April 22, 2007 — 2:12 PM
The Trinity: Troubling Trifle or Terrific Truism?
Mark 1: 9-11
John 14:23-26
Acts 2:42-47
Focus:
We continue today with the series that we began last week on community and specifically what it means to be a part of the Mission Bay Community Church. The overarching Scripture passage for this series comes from Acts 2:42-47. This passage describes what the first Christian community was like and how it was growing rapidly. Last week Bruce began the series by interviewing three members of this community to see what drew them here and why being a part of this community is important to them. Today we will look at the Christian understanding of the triune God – three persons but only one God. For many people, this topic is too much an intellectual puzzle to be worked out and not really something that they see as affecting their every day living. And, I have to admit, I used to be in that camp. But, my studies in seminary changed that for me. Today, I believe that the fact that we worship a triune God – a God who lives in community – is central not only to our faith but also to our understanding of how God wants us to live our lives. This morning we’ll work through this puzzle a little bit to see how it might deepen our faith in God and help us to live more faithfully into what God would have us to be as Christians.
Prayer:
Gracious God, you have brought us here to be a part of this community. Bless our time together this morning. Let us hear your will for us as we consider your Word. Be in my words and in all of our hearts. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Sermon:
The feeling that we are meant to live in community is strong. We join with groups of all sorts. Some focus on physical activities like hiking, running, bicycling, or ultimate Frisbee. Others focus on intellectual pursuits: book clubs, lecture series, or political gatherings. Some focus on social justice outreach: working in soup kitchens, helping count the homeless, marching for peace, and many other important causes.
The feeling that we are meant to be in community is so strong that if someone chooses not to be an active participant in our society we worry about them and think that something is wrong. The terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech this past week is, sadly, an example of this. When a horrible event like this happens we search for reasons. We want to know what is the meaning of the events that unfolded. And we also want to learn how we might stop someone else in the future from following the same tragic path.
In the endless coverage of the events in Virginia, the word that has been used over and over again to describe the gunman Seung-Hui Cho is “loner”. Interview after interview of people at the university revealed that no one really knew much about this man. When people were asked to describe him, most struggled because he had shunned interaction with others. He even refused to interact when pushed to do so in classroom situations. His anti-social behavior confused his fellow classmates as well as his professors. His violent writing assignments and text messages to a few female students led some to suggest counseling.
We will probably never understand completely what led this man to act in such a violent manner towards people he barely knew and who barely knew him. All we are left with is this picture of someone who chose to close himself off from the community of which he was supposedly a part.
Now, this is an extreme example. Thank goodness. But people who don’t join in group activities easily or often tend to get labeled as “antisocial” or “loners” and are watched more closely to see if they are “okay.” I’m guessing that you can think of at least a few people you’ve crossed paths with during your life who might fit these descriptions. They tend to stick in our memory because their actions just don’t seem right and that makes us uncomfortable.
We are meant to be in community. We feel that deep within our psyche.
But our culture gives us mixed messages. While we as a society worry about those who choose to be left alone and shun the larger community, we also celebrate the “self-made man”: That person who strikes out on his own and makes a name for himself – often by sheer determination and individual effort. This focus on the individual and his or her successes or failures often undermines our feeling of connection with humanity and all of creation.
This is what happens to Albert Markovski in the movie “I [heart] Huckabees.” He has run into the same African man three separate times. And while he has the feeling that these encounters are more than a mere coincidence, he doesn’t think that the encounters have anything to do with the rest of his life – and especially not his professional life. His desire to know why he has seen this same man several times leads him to seek the help of a couple of “existential detectives.” Albert ends up getting more than he bargained for when he meets with the couple. Let’s take a look.
[clip from the movie from 0:08:42 to 0:10:34]
“We are all connected.” Albert is able to agree with that statement immediately because it resonates with an understanding deep within him. And I imagine many of us would agree with this statement as well. Where does this understanding come from?
Many, including Christians, say that this understanding comes from the idea that everything that is was created by one being. Our Scriptures tells us that “in the beginning” God moved over the chaos and brought about order – an act that brought about the created universe. The fact that everything has its roots in that event connects it all together. God is the source of all that is. God connects us all to one another and to all of creation.
But for Christians, the idea that everything is connected doesn’t just stop at the act of creation by our God. It goes further into the very nature of the God who did and still does the creating. Our sense of connection ultimately comes from our understanding of God as being three persons who exist as one entity or being. Our God lives in community. Our God is relational. Our God is connected within God’s very being.
This is a difficult idea to understand and an even more difficult idea to explain. But it is an idea that is central to the Christian understanding of God. And therefore, it is central to the understanding of what it means to be a Christian.
Where did this idea that God is three persons and yet one God come from?
The Bible. Pretty safe answer, no? And yet, not everyone agrees that God is three persons in one Being. If it says God is triune in the Bible, then why doesn’t everyone agree? Here is where the difficulty arises. The Bible never says outright: I AM your God – I AM Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But it does have many references to God in which each of those persons is mentioned. When Christians throughout the ages have tried to explain why they believe in a triune God, they have drawn on our two Scripture passages for this morning along with the Great Commission in Matthew’s Gospel to go and baptize in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Jesus’ baptism, described for us in the first chapter of Mark’s gospel, was key to the disciples’ understanding of who he was and, through him, who God is. It was such an important event that all four gospels tell about the event. This is very rare. Add to that the fact that Matthew, Mark, and Luke use almost the identical language to describe what happened.
The important pieces that appear in all four accounts are these: (1) Jesus was baptized; and as he came up out of the water (2) the Spirit descended on him in the form of a dove; and then (3) God spoke from the heavens. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, God calls Jesus God’s son, whom God loves, and with whom God is well-pleased.
This event is widely viewed as the official beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. And it is important to note that the Father and the Holy Spirit give their blessing to Jesus as this one person of the greater whole begins to act in the world on all of their behalf. Jesus is not going to be striking out on his own to do whatever he pleases. Rather, he is going to be representing the entire Trinity to creation through his human form and his human actions. The blessing of the Spirit and the Father at Jesus’ baptism is a sign to all those witnessing it that there is something special about Jesus. This event had such a strong effect on those who witnessed it that years later all accounts about Jesus and his ministry include a reference to what happened there that day.
Human beings are visual creatures. We like to use symbols and drawings to help us understand and remember things. And the symbol that Christians have used through the centuries to represent this idea that God is three persons yet one being is the triangle. This symbol not only helps us visualize God, but it also helps us visualize the struggles that arose about how to understand the persons of the Trinity and how they interact.
Beginning in the third century of the Christian Era, Christianity became the official religion of the kingdom. With this came the desire to codify or regularize the belief system so that it could be used to bind all the different people of the kingdom together. Immediately, there began to be rifts between the Roman (or Western) church and the Eastern (or what we now know as the Orthodox) church.
In the discussions about the Trinity, which got quite heated at times, there were disagreements about how to characterize Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I won’t go into the whole debate, but visually it boiled down to how one viewed the triangle. For the Roman church, it had God and Jesus on a plane together with the sides going down to the Holy Spirit. For the Eastern church, it had God at the top going down equally to a plane with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Does anyone have any ideas why that difference might be so important? [Get ideas from congregation]
Ultimately, it comes down to power. The triangle with God on the top shows that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are equal partners in the community of the Trinity both coming from God, the Great I AM. The Eastern church disagreed with the wording of the Roman church which put Jesus on par with God but made the Holy Spirit seems somehow a lesser being, almost an afterthought in the Trinity.
Those who spoke out the loudest in the Eastern church were scholars in a group called the Cappadocian Fathers. These men argued that all three persons of the Trinity lived in a kind of eternal dance of give and take from each other. If they had been pushed to use a symbol it would be a circle laid flat. They argued against hierarchy within the being of God. All three persons are equally important. All three persons participate equally in every act of God.
Okay, that’s where the seminary lecture ends. And that’s where our second passage for today comes in.
At this point in John’s gospel Jesus is preparing his disciples for life after he is no longer with them. He wants them to know that even though he won’t be with them physically, he will still be with them through the Advocate, or the Holy Spirit, whom God will send to them.
Jesus is telling his disciples the most wonderful thing if they can only see it. This circle of God’s community – of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit – which is in the eternal dance of give and take is opening to bring in all those who love Jesus and obey his teaching. The circle widens each time someone accepts the invitation God offers through Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.
God does not change when God welcomes creation to join the loving community of the Trinity. It is creation that is changed. The circle remains a circle, it is just fuller, wider, more inclusive.
Does it make a difference to you which symbol is used to picture the triune God? Does it affect the way you relate to God and to others? [Get feedback from the congregation]
There is no hierarchy in God’s loving community. So why is there hierarchy in our human communities? We were created in the image of God, but sin disrupts our ability to live into that calling. God wants us to live in mutual relationship with God, with other humans, as well as with all of creation. God wants us to join the eternal dance of give and take.
I don’t believe that the idea that we worship a triune God is a troubling trifle. It is not just a puzzle that should be worked out in seminary classrooms. I believe it is terribly important to how we live our everyday lives. As we seek to be faithful to God’s will for our lives, we need to remember that God lives in relationship. Our God lives in a loving, mutually respectful community. We should strive to mirror that in our earthly relationships as we pray for God’s new heaven and new earth to be made real.
May it be so. Amen.
