It's a mystery!
Commentary
One of the most delightful movies I have seen in awhile was Shakespeare in Love, which won the Oscar for the best movie of 1999. One of the favorite lines throughout the movie was, "I don't know. It's a mystery."
And that's what I feel like saying every time Trinity Sunday comes around: "I don't know. It's a mystery."
Isn't that, in a way, what even Jesus is saying when he speaks of the wind or Spirit in the gospel reading today? The wind, like the Spirit, is a mystery. You cannot comprehend the wind or control it. The wind goes where it will. So does the Spirit.
The doctrine of the Trinity is an attempt to explain a mystery that is, in the final analysis, unexplainable. "I don't know. It's a mystery." And that's not such a bad thing to admit, to accept and even celebrate.
Isaiah 6:1-8
Isaiah 6:1 through at least 8:18 forms a memoir Isaiah shared with the whole world. It's really his call to ministry. So what he is sharing is deeply personal but something that made him who he was, determined his identity and place and work in the world.
But his calling was within the scope of what was going on in his nation and world. Isaiah was called at a critical time in the history of his people -- during the events leading to the Syro-Ephraimite War (when Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel banded together against Judah) and the pressure being placed on King Ahaz. These two kingdoms wanted Judah to join them in rebellion against Assyria but Judah was reluctant to do so. Isaiah will tell Ahaz not to listen to this plea as the two kingdoms will not last very long. There is nothing to fear, Isaiah says, but Ahaz doesn't listen. Isaiah's task, in other words, would not be an easy one (see v. 9ff, which is not in today's reading). He would speak judgment on a wayward nation and government. Many would oppose him. Prophets are not without honor except in their own countries. They are not the most popular of people.
The setting for Isaiah's call is most likely the Temple in Jerusalem. From the description of the setting, it appears that Isaiah is looking through the entranceway into the inner sanctum of the temple. Why is he there? By what right? Perhaps he is already a priest serving there, as many scholars think. Or maybe he was a court official of some kind.
Why is he there? Perhaps getting ready to carry out his priestly duties. Or maybe he was there for prayer and worship. Perhaps he was there praying for his people as it was a time of crisis. Uzziah, their king, had died (this was probably 736/735 B.C.). We know from 2 Kings 15:5 that Uzziah had leprosy, with his son, Jotham, was acting as king until both he and Uzziah died, leaving Jotham's son, Ahaz, to take the throne.
Isaiah has a vision. The temple had become the throne room for God. God was high and lifted up on a throne and the train of God's robe filled the whole room. What a vision! Isaiah felt himself in the presence of God.
Earthly kings always had servants and bodyguards standing by. Likewise, Isaiah sees "seraphs," God's servants or attendants. They seem to be serpent-like creatures with three pair of wings but human hands and feet. They fly and they sing. Such creatures were often seen or used in Egyptian royal symbolism as the bodyguards of the king (some in the form of a winged cobra). But as far as we know there were no actual images of seraphim in the temple itself.
The seraphim are singing a song of praise to God: "Holy, holy, holy." Many scholars believe what Isaiah is hearing, if he is indeed having this vision in a worship service, is a choral antiphon or song used in the temple. The song sings of the majestic, mystery, power and worthiness of God. Indeed, God's glory is such that it fills the earth. God's greatness can be seen everywhere if we look.
The voices from the choir and the seraphim and the incense all combined to make the prophet feel the temple or whole earth shake and tremble, perhaps as a way of also praising God. So it's no wonder that the prophet begins to shake and tremble as well! The prophet has an intense fear that he is a sinner and not worthy to be in the presence of God. This might well spell his doom! Perhaps he had sensed for some time this call from God but had felt and still did that his lips were unworthy of such a task as being God's messenger. And he is certainly aware that he's not alone in his unworthiness and sin -- the entire nation is sinful. None are worthy of being God's people, God's servants.
Then Isaiah hears God's voice asking who can God send to these sinful people. Without hesitation Isaiah says, like so many before and after him, "Here I am; send me."
Romans 8:12-17
The Christian has been given a life on another level -- the level of the Spirit -- and must seek to live on that level. It's explained here as living as God's children. Because the Spirit dwells within us, we are God's own children. So we can call upon God as our heavenly Parent and look forward to a share in a great inheritance.
Verses 12-13 sum up and build on what has gone before this. Paul addresses the Roman Christians in more friendly, intimate terms as "friends" or "brothers and sisters." They are free now from the domination of sin, the lower nature, and even from death. But they can fall back into it, and that would mean death to them. What Paul seems to have in mind is going back to living in the flesh, sarx, following the way of the lower nature, the way that does not follow Christ and the leading of the Spirit. Such actions or lifestyles are named in Galatians 5:19-20. All of these must be put to death. Refusing to go back to that way of life, with the help of the Spirit, then results in true life, life as God intended it to be.
Verses 14-17 explain the nature of this new life given in and by the Spirit. We are sons and daughters of God. The Spirit makes us thus. The Spirit creates a whole new relationship with God.
This idea of the Spirit living in us and making us God's children is interesting. I can feel that something of the "spirit" of my parents lives in me. This is a mystery that is hard to explain or demonstrate, but it is true nonetheless. There is this unexplainable connection I have with them. They live within me. And perhaps this is also what Paul has in mind. The Spirit lives within us, too, is our connection to our heavenly Parent. The Spirit assures us that we are God's children.
Paul fears, however, that they might forget their new and exalted status, that they might go back to dependence on the law for their justification and that would be slavery, he says, and to doom themselves to a life of fear, never really knowing for certain if they were right with God. But that is not their birthright. The Spirit gives them an assurance of being loved and accepted by God as children, not based on who they are or what they have done or not done, but based solely on the free grace and love of God.
Knowing such love and having the presence of the Spirit, we are able to call upon God as "Abba," or "Father." It is very much the word a child would use for her dad. It's an intimate word, a word that shows a close and loving relationship with God. This is what Christ desires for us to have with God. It is our birthright. We were created for such a relationship. But sin broke it. Christ restores it through the power of the Spirit. And the Spirit then, working in us, enables us to call upon God as a heavenly Parent, really knowing and feeling that God loves us like a Parent, and even more so, like the most loving Parent we could ever have. The Spirit keeps working to assure us that we are children of God.
Because we are God's children, we are heirs and joint heirs with Christ. We stand to inherit all the things one might receive being an heir of God. This does not include only material things but more spiritual things, I think. The greatest inheritance is the presence of God, that is, knowing God each and every day. What greater thing can God give us than God's own self? Yet, this inheritance also includes eternal life -- life always in the presence of God. A taste or foretaste of this is seen already in the resurrection of Christ, who himself lives within us. No earthly inheritance even begins to compare to this one!
John 3:1-17
John 3:1-21 is a series of dialogues between Jesus and a Pharisee named Nicodemus who perhaps witnessed some of the signs/miracles Jesus had been doing (John, ch. 2) and came to Jesus at night curious about just who this man was.
In this encounter with Nicodemus, we see the new confronting the old. Nicodemus is a teacher of Israel, a theologian, an expert in the laws and traditions of Judaism. He is a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin -- their supreme court. If ever there was an expert in the Jewish faith, it was Nicodemus.
But he is curious about Jesus. Here is a whole new movement. Nicodemus had heard things, seen things, but now wants to meet Jesus personally and see for himself what Jesus was all about.
Nicodemus is a learned man, but Jesus in essence tells him that he needs to make a whole new beginning. What's needed now is not new information, new laws to follow, but a whole new birth, a new start, a new orientation to God. It can only be compared to a whole new birth.
Impossible! Nicodemus says, thinking only in physical terms. Jesus is thinking of spiritual rebirth or regeneration -- coming to a whole new understanding and experience of how God relates to us and works in our lives. This would be the way of grace and love, not works and law. All of this was what God was bringing about in the life and teaching of Jesus. This would be as difficult for Nicodemus to experience and understand as labor pains. He could not grasp it.
This wondrous new work of God was already happening as John the Baptist was preaching repentance and then giving baptism. But more than water was needed. One also had to be awash in the Spirit or born of the Spirit (v. 5). This gift is only given by John's successor -- Jesus (who John said of himself, "I wash or baptize you with water, but the one coming after me will baptize you in the Holy Spirit). Christ is the one who reconnects us with God. Christ restores our fellowship with God, so that God's own Spirit lives within us (as Paul says in the epistle reading for today).
Then perhaps a night breeze blows through the place they are that evening and Jesus uses that to further explain what he means. This is a mystery. "I know it is hard to understand. So is the wind that we feel right now. It comes and goes as it wishes. We cannot see it but we feel its presence and see its power. Likewise, this new thing God is doing, which you need so much, is the work of God's Spirit. You may not see the Spirit, but, if you open your heart and mind, you will feel the presence and power of the Spirit moving in your life, making you a new person." But Nicodemus still does not get it. Maybe he could not at this point nor could any of us until that time when Christ was "lifted up." Only as they came to look up at the Christ on the cross would they begin to see, to feel the Spirit blowing away the old and bringing the new.
The heart of this passage is verses 14-16. Jesus makes reference to the Numbers account of the bronze serpent, how it was lifted up and those who looked up in faith to the God who had commanded it be made were then healed, given life. Likewise, when Christ is lifted up (the Greek word here for "lifted up" is hupsoun, which means both lifted up on the cross and lifted up to glory -- ascension). Those who also look up in faith or who "believe in him" will receive not just life but eternal life.
But God's gift of love in Christ also brings judgment, though this is not why Jesus came (v. 17). Jesus came to bring life, salvation, light and truth. But how one reacts to Jesus brings condemnation or salvation. In Jesus, the love and grace of God comes into our world. That presents us with a choice, a decision. Will we believe God loves us? Will we accept it? Will we then let that love flow through us and in everything we do?
To believe is to live. To not choose or to reject is to close ourselves off from the life and love God gives in Christ.
Application
To affirm that there are things we don't understand, that God is in many ways a mystery to us is an expression of faith and sound theology. For how can we ever fully explain God? If we could, would God be God? Here is always a hiddenness about God, a mystery. That is part of what's wonderful about God and our relationship with God.
And isn't this true with our other relationships?
I have been married to my wife for 27 years. I know her well. But quite often when relating to her I find myself wondering, "I don't know. It's a mystery." And I do not mean that in a negative sense at all. There is still a wondrous part of who she is that I am still getting to know. There is depth and mystery there that keeps our relationship fresh and renewing. Of course, I'm not sure she would say the same about me!
I think we need the mystery! We need to not know it all. We should accept that and celebrate it.
Lynn Anderson is the author of If I Really Believe, Why Do I Have These Doubts? Anderson makes a strong case for the mystery of God. We should affirm it. He writes:
There is nothing wrong with trying to understand our faith. But many of us try too hard. We attempt to explain the unexplainable, find out the indefinable, ponder over the imponderable, and unscrew the inscrutable. A life of real meaningful faith can't be treated that way. Trying to do so only leaves people with swollen heads and shrunken hearts ([Howard Publishing, 2000], 36).
Anderson goes on to relate how one astronaut who walked on the moon found the experience disillusioning. James Irwin was on a European tour after his Apollo 15 moon mission. Spanish journalist and Christian Juan Monroy asked him, "What did you feel when you stepped out of that capsule and your feet touched the surface of the moon?" To everyone's surprise Irwin answered, "It was one of the most profoundly disillusioning moments of my life ... All of my life I have been enchanted by the romance and the mystery of the moon. I sang love songs under the moon. I read poems by moonstruck poets. I embraced my lover in the moonlight. I looked up in wonder at the lunar sphere. But that day I stepped from the capsule onto the lunar surface and reached down at my feet, I came up with nothing but two handfuls of gray dirt. I cannot describe the loss I felt as the romance and mystery were stripped away. There will be no more moon in the sky!" (Anderson, 37).
Stripping away the mystery, even if we could, would leave us with a lot of doctrine as meaningless as a handful of gray dirt. It makes our faith empty, passionless. "I don't know. It's a mystery," is a great affirmation of faith and one that keeps us ever hungry for God and for growing in our knowledge of God.
"I don't know. It's a mystery." That's not a bad thing for us to affirm this Trinity Sunday and each day.
Alternative Applications
1) Isaiah 6:1-8. Many of us find ourselves wondering about who we are, why we are in this world. Michael W. Smith wrote a popular song that's even been on the secular charts called, "My Place in This World." It's about finding your place, your calling in the world.
Do you ever wonder about that? Have you found your place in this world? It's not just a question for young people. We can find ourselves at most any time in our lives wondering about our calling, just what we should do with our lives.
I think Isaiah was going through that as well. He was seeking to know his calling, his place in this world. From Isaiah's call, we can gain some insights into discovering our own call. For example, Isaiah goes to the right source -- God. He is worshiping God when he discovers his calling; his call also involved others -- that is, the needs of others -- so does our call.
2) John 3:1-17. Nicodemus just did not get it, did he? Christ tried to explain new spiritual things to him but he was still thinking the old way. He could not understand the need for a new spiritual birth.
But do we get it? Is our understanding any better? This Trinity Sunday, do we get it? Is our understanding any clearer? This wonderful passage of scripture seeks to help us "get it," to deepen our spiritual understanding.
* Get this: Christ the Son died for you (vv. 13-15).
* Get this: God the Father/Parent loves you (vv. 16-17).
* Get this: God the Holy Spirit re-creates you, gives you new life (vv. 5-8; and epistle lesson).
The Spirit is the one who conveys God's loves to us, who helps us experience the salvation of God; who assures us that we are the children of God.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 29
Though I quite understand the danger of thunderstorms, they do not terrorize me. I believe this is because of my childhood memories of my mother going out on the porch during storms to watch and listen to them. One of my first recollections about hearing thunder is my mother telling me that it was the sound of angel's bowling. But as I grew and came to know my mom better, I realized that she was a deeply committed Christian, and that she considered storms expressions of God's glory (and this despite the fact that an acquaintance of hers had been killed by lightning during a storm).
So does the author of Psalm 29. It is essentially a song praising God's glory as revealed in thunderstorms. The "voice of the Lord" in verses 3-9 is thunder.
The psalmist views the natural phenomenon of the storm as an epiphany of Yahweh, something we, in a time when meteorology is "science," are not likely to do. We can explain, at least in broad strokes, why storms occur, and so have a harder time hearing anything about God's glory in the rumble of thunder. At the same time, when we view the damage and destruction storms can do, we may not want to associate them with God's glory.
What we should not forget, however, is that whether or not we identify storms with the glory of God, the Creator can use any medium as a channel to speak to us. My mother heard God in storms where others found only anxiety. We can explain storms, prepare for them, hide from them, get caught in them, clean up after them, and so on, but we cannot say that heavenly beings never shout, "Glory!" in them. (In v. 1, the author calls on "heavenly beings" to lead the praising of God, so maybe my mother's reference to angels wasn't that far off!)
In his excellent book on the Psalms in the Interpretation commentary series, James Luther Mays points out the danger of reducing the natural phenomenon entirely to "the dimension of our reason and needs." He then quotes Calvin: "It is a diabolical science which fixes our contemplations on the works of nature, and turns them away from God ... Nothing is more preposterous than, when we meet with mediate causes, however many, to be stopped and retarded by them, as by so many obstacles, from approaching God." (Mays, Interpretation: Psalms, [Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994], 138-139.)
And that's what I feel like saying every time Trinity Sunday comes around: "I don't know. It's a mystery."
Isn't that, in a way, what even Jesus is saying when he speaks of the wind or Spirit in the gospel reading today? The wind, like the Spirit, is a mystery. You cannot comprehend the wind or control it. The wind goes where it will. So does the Spirit.
The doctrine of the Trinity is an attempt to explain a mystery that is, in the final analysis, unexplainable. "I don't know. It's a mystery." And that's not such a bad thing to admit, to accept and even celebrate.
Isaiah 6:1-8
Isaiah 6:1 through at least 8:18 forms a memoir Isaiah shared with the whole world. It's really his call to ministry. So what he is sharing is deeply personal but something that made him who he was, determined his identity and place and work in the world.
But his calling was within the scope of what was going on in his nation and world. Isaiah was called at a critical time in the history of his people -- during the events leading to the Syro-Ephraimite War (when Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel banded together against Judah) and the pressure being placed on King Ahaz. These two kingdoms wanted Judah to join them in rebellion against Assyria but Judah was reluctant to do so. Isaiah will tell Ahaz not to listen to this plea as the two kingdoms will not last very long. There is nothing to fear, Isaiah says, but Ahaz doesn't listen. Isaiah's task, in other words, would not be an easy one (see v. 9ff, which is not in today's reading). He would speak judgment on a wayward nation and government. Many would oppose him. Prophets are not without honor except in their own countries. They are not the most popular of people.
The setting for Isaiah's call is most likely the Temple in Jerusalem. From the description of the setting, it appears that Isaiah is looking through the entranceway into the inner sanctum of the temple. Why is he there? By what right? Perhaps he is already a priest serving there, as many scholars think. Or maybe he was a court official of some kind.
Why is he there? Perhaps getting ready to carry out his priestly duties. Or maybe he was there for prayer and worship. Perhaps he was there praying for his people as it was a time of crisis. Uzziah, their king, had died (this was probably 736/735 B.C.). We know from 2 Kings 15:5 that Uzziah had leprosy, with his son, Jotham, was acting as king until both he and Uzziah died, leaving Jotham's son, Ahaz, to take the throne.
Isaiah has a vision. The temple had become the throne room for God. God was high and lifted up on a throne and the train of God's robe filled the whole room. What a vision! Isaiah felt himself in the presence of God.
Earthly kings always had servants and bodyguards standing by. Likewise, Isaiah sees "seraphs," God's servants or attendants. They seem to be serpent-like creatures with three pair of wings but human hands and feet. They fly and they sing. Such creatures were often seen or used in Egyptian royal symbolism as the bodyguards of the king (some in the form of a winged cobra). But as far as we know there were no actual images of seraphim in the temple itself.
The seraphim are singing a song of praise to God: "Holy, holy, holy." Many scholars believe what Isaiah is hearing, if he is indeed having this vision in a worship service, is a choral antiphon or song used in the temple. The song sings of the majestic, mystery, power and worthiness of God. Indeed, God's glory is such that it fills the earth. God's greatness can be seen everywhere if we look.
The voices from the choir and the seraphim and the incense all combined to make the prophet feel the temple or whole earth shake and tremble, perhaps as a way of also praising God. So it's no wonder that the prophet begins to shake and tremble as well! The prophet has an intense fear that he is a sinner and not worthy to be in the presence of God. This might well spell his doom! Perhaps he had sensed for some time this call from God but had felt and still did that his lips were unworthy of such a task as being God's messenger. And he is certainly aware that he's not alone in his unworthiness and sin -- the entire nation is sinful. None are worthy of being God's people, God's servants.
Then Isaiah hears God's voice asking who can God send to these sinful people. Without hesitation Isaiah says, like so many before and after him, "Here I am; send me."
Romans 8:12-17
The Christian has been given a life on another level -- the level of the Spirit -- and must seek to live on that level. It's explained here as living as God's children. Because the Spirit dwells within us, we are God's own children. So we can call upon God as our heavenly Parent and look forward to a share in a great inheritance.
Verses 12-13 sum up and build on what has gone before this. Paul addresses the Roman Christians in more friendly, intimate terms as "friends" or "brothers and sisters." They are free now from the domination of sin, the lower nature, and even from death. But they can fall back into it, and that would mean death to them. What Paul seems to have in mind is going back to living in the flesh, sarx, following the way of the lower nature, the way that does not follow Christ and the leading of the Spirit. Such actions or lifestyles are named in Galatians 5:19-20. All of these must be put to death. Refusing to go back to that way of life, with the help of the Spirit, then results in true life, life as God intended it to be.
Verses 14-17 explain the nature of this new life given in and by the Spirit. We are sons and daughters of God. The Spirit makes us thus. The Spirit creates a whole new relationship with God.
This idea of the Spirit living in us and making us God's children is interesting. I can feel that something of the "spirit" of my parents lives in me. This is a mystery that is hard to explain or demonstrate, but it is true nonetheless. There is this unexplainable connection I have with them. They live within me. And perhaps this is also what Paul has in mind. The Spirit lives within us, too, is our connection to our heavenly Parent. The Spirit assures us that we are God's children.
Paul fears, however, that they might forget their new and exalted status, that they might go back to dependence on the law for their justification and that would be slavery, he says, and to doom themselves to a life of fear, never really knowing for certain if they were right with God. But that is not their birthright. The Spirit gives them an assurance of being loved and accepted by God as children, not based on who they are or what they have done or not done, but based solely on the free grace and love of God.
Knowing such love and having the presence of the Spirit, we are able to call upon God as "Abba," or "Father." It is very much the word a child would use for her dad. It's an intimate word, a word that shows a close and loving relationship with God. This is what Christ desires for us to have with God. It is our birthright. We were created for such a relationship. But sin broke it. Christ restores it through the power of the Spirit. And the Spirit then, working in us, enables us to call upon God as a heavenly Parent, really knowing and feeling that God loves us like a Parent, and even more so, like the most loving Parent we could ever have. The Spirit keeps working to assure us that we are children of God.
Because we are God's children, we are heirs and joint heirs with Christ. We stand to inherit all the things one might receive being an heir of God. This does not include only material things but more spiritual things, I think. The greatest inheritance is the presence of God, that is, knowing God each and every day. What greater thing can God give us than God's own self? Yet, this inheritance also includes eternal life -- life always in the presence of God. A taste or foretaste of this is seen already in the resurrection of Christ, who himself lives within us. No earthly inheritance even begins to compare to this one!
John 3:1-17
John 3:1-21 is a series of dialogues between Jesus and a Pharisee named Nicodemus who perhaps witnessed some of the signs/miracles Jesus had been doing (John, ch. 2) and came to Jesus at night curious about just who this man was.
In this encounter with Nicodemus, we see the new confronting the old. Nicodemus is a teacher of Israel, a theologian, an expert in the laws and traditions of Judaism. He is a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin -- their supreme court. If ever there was an expert in the Jewish faith, it was Nicodemus.
But he is curious about Jesus. Here is a whole new movement. Nicodemus had heard things, seen things, but now wants to meet Jesus personally and see for himself what Jesus was all about.
Nicodemus is a learned man, but Jesus in essence tells him that he needs to make a whole new beginning. What's needed now is not new information, new laws to follow, but a whole new birth, a new start, a new orientation to God. It can only be compared to a whole new birth.
Impossible! Nicodemus says, thinking only in physical terms. Jesus is thinking of spiritual rebirth or regeneration -- coming to a whole new understanding and experience of how God relates to us and works in our lives. This would be the way of grace and love, not works and law. All of this was what God was bringing about in the life and teaching of Jesus. This would be as difficult for Nicodemus to experience and understand as labor pains. He could not grasp it.
This wondrous new work of God was already happening as John the Baptist was preaching repentance and then giving baptism. But more than water was needed. One also had to be awash in the Spirit or born of the Spirit (v. 5). This gift is only given by John's successor -- Jesus (who John said of himself, "I wash or baptize you with water, but the one coming after me will baptize you in the Holy Spirit). Christ is the one who reconnects us with God. Christ restores our fellowship with God, so that God's own Spirit lives within us (as Paul says in the epistle reading for today).
Then perhaps a night breeze blows through the place they are that evening and Jesus uses that to further explain what he means. This is a mystery. "I know it is hard to understand. So is the wind that we feel right now. It comes and goes as it wishes. We cannot see it but we feel its presence and see its power. Likewise, this new thing God is doing, which you need so much, is the work of God's Spirit. You may not see the Spirit, but, if you open your heart and mind, you will feel the presence and power of the Spirit moving in your life, making you a new person." But Nicodemus still does not get it. Maybe he could not at this point nor could any of us until that time when Christ was "lifted up." Only as they came to look up at the Christ on the cross would they begin to see, to feel the Spirit blowing away the old and bringing the new.
The heart of this passage is verses 14-16. Jesus makes reference to the Numbers account of the bronze serpent, how it was lifted up and those who looked up in faith to the God who had commanded it be made were then healed, given life. Likewise, when Christ is lifted up (the Greek word here for "lifted up" is hupsoun, which means both lifted up on the cross and lifted up to glory -- ascension). Those who also look up in faith or who "believe in him" will receive not just life but eternal life.
But God's gift of love in Christ also brings judgment, though this is not why Jesus came (v. 17). Jesus came to bring life, salvation, light and truth. But how one reacts to Jesus brings condemnation or salvation. In Jesus, the love and grace of God comes into our world. That presents us with a choice, a decision. Will we believe God loves us? Will we accept it? Will we then let that love flow through us and in everything we do?
To believe is to live. To not choose or to reject is to close ourselves off from the life and love God gives in Christ.
Application
To affirm that there are things we don't understand, that God is in many ways a mystery to us is an expression of faith and sound theology. For how can we ever fully explain God? If we could, would God be God? Here is always a hiddenness about God, a mystery. That is part of what's wonderful about God and our relationship with God.
And isn't this true with our other relationships?
I have been married to my wife for 27 years. I know her well. But quite often when relating to her I find myself wondering, "I don't know. It's a mystery." And I do not mean that in a negative sense at all. There is still a wondrous part of who she is that I am still getting to know. There is depth and mystery there that keeps our relationship fresh and renewing. Of course, I'm not sure she would say the same about me!
I think we need the mystery! We need to not know it all. We should accept that and celebrate it.
Lynn Anderson is the author of If I Really Believe, Why Do I Have These Doubts? Anderson makes a strong case for the mystery of God. We should affirm it. He writes:
There is nothing wrong with trying to understand our faith. But many of us try too hard. We attempt to explain the unexplainable, find out the indefinable, ponder over the imponderable, and unscrew the inscrutable. A life of real meaningful faith can't be treated that way. Trying to do so only leaves people with swollen heads and shrunken hearts ([Howard Publishing, 2000], 36).
Anderson goes on to relate how one astronaut who walked on the moon found the experience disillusioning. James Irwin was on a European tour after his Apollo 15 moon mission. Spanish journalist and Christian Juan Monroy asked him, "What did you feel when you stepped out of that capsule and your feet touched the surface of the moon?" To everyone's surprise Irwin answered, "It was one of the most profoundly disillusioning moments of my life ... All of my life I have been enchanted by the romance and the mystery of the moon. I sang love songs under the moon. I read poems by moonstruck poets. I embraced my lover in the moonlight. I looked up in wonder at the lunar sphere. But that day I stepped from the capsule onto the lunar surface and reached down at my feet, I came up with nothing but two handfuls of gray dirt. I cannot describe the loss I felt as the romance and mystery were stripped away. There will be no more moon in the sky!" (Anderson, 37).
Stripping away the mystery, even if we could, would leave us with a lot of doctrine as meaningless as a handful of gray dirt. It makes our faith empty, passionless. "I don't know. It's a mystery," is a great affirmation of faith and one that keeps us ever hungry for God and for growing in our knowledge of God.
"I don't know. It's a mystery." That's not a bad thing for us to affirm this Trinity Sunday and each day.
Alternative Applications
1) Isaiah 6:1-8. Many of us find ourselves wondering about who we are, why we are in this world. Michael W. Smith wrote a popular song that's even been on the secular charts called, "My Place in This World." It's about finding your place, your calling in the world.
Do you ever wonder about that? Have you found your place in this world? It's not just a question for young people. We can find ourselves at most any time in our lives wondering about our calling, just what we should do with our lives.
I think Isaiah was going through that as well. He was seeking to know his calling, his place in this world. From Isaiah's call, we can gain some insights into discovering our own call. For example, Isaiah goes to the right source -- God. He is worshiping God when he discovers his calling; his call also involved others -- that is, the needs of others -- so does our call.
2) John 3:1-17. Nicodemus just did not get it, did he? Christ tried to explain new spiritual things to him but he was still thinking the old way. He could not understand the need for a new spiritual birth.
But do we get it? Is our understanding any better? This Trinity Sunday, do we get it? Is our understanding any clearer? This wonderful passage of scripture seeks to help us "get it," to deepen our spiritual understanding.
* Get this: Christ the Son died for you (vv. 13-15).
* Get this: God the Father/Parent loves you (vv. 16-17).
* Get this: God the Holy Spirit re-creates you, gives you new life (vv. 5-8; and epistle lesson).
The Spirit is the one who conveys God's loves to us, who helps us experience the salvation of God; who assures us that we are the children of God.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 29
Though I quite understand the danger of thunderstorms, they do not terrorize me. I believe this is because of my childhood memories of my mother going out on the porch during storms to watch and listen to them. One of my first recollections about hearing thunder is my mother telling me that it was the sound of angel's bowling. But as I grew and came to know my mom better, I realized that she was a deeply committed Christian, and that she considered storms expressions of God's glory (and this despite the fact that an acquaintance of hers had been killed by lightning during a storm).
So does the author of Psalm 29. It is essentially a song praising God's glory as revealed in thunderstorms. The "voice of the Lord" in verses 3-9 is thunder.
The psalmist views the natural phenomenon of the storm as an epiphany of Yahweh, something we, in a time when meteorology is "science," are not likely to do. We can explain, at least in broad strokes, why storms occur, and so have a harder time hearing anything about God's glory in the rumble of thunder. At the same time, when we view the damage and destruction storms can do, we may not want to associate them with God's glory.
What we should not forget, however, is that whether or not we identify storms with the glory of God, the Creator can use any medium as a channel to speak to us. My mother heard God in storms where others found only anxiety. We can explain storms, prepare for them, hide from them, get caught in them, clean up after them, and so on, but we cannot say that heavenly beings never shout, "Glory!" in them. (In v. 1, the author calls on "heavenly beings" to lead the praising of God, so maybe my mother's reference to angels wasn't that far off!)
In his excellent book on the Psalms in the Interpretation commentary series, James Luther Mays points out the danger of reducing the natural phenomenon entirely to "the dimension of our reason and needs." He then quotes Calvin: "It is a diabolical science which fixes our contemplations on the works of nature, and turns them away from God ... Nothing is more preposterous than, when we meet with mediate causes, however many, to be stopped and retarded by them, as by so many obstacles, from approaching God." (Mays, Interpretation: Psalms, [Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994], 138-139.)
