about God. Jesus tells the Disciples that He is going to the Father and that they already know the way to where He is going. Thomas says, "Lord, we do not know where You are going. How can we know the way?" Later, Philip says, "Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." The Disciples were then just as confused, mystified, and awestruck about God as we are today.

But what if this infinite God decided to describe God's self in terms that finite human beings like us can understand? What if God somehow left behind the glory of the heavenly realms and took on the flesh and blood of humanity to walk beside us? What if God - to borrow a phrase from Eugene Peterson - "moved into the neighborhood"?¹⁷ This is essentially what St. John writes at the beginning of his gospel:
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.¹⁸
John uses the Greek word Logos, which has been translated into English as Word, to describe God's self-revelation in the second person of the Trinity, the Son.

It was this same Logos with whom the Disciples spoke that evening in the upper room. Philip says, "Show us the Father." Jesus replies, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know Me? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father." Thomas asks, "How can we know the way [to the Father]?" Jesus answers, "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you know Me, you will know My Father also. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him." We find ourselves frightened and mystified by the conflicting messages we hear about God and by God's sheer otherness, but when we look at Jesus we see God. When we walk in the footsteps of Jesus, who calls Himself "the Way," we walk toward God.

Jesus Christ is God Incarnate - God in the flesh. The Church teaches that Christ is both fully God and fully human. We can see this dual nature in the the titles Jesus is given in the Gospels: Son of God and Son of Man. Our God is not a God who is distant and separated from humanity; our God has actually walked a mile in our shoes. Because of Christ we know that God is fully capable of empathizing with us in our humanity. In Christ, we know that God has experienced both the beauty and the godforsakenness of being human.

When we say that Christ is fully human, we must be careful that we do fool ourselves into thinking that Christ is just like us. While Christ is fully human, the rest of us are not: we are broken.¹⁹ Just as broken machines do not function as they were created to function, we fallen humans do not operate in the way God intended. Christ left heaven and came down to earth as part of a divine plan to put a broken creation back together again. I believe that part of this plan was to show us how to be fully human. Interestingly, the Common English Bible uses the title Human One instead of Son of Man. I believe that Christ came to show us what it means to be fully human, to be creatures who bear God's image.

In Jesus' day, rabbis called disciples to learn from them, to do what they did, and to carry on their work after they were gone. The twelve Disciples shadowed Jesus for three years, watching Him heal the sick, feed those who were spiritually and physically hungry, reach out to the untouchable, bring peace to the troubled, befriend the friendless, and proclaim a message of hope. In the upper room that evening, Christ says, "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." Yes, you heard that correctly: Jesus said that those who believe in Him will do greater things than He did.

Doing the things Christ did and even greater things than those is a tall order to fill, but Christ never said that we are called to do these things on our own. He begins to speak about Another whom the Father will send to the Disciples. Different translations of the Bible use different words to describe this Third. The New Revised Standard Version uses the word Advocate. The older King James Version uses the word Comforter. The more recent Common English Bible uses the word Companion. The Greek word originally used here is Paraclete, which describes someone "called to one's side."²⁰ Christ says that this Paraclete will dwell within us. He is, of course, referring to the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

Jesus knows that His time on earth is drawing to an end, but He does not intend to leave His disciples to carry on His work all by themselves. "I will not leave you orphaned," He says. Christ says that the Holy Spirit will remind the Disciples of everything He taught them and that the Spirit will continue to teach them. Later in the conversation, Jesus 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."²¹

The Holy Spirit had been at work in the world long before Christ came to build His Church. St. Peter writes that it was the Holy Spirit who gave the ancient prophets the messages they proclaimed to the people.²² This same Spirit is the energy that has driven the Church since that feast day of Pentecost nearly two thousand years ago when the Disciples heard a loud rushing wind, saw tongues of fire descending on them, and began speaking in foreign languages.²³ St. Paul has two interesting titles for the Church: the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. It is we the Church who continue to do the work of Christ in the world. Perhaps you have even heard someone say that we are Christ's "hands and feet." It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that the Body does Christ's work.

There is not much more I can say about the Trinity. There is so much I don't understand. To be honest, my understanding of God has become a lot more abstract as I have grown. I don't know what it means to say that the Son is "eternally begotten of the Father" but "not made." I don't understand how God can be one and three at the same time. I don't know what it means to say that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one in "substance, essence, or nature." I can't tell you exactly what a spirit is. Much of what I have said to you today has been handed down to us in the Scriptures and in the Nicene creed.

The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that God reigns above us as Creator, Father, and Mother in ways we cannot even begin to understand; that God has come to earth to walk beside us in Jesus Christ, showing us the way and experiencing what we experience; and that God dwells within us guiding us and sustaining us day by day. I believe that the doctrine of the Trinity reminds us who we are as well. In the Father, we remember that we are not merely creations of God but beloved children. In the Son, we see what we are meant to be as children of God. And, in the Spirit, we remember that we are never alone, for God is always with us.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.


Notes:

1. See my sermon "What We All Need to Hear"
2. See my sermon "Not of This World"
3. Matt 3:16-17 (NRSV)
4. Matt 28:19 (NRSV)
5. Wikipedia: Trinity
6. Wikipedia: Nicene Creed
7. From the Nicene Creed as printed in the United Methodist Hymnal
8. Wikipedia: Sabellianism
9. Wikipedia: Tritheism
10. Deut 6:4 (NIV). This is the first part of the Shema, a creed of the Jewish faith.
11. Wikipedia: Trinity
12. Isaiah 55:8-9 (NRSV)
13. Psalm 139:1-18 (NRSV)
14. Exodus 32:1-5
15. Acts 17:22-23
16. Hebrews 12:20-21
17. From John 1:14 (The Message)
18. John 1:1,14,18 (NRSV)
19. Peter Rollins. "Salvation for Zombies." January 15, 2012
20. Wikipedia: Paraclete
21. John 16:12-13a (NRSV)
22. 2 Peter 1:20-21
23. Acts 2:1-4

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