The Holy Trinity
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle A
Object:
Theme For The Day
The great Trinitarian benediction of 2 Corinthians 13:13 -- "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all" -- provides an outline for teaching the doctrine of the Trinity.
Old Testament Lesson
Genesis 1:1--2:4a
The Creation
This week we begin a thirteen-week series of readings from Genesis. Today's reading is, of course, the first of two creation stories in Genesis (the second begins at 2:4b). In terms of source criticism, it is a Priestly account. The creation takes six days. The first three God devotes to "separating" one thing from another (light from darkness, waters above from waters below, sea from dry land) in order to create land that can sustain life. The last three days, God devotes to creating the inhabitants of that land. Day six is slightly different from the rest. God says, "Let us make humankind in our image..." (v. 26). This is perhaps the remnant of an earlier Near Eastern creation story, in which the supreme Creator-God first consults the other members of the divine pantheon before proceeding. Creation in God's image (imago dei) is one of the most important ideas of Judeo-Christian theology. In the ancient Near Eastern religious context, it was a title ascribed to the king, who was thought to reflect the divine glory. That the Hebrews ascribe this term to all human beings is remarkably egalitarian, and reflects the marvelous idea that, in the eyes of God, we are all royalty. Jewish law, of course, forbids the manufacture of any image of God; the only acceptable image of God is human beings. A centrally important idea is that of sabbath, which is established on the seventh day, as God rests (verses 2:2-3). Sabbath law, which is laid out in excruciating detail later in the Pentateuch, is a stunning development in terms of social justice. It is the sort of law that only a people who had once been enslaved could conceive. The need for periodic rest is woven through creation itself, so there can be no creature to whom it does not apply. The cosmology of the Genesis creation account is radically different from how we now know the universe to be. In Genesis, the world is shaped like a dinner plate, with a dome on top of it. Underneath the plate and above the dome are the waters of chaos, which God pushes back in order to make room for life. The dome is "the firmament" (the heavens) on which hang the greater and lesser lights (sun, moon, and stars). Periodically, water leaks through this dome, causing rain. Clearly, we need not understand this passage as a scientific account of how the world came to be. It is, rather, a theological account of why the world came to be -- and how we are to live within it under God's grace.
New Testament Lesson
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
A Trinitarian Benediction
This brief reading, containing this letter's final greetings, was evidently chosen for Trinity Sunday because of the Trinitarian benediction in its last verse: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you." These are words that are well-known to most congregations; in many churches, they conclude every worship service. Yet, it can be fruitful to "unpack" a familiar verse like this in order to help the people hear it with new ears. Three great New Testament words are here in one place: grace (charis), love (agape), and communion or fellowship (koinonia). Although the author identifies these words with each of the three persons of the Trinity, they are not so easily compartmentalized. Just as the Trinity is a community with permeable boundaries between its three persons, so these words belong to all three persons of the Godhead.
The Gospel
Matthew 28:16-20
The Great Commission
These verses, the last in Matthew's gospel, closely follow his account of the resurrection. The only intervening material is verses 11-15, which tell of a certain attempt by the chief priests to bribe the Roman guards to get them to bear false witness that some of Jesus' disciples came by night to steal his body from the tomb. In verse 7, the angel gave the women a message for the other disciples: to go to Galilee to meet the risen Jesus there. This is exactly what the eleven do. These closing verses are Matthew's account of what happened there. Although there was nothing in the angel's message about going to a mountain, Matthew indicates that Jesus had earlier directed them to go to a certain mountaintop. There, they worship him; although, Matthew tells us, "some doubted" (v. 17). This provides some comfort for doubters everywhere: that, having seen the risen Lord face-to-face, some of his closest followers still struggle with doubt. Periodically, throughout his ministry, Jesus has revealed himself as a person exercising divine authority (see 7:29; 8:9; 9:6, 8; 21:24). Now, it is clear that all authority, in heaven and earth, has been given to him (v. 18). He reveals himself as the second person of the Trinity as he commands the disciples to baptize "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (v. 19). There is no longer any caution or reticence on Jesus' part: On this side of the resurrection, he frankly admits who he is. It may be useful to focus on the verbs in the Great Commission, all of them imperatives. First, Jesus orders the disciples to go (poreuomai). There are no armchair Christians. Second, they are to make disciples (matheteuo) -- not only of those close at hand, but "of all nations" (ethnos). This word -- the root of our word, "ethnic" -- is sometimes translated "Gentiles." The Great Commission has a remarkably wide scope -- especially for this group of faithful Jews who, when first they answered Jesus' call, probably didn't dream of the strange and far-flung places to which that call would ultimately take them. Third, they are to baptize (baptizomai). The only people baptized, under orthodox Judaism in Jesus' day, were Gentile converts. The practice of John the Baptist, of course, was a notable exception -- and, here, Jesus continues John the Baptist's radical (and, to some, offensive) practice of baptizing Jew and Gentile alike. Finally, they are to teach (didasko) all the things the Lord has commanded them. Although the NRSV gives us a fifth imperative, in "remember," in fact the Greek text simply says, "behold" (idou): "I am with you always, to the end of the age." The disciples will be able to fulfill all these weighty responsibilities because the risen Lord will be with them.
Preaching Possibilities
There is one verse from scripture that most ministers have quoted more times than any other. Each Sunday, in many churches, pastors raise their hands and say to the people, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all." It's the famous benediction from the end of Second Corinthians. These words are so familiar to anyone who's been around the church, that we're likely to let them roll by without so much as a second thought.
It's well worth slowing the benediction down and taking a good look at it. On this day, known to the church as Trinity Sunday, this benediction provides us a snapshot of God, the three-in-one.
The Trinity is not an easy doctrine to comprehend. God is one; yet God is also three: father, son, and Holy Spirit. Most of us can recall, when we were young, being told the Trinity is a "mystery." It may have seemed like a box wrapped up in brown paper: You knew something was in there, but you couldn't say what. And a mystery it is to many of us -- to all of us, if truth be told -- still.
The greatest minds of the church have struggled to explain it to no avail. As Augustine said long ago, "In no other subject is error more dangerous, or inquiry more laborious, or the discovery of the truth more profitable."
First, let's consider "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ." In Paul's benediction, it's Christ who comes first, even though he's usually called "the second person of the Trinity." Yet this is as it should be for it is Jesus Christ who opens up to us the nature of God.
Turn to the pages of the Old Testament, and you will discover a God who is awesome, even terrible. This is the God who can blast mountains, unleash floods, and visit plagues upon the earth. Even Moses, the greatest of prophets, could not look upon the face of God but had to hide himself in a cleft of the rock as the Lord passed by.
Without Jesus Christ, God is impossibly distant. Yet, when we see in our mind's eye God's own Son staggering down the Way of Sorrows with a cross on his back, we know without a doubt that God cares about us. For, in Christ, God has come to earth to know life in all its joys and sorrows.
That graceful vision is a gift. We look at Jesus Christ and we know -- don't ask us how, we just know -- that "God so loved the world." Grace does not show us that everything is all right; grace shows us that it is right for us to live that God loves us, in spite of everything, even sin.
Grace will never make our dreams come true. It will not cure what ails us, and will not send us soaring to the heights of fame and fortune. What grace does do is allow us to look life full in the face and know that although everything may seem to be all wrong, somehow, in the providence of God, it will be all right.
Next, let's consider the love of God. It's well known to most longtime listeners to sermons that the Greek language has at least three different words for love. There's eros, the soulful physical attraction between two people. There's philia, the love of friend for friend. Yet when Paul sets out to wish the Corinthians "the love of God," he chooses the rarest word of all -- agape -- selfless, self-giving love.
How often can we manage that kind of love? Our lives seem to prove the truth of the old saying: "You only hurt the one you love."
In our best moments, though, we do manage it. We do so not by our own devices, but by channeling the love that we receive from God to others. "Love," wrote Augustine centuries ago, "means that I want you to be." Agape -- the selfless love of God -- desires, more than anything, that we and others simply be; that we be ourselves; that we live as the flawed and fearful and fortunate creatures we are.
Finally, let's take a look at the communion of the Holy Spirit. Now, there's a high and lofty idea! Communion means "union with." When we commune with another person, heart touches heart, and soul reaches out to soul. What a rare and beautiful experience that is! Yet the apostle is speaking, here, of communion with God. It seems arrogant, to say the least, to borrow such language as that!
Yet, "the communion of the Holy Spirit" is exactly what Paul means -- for it is that which he desires for the Christians of Corinth. The Corinthians were not anyone's ideal of the perfect Christian. Corinth in those days was a notorious and worldly place -- a city of sailors on shore leave, of prostitutes and pickpockets and philanderers. The Corinthian church was continually racked by controversy. Yet, it is these flawed and worldly people that Paul blesses with "the communion of the Holy Spirit."
"Shared joy," says an old Swedish proverb, "is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow." It is only through fellowship with one another that the likes of you and me experience fellowship with God. If we are to commune with the infinite, we must first break bread with one another. When Christ's Spirit is among us, we see things we have never seen before -- including hints of God reflected in our fellow human beings as the moon reflects the light of the sun.
The Trinity is too great a reality for our small minds to comprehend. Yet, corresponding to the persons of the Trinity are these three gifts of grace, love, and communion. It is by those gifts that we enter into the circle -- and it's a fabulous ride! The Trinity is dynamic; we cannot so much comprehend it as be caught up in it.
A Christian benediction is more than benign good wishes. It is powerful stuff. If the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is with us, our lives will never be the same. If we have experienced the utterly self-giving love of God, our lives will never be the same. If the communion of the Holy Spirit characterizes our common life as a church, our lives will never be the same.
Scripture promises, however, that one day it will come true for all to see. Paul's benediction doesn't contain the word "if." "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all." It's a certainty that sometime during the coming week you will receive a little bit of grace, experience the love of God, have your life touched by transforming fellowship. Blessings are the stuff of daily life, if we will but open our eyes to see them and our hearts to receive them!
Prayer For The Day
Great God of benevolent generosity,
we bow, today, to ask for your blessing,
your benediction on our lives.
There is so much about our lives that seems unholy,
corrupted by the spirits of selfish striving
that seem to rule our world.
Yet, you promise grace, love, and communion:
gifts you lavish upon us,
beyond our deserving.
Make us fit to receive such blessings at your hand.
Even more, equip us to lead others to receive them as well.
In Jesus' name we ask it. Amen.
To Illustrate
During a time of war, two soldiers had to bury a friend who had just died. They went to the local Catholic priest and asked permission to bury their friend in the cemetery. The priest said he was sorry, but the man was a Protestant, and this was a Catholic cemetery. He would have to be buried outside the fence.
The soldiers did as they were told and came back the next day to pay their final respects. To their amazement, the grave was now inside the fence. When they asked the priest about it, he explained that he could not sleep, thinking about that soldier outside the cemetery fence. So he went out in the middle of the night and moved the fence.
That's what the grace of Jesus Christ is like. The fence is moved to include even us.
***
Sometimes our love for others is ambivalent. A little girl named Nancy was mad at her mother. She stomped up to her room in a huff and could be heard banging the furniture around. Then things got quiet. A few minutes later Nancy called down, "How do you spell hate?" Then she called down, "How do you spell love?"
Not long after, her mother looked up to see a note come fluttering down from the upstairs landing. It read, "Dear Mom, I hate you. Love, Nancy."
Now, we adults are a little more sophisticated in our communications than that. Yet, the messages we send are often just as mixed. That's not how it is with God's love. The agape of God is not ambivalent, but constant.
***
A young woman had been seeing a psychiatrist. He asked her one day, "Which of your three children do you love the most?"
"What an impossible question!" she replied. "I love them all the same," she replied.
"Oh, come off it!" the psychiatrist objected. "You can't love them all equally."
He continued to press the woman until she admitted, "All right, I don't love all three of them the same. When one of my children is sick, I love that one more. When one of them is in pain, or lost, I love that one more. When one of them has done wrong, I love that one more."
***
Historically, the church has imagined the Trinity as a triangle. Yet, that may not be the best image. A triangle is too solid, too static, too squat. We can think of the Trinity, instead, as a circle.
One thing about a circle is that it has no beginning. You can enter the circle at any point. Some enter the circle of God at a particular point, relating more strongly to one person of the Trinity than the others. Some, for example, enter the circle in a powerful, personal experience of grace, mediated through Jesus Christ. Sin and forgiveness loom large in this type of experience, and the person often feels compelled to revisit the formative grace-experience again and again.
For others, it is the love of God that woos them into the circle. Some Christians have grown up with the image of God as a stern taskmaster, and when they discover the God of love, it is almost as a conversion experience.
Still others see the imprint of God on the life of the Christian community. It is the new quality of life within the fellowship that woos them into faith.
Wherever you or I may enter the circle, it is not long before we get in touch with the other aspects of the divine nature. Although we may enter as an individualistic, salvation-oriented believer, it won't be long before we discover the great commandment to love. If we've entered at communion, or fellowship, drawn in by "those nice people" up at the church, it won't be long before we understand that the reason those people are so winsome is because they know they are sinners in need of grace, as are we all.
***
Rightly understood, the Trinity as a theological image should expand our God consciousness, not restrict it. It should stretch our capacities for wholeness and holiness, not shrink us. It should sharpen our religious imaginations, not dull our sensibilities.
-- Carter Heyward, The Living Pulpit, April/June 1999, p. 21
***
In human language we say, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," but we do not mean one God with two beings alongside him, or three gods of limited power. Just as we say, "Here is my hand, and these are the actions my one hand performs," but it is not different from the actions of my five fingers, so with God: this is God, the One, the Living and Self-subsistent, but what God does is not different from the life that is eternally at the same time a source and an expression and a sharing of life. Since God's life is always an intelligent and purposeful life, each of these dimensions of divine life can be thought of as a center of mind and love; but this does not mean that God "contains" three different individuals, separate from each other as human individuals are.
And Christians believe that this life enters into ours in a limited degree. When God takes away our evildoing and our guilt, when he forgives us and sets us free, he breathes new life into us as he breathed life into Adam at the first. That breathing into us we call the "Spirit." As we become mature in our new life, we become more and more like the expression of divine life, the Word whom we encounter in Jesus. Because Jesus prayed to the source of his life as "Father," we call the eternal expression of God's life the "Son." And so too we pray to the source of divine life in the way that Jesus taught us, and we say "Father" to this divine reality.
But in no way does the true Christian say that the life and action of God could be divided into separate parts as if it were a material thing. In no way does the true Christian say that there is more than one God or that God needs some other in order to act or that God promotes some other being to share his glory. There is one divine action, one divine will; yet (like the fingers of the hand) there are three ways in which that life is real, and it is only in those three ways that the divine life is real -- as source, expression, and sharing. It is because of those three ways in which divine life exists that Christians speak as they do about what it means to grow in holiness.
-- Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, describing Christianity to a Muslim audience at the al-Azhar al-Sharif Institute in Cairo, September 11, 2004. Source: Anglican Communion News Service
The great Trinitarian benediction of 2 Corinthians 13:13 -- "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all" -- provides an outline for teaching the doctrine of the Trinity.
Old Testament Lesson
Genesis 1:1--2:4a
The Creation
This week we begin a thirteen-week series of readings from Genesis. Today's reading is, of course, the first of two creation stories in Genesis (the second begins at 2:4b). In terms of source criticism, it is a Priestly account. The creation takes six days. The first three God devotes to "separating" one thing from another (light from darkness, waters above from waters below, sea from dry land) in order to create land that can sustain life. The last three days, God devotes to creating the inhabitants of that land. Day six is slightly different from the rest. God says, "Let us make humankind in our image..." (v. 26). This is perhaps the remnant of an earlier Near Eastern creation story, in which the supreme Creator-God first consults the other members of the divine pantheon before proceeding. Creation in God's image (imago dei) is one of the most important ideas of Judeo-Christian theology. In the ancient Near Eastern religious context, it was a title ascribed to the king, who was thought to reflect the divine glory. That the Hebrews ascribe this term to all human beings is remarkably egalitarian, and reflects the marvelous idea that, in the eyes of God, we are all royalty. Jewish law, of course, forbids the manufacture of any image of God; the only acceptable image of God is human beings. A centrally important idea is that of sabbath, which is established on the seventh day, as God rests (verses 2:2-3). Sabbath law, which is laid out in excruciating detail later in the Pentateuch, is a stunning development in terms of social justice. It is the sort of law that only a people who had once been enslaved could conceive. The need for periodic rest is woven through creation itself, so there can be no creature to whom it does not apply. The cosmology of the Genesis creation account is radically different from how we now know the universe to be. In Genesis, the world is shaped like a dinner plate, with a dome on top of it. Underneath the plate and above the dome are the waters of chaos, which God pushes back in order to make room for life. The dome is "the firmament" (the heavens) on which hang the greater and lesser lights (sun, moon, and stars). Periodically, water leaks through this dome, causing rain. Clearly, we need not understand this passage as a scientific account of how the world came to be. It is, rather, a theological account of why the world came to be -- and how we are to live within it under God's grace.
New Testament Lesson
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
A Trinitarian Benediction
This brief reading, containing this letter's final greetings, was evidently chosen for Trinity Sunday because of the Trinitarian benediction in its last verse: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you." These are words that are well-known to most congregations; in many churches, they conclude every worship service. Yet, it can be fruitful to "unpack" a familiar verse like this in order to help the people hear it with new ears. Three great New Testament words are here in one place: grace (charis), love (agape), and communion or fellowship (koinonia). Although the author identifies these words with each of the three persons of the Trinity, they are not so easily compartmentalized. Just as the Trinity is a community with permeable boundaries between its three persons, so these words belong to all three persons of the Godhead.
The Gospel
Matthew 28:16-20
The Great Commission
These verses, the last in Matthew's gospel, closely follow his account of the resurrection. The only intervening material is verses 11-15, which tell of a certain attempt by the chief priests to bribe the Roman guards to get them to bear false witness that some of Jesus' disciples came by night to steal his body from the tomb. In verse 7, the angel gave the women a message for the other disciples: to go to Galilee to meet the risen Jesus there. This is exactly what the eleven do. These closing verses are Matthew's account of what happened there. Although there was nothing in the angel's message about going to a mountain, Matthew indicates that Jesus had earlier directed them to go to a certain mountaintop. There, they worship him; although, Matthew tells us, "some doubted" (v. 17). This provides some comfort for doubters everywhere: that, having seen the risen Lord face-to-face, some of his closest followers still struggle with doubt. Periodically, throughout his ministry, Jesus has revealed himself as a person exercising divine authority (see 7:29; 8:9; 9:6, 8; 21:24). Now, it is clear that all authority, in heaven and earth, has been given to him (v. 18). He reveals himself as the second person of the Trinity as he commands the disciples to baptize "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (v. 19). There is no longer any caution or reticence on Jesus' part: On this side of the resurrection, he frankly admits who he is. It may be useful to focus on the verbs in the Great Commission, all of them imperatives. First, Jesus orders the disciples to go (poreuomai). There are no armchair Christians. Second, they are to make disciples (matheteuo) -- not only of those close at hand, but "of all nations" (ethnos). This word -- the root of our word, "ethnic" -- is sometimes translated "Gentiles." The Great Commission has a remarkably wide scope -- especially for this group of faithful Jews who, when first they answered Jesus' call, probably didn't dream of the strange and far-flung places to which that call would ultimately take them. Third, they are to baptize (baptizomai). The only people baptized, under orthodox Judaism in Jesus' day, were Gentile converts. The practice of John the Baptist, of course, was a notable exception -- and, here, Jesus continues John the Baptist's radical (and, to some, offensive) practice of baptizing Jew and Gentile alike. Finally, they are to teach (didasko) all the things the Lord has commanded them. Although the NRSV gives us a fifth imperative, in "remember," in fact the Greek text simply says, "behold" (idou): "I am with you always, to the end of the age." The disciples will be able to fulfill all these weighty responsibilities because the risen Lord will be with them.
Preaching Possibilities
There is one verse from scripture that most ministers have quoted more times than any other. Each Sunday, in many churches, pastors raise their hands and say to the people, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all." It's the famous benediction from the end of Second Corinthians. These words are so familiar to anyone who's been around the church, that we're likely to let them roll by without so much as a second thought.
It's well worth slowing the benediction down and taking a good look at it. On this day, known to the church as Trinity Sunday, this benediction provides us a snapshot of God, the three-in-one.
The Trinity is not an easy doctrine to comprehend. God is one; yet God is also three: father, son, and Holy Spirit. Most of us can recall, when we were young, being told the Trinity is a "mystery." It may have seemed like a box wrapped up in brown paper: You knew something was in there, but you couldn't say what. And a mystery it is to many of us -- to all of us, if truth be told -- still.
The greatest minds of the church have struggled to explain it to no avail. As Augustine said long ago, "In no other subject is error more dangerous, or inquiry more laborious, or the discovery of the truth more profitable."
First, let's consider "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ." In Paul's benediction, it's Christ who comes first, even though he's usually called "the second person of the Trinity." Yet this is as it should be for it is Jesus Christ who opens up to us the nature of God.
Turn to the pages of the Old Testament, and you will discover a God who is awesome, even terrible. This is the God who can blast mountains, unleash floods, and visit plagues upon the earth. Even Moses, the greatest of prophets, could not look upon the face of God but had to hide himself in a cleft of the rock as the Lord passed by.
Without Jesus Christ, God is impossibly distant. Yet, when we see in our mind's eye God's own Son staggering down the Way of Sorrows with a cross on his back, we know without a doubt that God cares about us. For, in Christ, God has come to earth to know life in all its joys and sorrows.
That graceful vision is a gift. We look at Jesus Christ and we know -- don't ask us how, we just know -- that "God so loved the world." Grace does not show us that everything is all right; grace shows us that it is right for us to live that God loves us, in spite of everything, even sin.
Grace will never make our dreams come true. It will not cure what ails us, and will not send us soaring to the heights of fame and fortune. What grace does do is allow us to look life full in the face and know that although everything may seem to be all wrong, somehow, in the providence of God, it will be all right.
Next, let's consider the love of God. It's well known to most longtime listeners to sermons that the Greek language has at least three different words for love. There's eros, the soulful physical attraction between two people. There's philia, the love of friend for friend. Yet when Paul sets out to wish the Corinthians "the love of God," he chooses the rarest word of all -- agape -- selfless, self-giving love.
How often can we manage that kind of love? Our lives seem to prove the truth of the old saying: "You only hurt the one you love."
In our best moments, though, we do manage it. We do so not by our own devices, but by channeling the love that we receive from God to others. "Love," wrote Augustine centuries ago, "means that I want you to be." Agape -- the selfless love of God -- desires, more than anything, that we and others simply be; that we be ourselves; that we live as the flawed and fearful and fortunate creatures we are.
Finally, let's take a look at the communion of the Holy Spirit. Now, there's a high and lofty idea! Communion means "union with." When we commune with another person, heart touches heart, and soul reaches out to soul. What a rare and beautiful experience that is! Yet the apostle is speaking, here, of communion with God. It seems arrogant, to say the least, to borrow such language as that!
Yet, "the communion of the Holy Spirit" is exactly what Paul means -- for it is that which he desires for the Christians of Corinth. The Corinthians were not anyone's ideal of the perfect Christian. Corinth in those days was a notorious and worldly place -- a city of sailors on shore leave, of prostitutes and pickpockets and philanderers. The Corinthian church was continually racked by controversy. Yet, it is these flawed and worldly people that Paul blesses with "the communion of the Holy Spirit."
"Shared joy," says an old Swedish proverb, "is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow." It is only through fellowship with one another that the likes of you and me experience fellowship with God. If we are to commune with the infinite, we must first break bread with one another. When Christ's Spirit is among us, we see things we have never seen before -- including hints of God reflected in our fellow human beings as the moon reflects the light of the sun.
The Trinity is too great a reality for our small minds to comprehend. Yet, corresponding to the persons of the Trinity are these three gifts of grace, love, and communion. It is by those gifts that we enter into the circle -- and it's a fabulous ride! The Trinity is dynamic; we cannot so much comprehend it as be caught up in it.
A Christian benediction is more than benign good wishes. It is powerful stuff. If the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is with us, our lives will never be the same. If we have experienced the utterly self-giving love of God, our lives will never be the same. If the communion of the Holy Spirit characterizes our common life as a church, our lives will never be the same.
Scripture promises, however, that one day it will come true for all to see. Paul's benediction doesn't contain the word "if." "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all." It's a certainty that sometime during the coming week you will receive a little bit of grace, experience the love of God, have your life touched by transforming fellowship. Blessings are the stuff of daily life, if we will but open our eyes to see them and our hearts to receive them!
Prayer For The Day
Great God of benevolent generosity,
we bow, today, to ask for your blessing,
your benediction on our lives.
There is so much about our lives that seems unholy,
corrupted by the spirits of selfish striving
that seem to rule our world.
Yet, you promise grace, love, and communion:
gifts you lavish upon us,
beyond our deserving.
Make us fit to receive such blessings at your hand.
Even more, equip us to lead others to receive them as well.
In Jesus' name we ask it. Amen.
To Illustrate
During a time of war, two soldiers had to bury a friend who had just died. They went to the local Catholic priest and asked permission to bury their friend in the cemetery. The priest said he was sorry, but the man was a Protestant, and this was a Catholic cemetery. He would have to be buried outside the fence.
The soldiers did as they were told and came back the next day to pay their final respects. To their amazement, the grave was now inside the fence. When they asked the priest about it, he explained that he could not sleep, thinking about that soldier outside the cemetery fence. So he went out in the middle of the night and moved the fence.
That's what the grace of Jesus Christ is like. The fence is moved to include even us.
***
Sometimes our love for others is ambivalent. A little girl named Nancy was mad at her mother. She stomped up to her room in a huff and could be heard banging the furniture around. Then things got quiet. A few minutes later Nancy called down, "How do you spell hate?" Then she called down, "How do you spell love?"
Not long after, her mother looked up to see a note come fluttering down from the upstairs landing. It read, "Dear Mom, I hate you. Love, Nancy."
Now, we adults are a little more sophisticated in our communications than that. Yet, the messages we send are often just as mixed. That's not how it is with God's love. The agape of God is not ambivalent, but constant.
***
A young woman had been seeing a psychiatrist. He asked her one day, "Which of your three children do you love the most?"
"What an impossible question!" she replied. "I love them all the same," she replied.
"Oh, come off it!" the psychiatrist objected. "You can't love them all equally."
He continued to press the woman until she admitted, "All right, I don't love all three of them the same. When one of my children is sick, I love that one more. When one of them is in pain, or lost, I love that one more. When one of them has done wrong, I love that one more."
***
Historically, the church has imagined the Trinity as a triangle. Yet, that may not be the best image. A triangle is too solid, too static, too squat. We can think of the Trinity, instead, as a circle.
One thing about a circle is that it has no beginning. You can enter the circle at any point. Some enter the circle of God at a particular point, relating more strongly to one person of the Trinity than the others. Some, for example, enter the circle in a powerful, personal experience of grace, mediated through Jesus Christ. Sin and forgiveness loom large in this type of experience, and the person often feels compelled to revisit the formative grace-experience again and again.
For others, it is the love of God that woos them into the circle. Some Christians have grown up with the image of God as a stern taskmaster, and when they discover the God of love, it is almost as a conversion experience.
Still others see the imprint of God on the life of the Christian community. It is the new quality of life within the fellowship that woos them into faith.
Wherever you or I may enter the circle, it is not long before we get in touch with the other aspects of the divine nature. Although we may enter as an individualistic, salvation-oriented believer, it won't be long before we discover the great commandment to love. If we've entered at communion, or fellowship, drawn in by "those nice people" up at the church, it won't be long before we understand that the reason those people are so winsome is because they know they are sinners in need of grace, as are we all.
***
Rightly understood, the Trinity as a theological image should expand our God consciousness, not restrict it. It should stretch our capacities for wholeness and holiness, not shrink us. It should sharpen our religious imaginations, not dull our sensibilities.
-- Carter Heyward, The Living Pulpit, April/June 1999, p. 21
***
In human language we say, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," but we do not mean one God with two beings alongside him, or three gods of limited power. Just as we say, "Here is my hand, and these are the actions my one hand performs," but it is not different from the actions of my five fingers, so with God: this is God, the One, the Living and Self-subsistent, but what God does is not different from the life that is eternally at the same time a source and an expression and a sharing of life. Since God's life is always an intelligent and purposeful life, each of these dimensions of divine life can be thought of as a center of mind and love; but this does not mean that God "contains" three different individuals, separate from each other as human individuals are.
And Christians believe that this life enters into ours in a limited degree. When God takes away our evildoing and our guilt, when he forgives us and sets us free, he breathes new life into us as he breathed life into Adam at the first. That breathing into us we call the "Spirit." As we become mature in our new life, we become more and more like the expression of divine life, the Word whom we encounter in Jesus. Because Jesus prayed to the source of his life as "Father," we call the eternal expression of God's life the "Son." And so too we pray to the source of divine life in the way that Jesus taught us, and we say "Father" to this divine reality.
But in no way does the true Christian say that the life and action of God could be divided into separate parts as if it were a material thing. In no way does the true Christian say that there is more than one God or that God needs some other in order to act or that God promotes some other being to share his glory. There is one divine action, one divine will; yet (like the fingers of the hand) there are three ways in which that life is real, and it is only in those three ways that the divine life is real -- as source, expression, and sharing. It is because of those three ways in which divine life exists that Christians speak as they do about what it means to grow in holiness.
-- Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, describing Christianity to a Muslim audience at the al-Azhar al-Sharif Institute in Cairo, September 11, 2004. Source: Anglican Communion News Service
