Sunday
05/22/16 Freeville/Homer Avenue UMC’s
Sermon Title: “Why God is three in one”
Old Testament
Scripture: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
New Testament
Scripture: Romans 5:1-5
Gospel Lesson:
John 16:12-15
My friends, my brothers and sisters, welcome on this
Trinity Sunday, and this Peace with Justice Sunday. In this being Trinity
Sunday, this is the Sunday in the life of the church that we celebrate all that
God is. Our God who is three in one, or one in three. Our God who is the
creator, the savior, and the sanctifier.
This Sunday is also one of our special giving Sundays in
the life of the United Methodist Church, called Peace with Justice Sunday. On
this special giving Sunday, we are all invited to give to this special
offering. In giving to this special offering, we are enabling peace and justice
ministries to continue. These ministries are many, and they include ministries
like stopping the human trafficking of children, injustices in other countries,
protecting human rights, and various injustices everywhere. When terrible,
oppressive, and unjust things happen to innocent people, the Peace with Justice
Sunday giving is one of the many ways that we as Christians can promote the
love and justice of God. If you would like to give to this special giving
Sunday, again please indicate on your check memo lines, “Peace with Justice
Sunday,” or indicate this on an envelope with your cash donation. We will make
sure that this money to gets to the conference in Syracuse, and then to these
ministries, who are working for a more loving and just world.
With this said, this is Trinity Sunday. Last Sunday on
Pentecost Sunday, we celebrated the Holy Spirit that came to the Apostles of
Jesus Christ on the day of Pentecost. On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit
moved and caused the disciples to speak in tongues, and the Holy Spirit gave
the disciples the courage, the faith, and the wisdom to formally begin being
the Christian Church. Since the Holy Spirit moved, and since the disciples were
filled with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, they officially knew that
God was three in one, or one in three. While the word Trinity itself, or the
doctrine of the “Holy Trinity” would not be codified by the Roman Catholic
Church until the 300’s AD, this belief of God three in one, or one in three,
was in general the commonly held belief of who God was and is. This means that
the majority of Christians, including the disciples believed this from the
beginning.
Given this, as Christians, like our Jewish sisters and
brothers, we believe in the God that created the universe, the earth, us, and
everything. We believe that God the Father is the creator of everything. Yet as
Christians we also realize that we have a tendency to be sinful. We live in
world with greed, war, injustice, hatred, prejudice, and sometimes a lack of
love. The son of God, Jesus Christ came to earth to love, heal, and forgive.
For while God created everything, Jesus Christ is the person of God that came among
us. The person of God who came to us, lived with us, loved us, healed us, and died
for us. The third person of God is the one who showed up in a mighty way on the
day of Pentecost, and throughout the Old and New Testament. The person of God
that we experience all the time, and maybe even today. The Holy Spirit, or the
Holy Ghost, is the person of God that fills us, guides us, and sanctifies us.
Since the doctrine of the Holy Trinity was codified in from
325 AD to 381 AD, between the Ecumenical Church Councils at Nicaea and the
Constantinople, some have argued that idea of God three in one, or one in three
was a corrupt invention by the church. Yet there not a ton evidence of this.
When we recite the Nicene Creed in church, which is actually the Niceno-Constantinopolitan
Creed, we are reciting a creed that is centuries old. In the Ecumenical Church
Council in 325 AD, the church agreed that Jesus Christ and the God the creator
were one in the same, and then in the next Ecumenical Church Council in
Constantinople in 381 AD, the doctrine of Holy Spirit was officially added,
creating the Holy Trinity. We generally still refer to the creed as the Nicene
Creed however, largely because saying the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed is a
mouthful.
The historical reality therefore, is that the Jews at the
time of Jesus Christ, believed in God the creator, the Father. Some Jews, such
as the Pharisees also believed that a Messiah, a savior would come to deliver
and save Israel. The historic Christian belief held by the majority of Christians
from day one, was that this Messiah, this savior was Jesus Christ. Further if
the gospel of John claims that Jesus is the Word of God, and that the Word of
God is God, and that the Word of God was made flesh, most Christians have historically
believed that Jesus Christ was God on earth. Jesus Christ on earth was fully
God and fully human. The Holy Spirit is also spoken of coming from God, and speaking
the words of God.
No matter how we look at this, God the creator, Jesus
Christ, and the Holy Spirit are central to the Christian faith. So how do we
package our definition of God, of Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit? Some
people and scholars both past and present have argued against the doctrine of
the Holy Trinity. Some of these folks argue that Jesus was just a man, a
prophet, a well-intended social reformer, and etc., and that the Holy Spirit is
something else that is not equal to God the creator. Yet for nearly
two-thousand years the commonly held belief in God, is that God is revealed to
us through God the Father, who creates, through his son who saves, and through
the Holy Spirit that comes from God the Father and Son, to lead, guide, and
sanctify.
One analogy that I heard once for the Holy Trinity is that
of water. You see water can be ice, it can be liquid, or it can be steam. All
three of these are water, yet they come to us differently. God creates like
water that is ice, Jesus purifies and saves like water that is liquid, and the
Holy Spirit fills us like water that is steam. All water, all the same
substance, yet unique and different at the same time. The word Trinity itself comes
from the Latin “trinitas” or triad, and from the
Latin “trinus” or threefold, which is this idea of
God three in one. One God, who comes to us in three distinct ways, but is of
one substance or being (www.wikipedia.org). A God that is like ice, water, and
steam, three in one, or one in three.
I remember learning when I was in seminary that most
Christian clergy do not like preaching about the Holy Trinity, as it is by far
one of our most challenging doctrines. It is really hard to understand and to
wrap our minds around. I myself though, like to preach about the Holy Trinity,
but I have to admit that I might not ever fully understand the Holy Trinity, on
this side of heaven anyway. I do though believe that God created the whole
universe, and heaven and earth. I also believe that Jesus Christ was and is the
Son of God who came to earth to die for our sins, and to teach us a new way to
love, heal, and forgive. I also believe in the Holy Spirit that showed up on
the day of Pentecost so long ago. I myself have felt the Holy Spirit so many
times when I pray or worship, as have many of you and others. I therefore
believe that God is three in one, or one in three, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. This is why we baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. One God in three distinct persons.
Further, Jesus emphatically tells his disciples and his
other early followers that they will not fully understand who he is or his
gospel, until they have received the Holy Spirit. Last Sunday, on the day of
Pentecost, this happened. So Jesus tells his disciples to believe in God, to
believe in him, and that the Spirit of truth will come and fill in the missing
gaps. Given this, to me, God must be three one, or one in three.
I remember when I was in seminary one day, I asked a
professor to explain the Holy Trinity to me. This professor covered a massive
dry erase board with tons of information. He wrote some in Greek and Hebrew,
and he created this massively large academic argument for the Holy Trinity.
Then he said, “so do you get it now Paul?” I said, “Nope, but thank you for
writing and explaining all of that!”
So it is true that the word “Trinity” is not in the Bible,
and it is also true that doctrine of the “Holy Trinity” was created by the
church in the 300’s AD. Yet most Christians have long believed from day one,
that God was and is three in one, or one in three. If the Bible is our main source
for this belief, let us listen again to what Jesus says to us in the gospel of
John this morning.
In John 16:12-15 Jesus says to the disciples and us: “I have much more to say to you, more
than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the
truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he
will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from
me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is
mine. That
is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you”
(Jn. 16:12-15, NRSV).
When I read this
short gospel reading, I am sure that this scripture was intentionally given to
us in our lectionary reading for this morning, because it is Trinity Sunday. I say
this because in this scripture, I hear Jesus tell his disciples that they need
the Holy Spirit’s power to fully understand God the creator, and him. I also
hear Jesus say to the disciples that the Holy Spirit will speak the words that
are from God the Father, the creator, and him. Jesus is saying to the disciples
that they understand God the creator and him, but to get the full picture, they
will then also need the Holy Spirit.
In bringing this message to a close, I want to share with you
a story about all that God is. This story is taken from www.storiesforpreaching.com
and is called “The Parable of the Flatlanders.”
Here is what the story says: “Christians believe many astonishing things about
God, for example, that God is triune, that Christ was fully God and fully
human, that God is close, but cannot be seen, and so on. To help us come to
grips with such mysteries a nineteenth century schoolmaster named Edwin Abbott
wrote a story entitled Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. His concept is
very helpful in recognizing the limitations in our knowledge of God. Imagine a
group of people who live in a two-dimensional world. They have length and width
but not height. Their world would be like strange creatures living on a sheet
of paper. They have width and length but no height. They can move across the
paper, and along it, but they can never move above it or below it, nor would
they be able to see above it or below it. Now imagine you poked three fingers
into their world. All they see is three separate circles. They would have no
perception that these belonged to the one three dimensional hand. Or imagine if
you put your face close to look at the flatlanders, perhaps just a half a centimeter
above the surface of the page. You would be closer to the flatlanders than two
of them standing a centimeter apart and yet they would have no way of knowing
you are there. Or imagine the open end of a horseshoe being placed into their
world. All they would see are two rectangles on the ground, separated by some
distance. They would assume that these were two entirely separate objects. They
would have no sense that these belonged to the same object nor any idea what
the nature and purposes of the horseshoe are.”
“So
it is with us and God. We exist in a three dimensional world, but God
potentially exists in many more dimensions. Things that are obvious and natural
to God appear as mysterious and unfathomable to us as we might to be the
Flatlanders.”
The
Holy Trinity, my sisters and brothers, the idea that God is one God in three
persons, or three persons in one God, is a very complex and tough idea. Yet
most Christians throughout our history have believed in the God that creates,
the Son of God that saves, and the Spirit of God that guides and sanctifies. We
may never understand all that God is on this side of heaven, but we be open to
experiencing all that God is today, and always. With this, I say to you all be
blessed in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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