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The Rev. Frank
Logue
Three Short Sermons on the Trinity How is it that you picture God? How can you describe the divine? Here is a scene from the TV show The Simpson’s in which Homer encounters God in a dream after staying home from church while the rest of the family attended.
[show clip in which we see God as a tall man in a white robe, and a long,
white beard, The image of God as a large man with a flowing white beard is persistent, even if it never appears in scripture. Not exactly a kindly grandfather image, it may better fit the stern judge who first arrived in Homer’s dream, angry that Homer had forsaken God’s church. I want to offer another image in it’s place and to do so, I will give three sermons on the Trinity. Don’t worry, each of them will be about 3 minutes or less. In our reading from Exodus this morning, Moses encounters God in a bush that burns, but is not consumed by the flames. God, who was present in the whole world, came all the way down to earth in one particular place and time in fullness in order to act in history. The bush, which caught Moses eye that day in the wilderness, fully experienced God’s presence and was set afire by God and yet God comes to bring life, not to consume it, so though the bush blazed brightly, the fire did not consume it. We don’t experience God’s presence the same way all the time. To fully experience God the Father all the time would not only make us of no earthly value, it may well consume us. So, the Father is more fully known in some times and places than in others. The Father’s presence may be fully felt in a church, or great cathedral, but also in a grove of redwoods or a waterfall. We live in what Archbishop William Temple called a “Sacramental Universe.” Sacraments are something which convey God’s presence, such as the bread and wine of communion conveying the presence of the Trinity. God is not limited in ways to get our attention. For Moses it was a burning bush. The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning spoke of the sacramental universe in writing,
Earth’s crammed with heaven, As Browning notes everything in the world is potentially sacramental as anything may be used to convey God’s presence. While God has the potential to reveal the Father’s own self in anything, the Father is not equally present in all places and times and through all things. The key to feeling the Father’s presence is the one found in the story of Moses and the burning bush. Moses is receptive to God’s presence. As Browning wrote, only the one who sees takes off their shoes, realizing they are on holy ground. The Father does not come to you as a tall man with a flowing white beard. In fact, The Simpson’s hit closer to the truth with the idea that the Father could appear through a tortilla in Mexico. Yes, they said it in jest, but the Father does reveal himself to us through his creation. Now for the second sermon. The Gospel reading today told of what may be the most famous conversation of all time. True, not everyone remembers the nighttime encounter between Nicodemus and Jesus, but they probably do know that last line of the reading for today in which Jesus told Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” John 3:16 is so famous, that it makes appearances at football games and on roadside signs. We all know that the verse teaches us both of God’s love for us and for the purpose of that most complete revelation of God’s own self in the person of Jesus. We learn here and elsewhere in scripture that Jesus came so that all who believe in him may have eternal life. Had we kept reading further than the portion set aside for today, Jesus would have told Nicodemus, “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” Jesus has come not to bring judgment, but salvation. True judgment will come, but not until all have been offered the means of salvation. What I want to notice about the second person of the Trinity is that Jesus did not just come for you and for me. Jesus did not just come for those with their acts together, in fact Jesus would say that he came to seek and to save the lost. But Jesus did not only come for humans. John 3:16 and 17 both mention the world as the reason Jesus came. If we read through to the end of the story, we will find the same emphasis in Revelation, that all creation is redeemed in a new heaven and a new earth. This is very different from the emphasis in the very entertaining Left Behind series in which the world comes across as bad and creation gets no redemption. Sometimes people ask me if pets go to heaven. From reading scripture it seems like all creation goes to heaven. Now what I am trying to do here is set up some food for thought. It would take longer to draw this out, but if we are talking about the Trinity, then we need to understand that all three persons of the Trinity were involved in creation. We get that in Genesis when God the Father is present, the spirit hovers over the waters and the word of God (identified with Jesus) calls out for light and so on. The whole Trinity created all that is and the Trinity loves all that is. The Bible is concerned with that love story of God and not just humans, but all creation. It is a story that plays itself out most prominently through humans, who were created in God’s image and charged with stewardship of the whole earth. So the food for thought about Jesus is that Jesus, who existed before he came to earth, came to reveal the Trinity to use in human form, and in doing so taught us that God loves us and wants a relationship with us and further taught us that the love God has for us is for the whole world. Now the third and final sermon. In the reading from Romans, Paul writes that the very Spirit of God bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. So the third of the Trinity closest to you is the Holy Spirit, which is God’s spirit present in your spirit. There can be no closer communion with God than the presence of God within us. Unlike the image of God from the episode of The Simpson’s, where God appears and then disappears, we learn that God is ever present within us. To use 50-cent words, God is both immanent and transcendent. Immanent, meaning right here with me, in me. Transcendent meaning that the God who is in me is also beyond me, distant from me. Both of these realities are true at once. For God is within you and beyond you. But if it is the Holy Spirit within you and God the Father who is transcendent, then the Spirit teaches our spirit’s that we can call to God saying, “Abba! Father!” Abba is the Hebrew word for “Daddy.” It is a familiar word, not some distant judge image. For it is not just that we can sing “What a Friend we have in Jesus” or acknowledge that the spirit of God is within us. We can also sing “Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place” with Lord standing in for the whole Trinity as our whole Triune God is with us now. Janice Morris was leading Morning Prayer here one morning and as we said the creed, I noticed on the sanctuary wall, that we had the stained glass of the dove showing the Holy Spirit and below the cross as a symbol for God the Son, Jesus. I wondered about God the Father and immediately noticed that in the glass below we look out on creation. In the clear glass looking out on the trees, the cross and then the dove, we have an image of the Trinity in our sanctuary. But while we can say that in creation we learn of God the Father, through Jesus’ death on the cross God came to redeem us and now the Holy Spirit is present within us. This way of speaking of God as creator, redeemer, and sustainer is true, but if we confine the persons of the Trinity to those roles, we teach heresy. For God was not the Father long ago, then later the Son and finally the Spirit. God has always been both three and one—three persons in one being. Just as all three of these images are present at once in our sanctuary showing three persons in unity. True this statement is paradoxical to say that God is both one and three. But the God who is beyond words taught us to understand the divine in this way. And the first disciples who were firmly Jewish and understood God as the one true God also had no problem speaking of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. What we loose if we drop the Trinity is the understanding that there was communion within God before humans and the rest of creation came into being. God was already in relationship and then created us in his image for relationship. God created us to be in communion with God and with each other. This being drawn into the very life of the Trinity is what Paul is trying to put into words when he wrote that we are joint heirs with Christ led by the Spirit of God to see that we are children of God. It is the spirit of God in your spirit that teaches you, if you will pause to listen, that the Triune God wants a relationship with you that will call you into a closer relationship to the whole world that God created and God saved. Amen. Amen. And Amen.
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