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Scripture Reading:
NRS John 14:15 "If you love
me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and
he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17 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. 18 "I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19
In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because
I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will know that I am
in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 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… 25
"I have said these things to you while I am still with you. 26
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. 27
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.
28 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.
Did you hear
the story about the Three Stooges? It seems that Moe, Larry and Curly had been
selected as candidates for an intelligence test. They were examined by a whole
battery of doctors, educators, psychiatrists and psychologists. It came to the
math section of the test and the chief mathematician asked Curly, “What is
three times three?” Curly did calculations on his hand and in the air Rubbing
out a portion and starting over. Finally tallying up the answer, Curly proudly
announced, “274.” The doctor shot him one of those astonished looks, wrote down
the answer and then turned to Larry. “OK, it’s your turn. What is three times
three?” Larry had gone into one of his daydream states and didn’t really hear
the question. When the doctor nudged him and said, “You can answer, today, if
you’d like,” Larry smiled and said, “Tuesday.” The doctor shot Larry one of
those astonished, what tree you fell from looks, wrote down the answer and then
turned to Moe. Moe of course had been watching all of this and called his
partners “Imbecile, numbskull” and all those other Stooge words of endearment.
The doctor asked Moe, “OK, let’s get it over with, it’s your turn. What’s three
times three?” Moe smiles real big and says, “Ah, that’s easy. Nine.” “That’s
great,” says the doctor. “How did you get that?” Moe says, “It was simple? I
subtracted 274 from Tuesday.”
The Trinity
is a fundamental foundation of our Christian doctrine, something that we repeat
each week and invoke often in prayer. But do we really know or understand where
the concept of the Trinity came from and why Father, Son and Holy Spirit are
important to us as Christians? What is the historical background for the
concept of three, yet one? What is the Trinity and where does it find itself
revealed to us? These are the questions that as Christians we should be asking
ourselves and others more knowledgeable until we ourselves have a firm
foundation in doctrine we accept as fact, while others still debate its
validity.
"Where
does the doctrine of the Trinity originate?" We know that Christian faith
is centered on the revelation of God through Jesus Christ. The early Christian
church fathers understood this as well as the concept that Christ was the son
of God and that the Holy Spirit exists. The Nicene Creed, one of the tenets of
our United Methodist doctrine defines the language of the Trinity as "…God
from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made…he came
down from heaven…” We know historically that the Nicene Creed developed out of
the understanding of the church at a time when doctrine and theological
writings were becoming a part of the church. More importantly to this however
is the use of Trinitarian language by the Christian movement immediately following
the death of Christ in the baptism of new converts. We see the use of
Trinitarian language before the Gospel’s are put into written form. We believe
that this comes directly from Jesus teaching to the Disciples, especially from
the Great Commission where Jesus invoked the power of three, Father, Son and
Holy Ghost.
Dr. Jason
Vickers initiates that the concept of the Trinity is much simpler than all of
this argument and theological discussion suggests. If we review the words of
Christ from Matthew 28: 18-19, often referred to as the Great Commission, Jesus
uses the Trinitarian language.
"18 And Jesus came
and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to
me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,"
(NRSV) When Jesus uses this language, he
prefaces it by saying, "…in the name of…" and this is the language
used by the early church movement before the written account of the Gospel
appears. Vickers says, "…what is the Trinity in the baptismal context? …
It is the NAME for God. In this sense the Trinity is much simpler than most
people think. The Trinity is the divine personal name for the Christian
God." "The early church understood this. They understood that a name
is a very powerful thing." So if we believe that God reveals God through
the works of the Holy Spirit and the works are often scriptural, then this
would suggest that we have received a revelation of God's name as God wants us to
know God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit then are interwoven into the very fabric
of who God believes God to be, three in one. Three separate characters of one
being who each give to us different aspects of the whole. "They cannot be
understood in the absence of one another: the Word must be spoken by someone,
the spirit must be the spirit of someone … they are not endpoints, between whom
there are relations, they are, simply, relationships."
So we come to
the foundation of this message, why do need to know this, or in other words,
why is this concept important to me? If we believe that Jesus is the
incarnation of God, brought through the birth to Mary and his life is the
perfect image of God in this world, then we have been given an understanding of
who God is because of that. For you and I, what is fundamentally important
about the Trinity is that it identifies for us who it is we are interacting
with at any given moment in time. Father and son are united in their love for
the world and this result is a communion of will that is expressed both in the
life, death and resurrection of the Son, but also in the works of the Holy
Spirit who is in the world we live in. The Trinity then is all about God's
relationship with us and how we should be in relationship with each other. The
incarnation taught us in human terms how to be like the Father, while the death
and resurrection illuminates for us the love of God through atonement and
ultimately through revelation that Christ is God. So it comes to very simple
explanations for you and me to glean an understanding of all of this. By Jesus
own words, he identifies the Trinity as the divine name for God. God tells us
who God is in a way that we can understand and know God. When you know
someone's name, you are given insight into who they are by the identification
that is made to the name. In this case, the ceremony of baptism or the invoking
of the name in prayer identifies that we are talking to God.
I had said
earlier that I felt that a reference to the Trinitarian language exists early
in our biblical understanding of God. Let me refer back to the passage in
Genesis 1: 26.
26 Then God
said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air,
and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." (NRSV) The plurality of the
identification of God in this account in Genesis suggests that God wanted us to
know that God views God as not one, but as the plural suggests, more than one.
In this account we interpret that God was deciding among the three how to make
humankind and what their purpose would be.
There are
numerous accounts of the works of the spirit and "The Angel of the
Lord" in the Old Testament where we may be seeing the three in action in
events that were recorded for our knowledge. For us, the importance comes not
from the theological argument, but the significance of knowing the name of who
we are praying to, learning from and trying to imitate. You cannot have a
relationship with another without knowing their name and in that simple
statement God gives us the desire by God to have a relationship with us. The
account of God's interaction with the world, from beginning to today, is the
history of relationships, of love and grace that God wishes to share with you
and me. What is significant about this concept of Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
is that we have been given an awesome gift, centered on the life, death and
resurrection of the Son, and continued by the works of the Holy Spirit in our
lives. It helps us when we talk about Jesus, God or the Holy Spirit to know
that they are real and then to be able to know who we are talking about. That
is the beauty of knowing God's name, being able to have a personal relationship
with God, by knowing who God is.
That brings
us to back to our math problem. 1 + 1 + 1 DOES equal 1. One God, in three
persons. One God in three natures. One God: Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.
But the truth is we've only scratched the surface. It's still one of those
mysteries of faith. This is one of the concepts that define us as Christians
and as Methodists. We believe in a triune God. We believe that there is God.
And God is creator, redeemer and sustainer. We encounter God in different
personifications. We encounter God the creator each time we pay attention to
the world around us. God is often compared to the Potter and we are the clay
(see Jeremiah 18: 1-6; Isaiah 45:9). There is scientific evidence that we
humans are pre-disposed to believe in God. If we look at our world, how is it
possible that shear chance brought about this creation we call the universe,
the earth and of course, us? The second personification is of course, Jesus.
Jesus is the human interacting force of God that walked the earth, to teach us
and show us by example what it means to walk as one of God’s children. And then
we have the Holy Spirit who interacts with us in our daily lives. Creator,
Redeemer and Sustainer! Father, Son and Holy Spirit! Our belief is that God
exists as three personifications in one being or one essence. There are some
that believe that Jesus was simply a man, a prophet who walked the earth. But
we believe differently. Some might teach this concept by using water as an
example. At one point in temperature water exists simultaneously in three
states, liquid, solid and gas. I like the idea of personification of God in
three states.
One of the
basic tenets of Christianity is that God is the force and the energy behind
everything that is, was or ever will be. Without God there would be nothing.
Who would believe that a butterfly can fly for 2,000 miles to escape the
winter? That's exactly what the Monarch Butterfly does. Even though people have
been skeptical, it's been documented and it is true. It is absolutely amazing
that a little caterpillar weaves a cocoon and then becomes a beautiful
butterfly which flies through the air with the greatest of ease. And then will
migrate 2,000 miles to avoid winter. There are so many things in nature that
are absolutely amazing. Science and technology fascinate me as they continue to
do and create amazing things. But what is even more amazing is looking at a
herd of Dairy Cattle and realizing that no matter what we have accomplished,
the greatest scientists in the world have not yet figured out how to turn grass
into milk.
We are never
more like God or show the nature of the love of God more than when we give and
share with others unselfishly. We may never understand the fullness of God or
the revelation of God in the Trinitarian Natures of Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. But we CAN show the nature of God and God's love for us and the world.
We can show that nature and carry out Christ's Great Commission.
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