Isaiah
6.1-8; Romans 8.12-17; John 3.1-17
+ When all is said and done, at the
end of the day, I can say this about myself: I am actually fairly orthodox in
most of what I believe. I don’t say that
pridefully. I’m not bragging. I’m just saying…
Yes, I know. I’m pretty
liberal. At least socially.
But theologically, I’m pretty cut
and dry. It would be hard to find a major heresy in most of my thinking.
OK. Yes, I’ll admit I’m somewhat of
a universalist. I do believe that, eventually, we will all be together with
Christ in heaven. I really do believe that. I do not believe in an eternal
hell.
But the rest of it is pretty much straightforward.
I believe in the Incarnation of Christ.
I believe Jesus is the Word of God
made flesh.
I believe prayer does make a
difference in this world.
I believe in the Resurrection.
I believe in the Real Presence of
Christ in the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist.
And let’s not get into my view of Mary
and the saints.
But, then, there’s the Trinity.
Sigh.
The Trinity.
I’ll make it simple for you. I don’t
know what it is for certain. I don’t know how it works. But somehow I know it works. And I think that
is where most of us are with the Trinity.
Most of us, let’s face it, don’t
give the Trinity a lot of thought. For me, it’s a mystery. Which is not a bad
thing. I love the mystery of our faith. And
let me tell you, there is nothing more
mysterious than the Trinity.
God as Three-in-One—traditionally
seen as the Father, or Parent or Creator, the Son or Redeemer and the Spirit or
Sanctifier.
I know, I know. It’s difficult to wrap our minds around this
concept of God.
The question we regularly get is:
how can God be three and yet one? How
can we, in all honesty, say that we believe in one God when we worship God as
three? Aren’t we simply talking about
three gods? (We’re definitely not, by the way—just to be clear about that)
Whole Church councils have debated
the issue of the Trinity throughout history. The Church actually has split at times over
its interpretation of what exactly this Trinity is. Even as recently as the 1960s, when Episcopal
Bishop James Pike denied the Trinity and was brought up on heresy charges, it
has been an issue for us as the Church.
We can debate it all we want this
morning. We can talk what is orthodox or right-thinking about the Trinity all
we want. And I will admit, I probably have been heretical in some of my
thinking on this issue.
But, for me, I think it all comes to
down to how we experience God in our own personal lives. Now the word I use for
this experiential understanding of the Trinity is tri-personal. If we look at
our relationship with God in a tri-personal way, maybe—maybe—it sort of, kind
of, maybe makes a bit more sense.
One tri-personal God—a God who cannot be limited in any
way, but a God who is able to come to us and be revealed to us in a variety of
ways. We can go on and on about theology
and philosophy and all manner of thoughts about God, but ultimately what
matters is how we interact with our God.
How is our relationship with God and
with each other deepened and made more real by this one, tri-personal God? How
do become closer to God?
This is our primary responsibility:
our relationship with God. How can all this talk about God—how can this
thinking about God—then deepen our relationship with God?
Our goal is not to understand God: we will never understand God. God is not some Rubik’s Cube or a puzzle that
has to be solved.
Our goal is to know God. Our goal is to love God. Our goal is to try to experience God as God wishes to be experienced by
us.
Because God does know us. God does love
us.
And, more likely than not, we have
actually experienced our God in this tri-personal way more than once in our
lives.
I personally have experienced God in
a variety of ways; certainly I have experiences God in that tri-personal way countless
times. I have known God as a loving and
caring parent, especially when I think about those times when I have felt
marginalized by people or the Church or society or by friends and colleagues. And
let me tell you I have definitely been clinging to the parental aspect of God
in these last few months since my mother died.
I have also known God as my redeemer—as
One who has come to me where I am, as One who knows my suffering because this
One also has suffered as well. And this One has promised that I too can be a
child of this God who is my—and our—Parent. I have
been able to take comfort in the fact that God is not some distant deity who
could not comprehend what I have gone through in my life and in this limited,
mortal body. God the Redeemer knows what
it was to be limited by our bodies. There
is something wonderful and holy in that realization.
And I have known the healing and
renewal of the Spirit of God of my life. Certainly we, at St. Stephen’s have
experienced and continue to experience this Spirit’s presence in the life and
renewal we are celebrating in our congregation. We have known in a very real way the healing and
renewal of the Spirit of God here among us. And, I don’t need to tell you, it is wonderful.
In our reading from Paul’s Letter to
the Romans, we get a real and beautiful glimpse of how God seems to work in this
kind of tri-personal way. We hear,
“When
we cry Abba! Father! It is the very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit…
So, The Spirit helps us to recognize
this parental relationship with God. It then goes on,
“…that
we are children of God [like Jesus], and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,”
Here is the tri-personal
relationship at work. We can also see our
place in this relationship. The Spirit
helps us to see our place, as fully-accepted, fully-loved children of God, alongside
Jesus, reaping the same rewards Jesus himself was able to reap, doing so because
of Jesus.
So, in this one fairly short, but truly
wonderful scripture, we see it all working together well, like a well-oiled
machine. In
a sense, we, as children of God and heirs with Christ, are essentially being
invited to join in with the work of God. We are essentially being invited to
part of this Tri-Personal relationship.
We are being invited to join into the work of
the Tri-personal God.
It reminds me of that
ikon by Andrei Rubelev that I have put out in the Narthex this morning. We are
being invited to join in to the work God is doing. And I think that is why this icon is so
important to me.
We are constantly being invited to
the table of God. We are called to sit down at that table with this
tri-personal God, to join in that circle of love and, as followers of Jesus, to
share that love with others, then we are truly celebrating what this Sunday is
all about. We are sharing the love and
work of our tri-personal God.
We are saying to God, as Isaiah did
in today’s reading from the Hebrew scriptures:
“Here
I am!”
So, no matter what the theologians
argue about, no matter what those supposedly learned teachers proclaim,
ultimately, our understanding of God always needs to be based on our own
experience to some extent. The mysteries
of God do not have to be a frustrating aspect of our church and our faith. Rather they should widen and expand our faith
life and our understanding and experience of God and, in turn, of each other.
So, today, as we ponder our tri-personal
God—and we should ponder this tri-personal God in our lives—as we consider how
God has worked in our lives in a tri-personal way— and who God is in our lives,
let us remember how amazing God is in the ways God is revealed to us.
God cannot be limited or quantified
or reduced.
God can only be experienced.
And adored.
And pondered.
God can only be shared with others
as we share love with each other. When
we do that—when we live out and share our loving God with others—then we are
joining with the tri-personal God who is here with us, loving us with a love
deeper than any love we have ever known before.
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