SPECIAL DAYS: Trinity Sunday

LESSONS: Proverbs 8.1-4, 22-31; John 16.12-15

SERMON TITLE: Making Sense of the Trinity

INTRODUCTION:

1. RIDDLE:
1. When are three one and yet not one?
2. When they are the Trinity.
3. It's a concept of God with which we admit experiencing some difficulty.


ILL: "The liturgical calendar calls this Sunday, "Trinity Sunday"--a day set aside to "celebrate" the unique triune character of our Good, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. "'Celebrate' or stumble over? The complex theological doctrine of the Trinity has always managed to leave scholars somewhat frustrated and the faithful somewhat confused. Trying adequately to express the mystery of God who is Three-in-One tends to leave us tongue tied.

ILL: One scientist, in an oft-quoted remark, says this: "This is the sort of thing I wouldn't believe, even if it really happened."

ILL: Madeleine L'Engle, in Penguins and Golden Calves: Icons & Idols ⁽¹⁾ writes: "The Trinity, like any other concept about God,...is a groping attempt to explain wholeness to a fragmented race of mortals." We worship one God in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity," reads the creed which ends with..."As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated, but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible." Dorothy Sayers adds, "The whole thing incomprehensible," to which I add, "Thank God!" If it were comprehensible, nobody would have struggled to make it comprehensible in the various creeds of the church(es). Nobody has yet succeeded, and perhaps the very incomprehensibility is why we no longer pay more than lip service to Trinity Sunday, but slide over it and immediately forget it.

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4. So why don't we sing the closing song, have the benediction and go home?
1. Because!
2. Because we need to know something about the Trinity.
3. Because we can learn, by faith, to accept what it is that God is teaching us and find in it comfort and great encouragement.

MAIN BODY:

1. Ready to go to work.
1. Not physical work, although sitting is sometimes physical work
2. Mental work.
2. Why should we struggle to understand?
1. Let me remind you of a story that I may have told you of my early ministry.
1. Struggling minister
2. Heard a definition of faith that revealed a weakness and a lack of understanding.
3. Faith is a word we use to describe a relationship with God as with a person well-known.
4. It is the well-known part that gets us.
5. We misunderstand, we misconstrue, we misapprehend.
1. We all have our conceptions of God.
2. The way God acts.
3. The way God thinks.
4. The way God behaves.
5. The strengths and weakness of God and the power that is possessed.
6. THESE CONCEPTS HAVE THEIR IMPACT, CONSTRUCTIVE OR DESTRUCTIVE, ON US.

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ILL: In L. Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy finds herself in a strange land.

The only thing she wants is to go home.

To get home, she must go to the Emerald City and seek the help of the Wizard.

After a number of adventures, Dorothy and her companions reach the Emerald City.

They finally get an audience with the Wizard.

It is awesome:

Big face, loud noise, and fire surround his appearance.

He put them off.

Finally, they become disgusted and seek the wizard behind the screen.

There they find a small, slightly rotund, man who is using some machinery to project an image.

They are shattered by the truth.

The Wizard is not what he appeared to be.

Dorothy and her companions had a concept of the wizard.

It proved to be untrue

They had misunderstood, misconstrued, and misapprehended.

Their conception of the Wizard had to be revised to bring it into conformity with reality.

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6. Could it be that our own understanding of God has something in it of the Wizard of Oz?
1. Have we misunderstood, misconstrued, and misapprehended.
2. If we truly want to know God.
3. If we truly want the faith that sustains and saves.
4. If we want the peace that passes all understanding.
5. Then we need to become intimately acquainted with our God.
1. This takes work.
2. There is no escaping it.
3. Let us begin with mystery.
1. Mystery is not a word that we may clearly comprehend.
1. It is not something hidden that cannot be known
2. It is not something that must be the exclusive right or privilege held by the keepers of information.
2. Mystery = musteôrion something, because of either human misunderstanding or the lack of divine revelation that was hidden, but is now revealed in Jesus Christ.


ILL: Romans 16:25 through Romans 16:27 (NRSVA)

2525Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages ²⁶but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith--²⁷to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen.

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ILL Ephesians 3:7 through Ephesians 3:12 (NRSVA)

7Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God's grace that was given me by the working of his power. ⁸Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, ⁹and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; ¹⁰so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. ¹¹This was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, ¹²in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him.

1. The mystery is revealed.
2. The nature and personhood of God is made plain.
3. It has a significant impact on the way we see, experience and talk about our God.
3. We tend to see God as singular.
1. God is one.
2. WE call ourselves MONOTHEISTS in contrast to other religions which are POLYTHEISTIC.
3. We more often than not speak of God vertically.
1. From top to bottom, Father Son and Holy Spirit.
2. This is a misunderstanding of God,
4. We ought to see God horizontally.
1. Father, Son and Holy spirit all on the same plane.
2. They are co-existent and co-equal.

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4. The ancient creeds speak to us because they reveal the struggle that our spiritual ancestors confronted and, at least temporarily, resolved.
1. In the creeds we have the intense and often contentious work to distill the essence of Christianity into a brief statement that can be understood.


NICENE CREED (Go to)

The Nicene Creed was an expression of the faith of the church as defined at the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), and later reaffirmed at the Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451). Based probably on the baptismal creed of Jerusalem, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed contained a fuller statement concerning Christ and the Holy Spirit than the earlier formula.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED (Go to)

The Athanasian Creed was first clearly referred to in the 6th century. It is Latin in origin, and in the Middle Ages it was regularly used in church services. Since the Reformation its liturgical use has been confined mainly to the Roman Catholic church and the Anglican Communion, although it is now infrequently recited.

This creed was prepared to assist the Church in combating two errors that undermined Bible teaching. One error denied that God's Son and the Holy Spirit are of one being or Godhead with the Father. The other error denied that Jesus Christ is true God and true man in one person. The Athanasian Creed continues to serve the Christian Church as a standard of the truth.

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2. The Creeds recognizes three that are God.
1. Father who is equal to and independent of
2. Son who is equal to and independent of
3. Holy Spirit who is equal to and independent of.
   
   (For biblical proofs of the nature of Christ and the Holy Spirit go to SCRIPTURAL PROOFS)
   

   Deus (God) in the center.

   Father on one point of a triangle.

   Son and Holy Spirit on the other two points.

   On the legs of the triangle are the words non est meaning is not.

   Joining the points of the triangle are lines an on them is written est meaning is.

   The Father is not the Son

   The Son is not the Holy Spirit.

   The Holy Spirit is not the Father.

   All are God.

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   Ill: The British essayist Sara Maitland, writes that "Although many of us have grown up gratefully with St. Patrick's cloverleaf image of the Trinity -- three leaves making up one clover leaf -- there is always room for some new imagery as well.

   Her favorite model of the Trinity is that it is like a child's pigtail. If the Trinity is seen as a plait -- three equal strands, smoothly interrelated -- there are some advantages. Firstly, you can tear one of the leaves off a clover threesome and leave the other two still related, but if you pull one of the strands out of a plait, the whole thing collapses. Inasmuch as there is a Trinitarian God, this threefold revelation makes perfect sense, and obviously the same thing applies: You cannot have any two of the sources without the third because the whole thing falls apart. At times, when plaiting, it is important to look at the whole pigtail and check that the hair has been reasonably accurately divided into three.

   Both the orthodox churches of the East and the charismatic movement have suggested that perhaps the mainstream churches of the West have become excessively Christocentric -- that their emphasis on the second person of the Trinity has made the pigtail somewhat lopsided. In the same way, I would suggest that perhaps we have allowed the strand of revelation in creation to get rather too skinny; that God's role as Creator and sustainer of the universe needs some fleshing out, some extra weight" (Sara Maitland, A Big Enough God [New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1995], 15-16).

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   ILL: In an earlier sermon that I preached on the Trinity, I remarked that the Trinity would be like Identical Triplets.  A very knowledgeable member of the congregation with the appropriate doctoral degree told me that it was impossible. The next week in the Minneapolis Star was a story of identical triplets.

5. Romans and John, though not called Trinity, speak of the oneness and the separateness of God.
1. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
2. Clearly Jesus is speaking about three and the unity among them.
3. Otherwise he would have spoken about himself and his own future revelation without mentioning the Holy Spirit.
4. All are beings with personality.
1. All are beings of substance
2. All are beings separate yet equal.
6. What may we expect from an acceptance of this teaching and tradition.
1. We understand how important human being really are.
2. We understand that we are not alone, but surrounded by the presence of God.
3. We understand that God has a particular interest and regard for humanity.
4. So we struggle on.

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