So, Explain It To Me
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Object:
Trinity Sunday begins the second half of the church year. The first half of the church year beginning with Advent and ending with Pentecost focused on the life of Christ. We call this second half ordinary time but there is nothing ordinary about it. It is an extraordinary time of the year when we focus on the church's life and mission. Some have called Trinity Sunday the "great hinge" of the church year. Others have called it the "great pain"! Why? Because as the only Sunday of the church year that focuses on a doctrine instead of a historical event or person, it seems so abstract, complicated, and downright boring.
I vividly remember an event from my childhood. My father, who was also a pastor, was often visited in the summer by one of his boyhood friends, Harold, from St. Louis. Sitting around one Saturday night socializing, I remember Harold blurting out to his old friend, "Eddy (that was my father's name), whatever you do tomorrow, don't preach on the Trinity! You will put us all to sleep."
We feel obligated to confess the Trinity. We would feel very strange not talking about God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We don't want to discard it from our worship life. But few us know why it is important. Few of us would ever want our pastor to preach on the Trinity. It seems like the ultimate invitation to at least confusion if not total boredom.
Instead we spend our energy trying to explain the Trinity. We have developed all kinds of interesting illustrations and examples to explain the Trinity, this phenomenon of one God in three persons. Let me cite a few of them for you.
Water, H2O, one element, comes in three different forms: liquid, solid, and gas.
Here I am, Steve Albertin, one person who also at the same time has three different roles: son, father, and husband.
When we speak of "one God in three persons," what the early church had in mind was very different from what we think of today. "Person" is actually a translation of the Greek word, persona, which refers to the mask an actor would wear in the theater. So, in the case of the Trinity, one God in three persons is comparable to one actor playing three different roles, wearing a different mask, a different persona, to play each role.
One of the greatest leaders and theologians of the early church, Saint Augustine, wrote a massive work, On The Trinity, that has greatly shaped our understanding of the Trinity today. It took him ten years to write and is actually not one book but fifteen books all on the Trinity. In that work he developed that famous formulation of the Trinity that we see reflected in much church teaching, hymnody, and even art. Perhaps you have seen the visual portrayal of it. There is a triangle that at each point portrays a different person of the Trinity -- Father, Son, and Spirit. In the center is the word God. Between each person of the Trinity and the center is the word is. So, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. Then between each person of the Trinity are the words is not. So, the Father is not the Son. The Father is not the Spirit. The Son is not the Father, and so on.
Augustine looked at the world around him and saw examples of the Trinity everywhere. One well-known example went like this: love. Even Jesus said that we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We say, "I love myself." "I" is the subject of love, the lover. "Myself" is the object of love, the beloved. And "love" is the action of the lover for the beloved. It is all one activity with three distinct parts: the lover, the beloved, and love.
Such are the ways we often try to explain the Trinity. It isn't easy. It seems to require a lot of intellectual gymnastics. It seems to have its own kind of strange logic and rationality. For example, have you ever heard of "Trinitarian math"? Normal math is 1+1+1=3. But Trinitarian math is 1+1+1=1. It is indeed mysterious and confounding, reflecting the reality of a God who defies human explanation.
The doctrine of the Trinity has not been without its critics. The other two great monotheistic faiths, Judaism and Islam, have complained that we Christians need to make up our minds. Do we believe in one God or three Gods?
Others have complained that the Trinity reflects the concerns of a world that is no longer ours. It cannot be doubted that the doctrine of the Trinity is formulated in the philosophical categories of a world dominated by Greek philosophy. When we recite the Nicene Creed, the influence of those philosophical categories is obvious. Today we don't think that way. We don't argue about "substance," "accident," and "essence." Therefore, some say, we need to discard the Trinity as ancient and antiquated.
Still others, especially oppressed minorities such as women and blacks, have complained that the Trinity was just another tool of a patriarchal, racist, and an oppressive church.
What is common to all these attempts to explain the Trinity is that they treat it as an intellectual exercise that seeks to clarify a mystery that defies explanation. Unfortunately, that often results in doctrinal formulas that are simply "imposed" upon us. We are told that this is what we "gotta" believe, if we want to be a Christian. Sometimes I get the impression that when we teach the Trinity to our young people, what we are essentially telling them is "Shut up and believe it!"
The Trinity is really something altogether quite different. We miss the point of the doctrine of Trinity and what it is to accomplish when we treat it as some sort of ideology or doctrine that we "have to" accept and believe. Rather, the doctrine of the Trinity is the result of our experience of the gospel. The Trinity is the way we talk about a God whose love we experience and encounter in the gospel of Jesus Christ. We can't talk about a God who loves us like this without using Trinitarian language. It is because God loves us like he does, that we must speak of God as three in one, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
A classic example of basing the doctrine of the Trinity in the experience of the gospel of Christ is in today's reading from 2 Corinthians. With this benediction, Paul brings to a conclusion this letter. In the four previous chapters Paul has had to defend the authority of his apostleship after his critics have attacked the authority and legitimacy of his apostleship in every way. Paul's defense is not so much a defense of himself personally but a restatement of the gospel of the crucified Christ. He has warned and admonished the Corinthians, but his final word to them is a blessing. It has to be this way for Paul because the basis of his call for a change among the Corinthians is not his anger or personal indignation but God's love for them in Jesus Christ. Paul's last word to them must be love because that is God's last word to them. The only way Paul can talk about a God who loves the world like this is to talk about his experience of Christ in the power of his Spirit.
Paul can't talk about the God who loves them like that without resorting to the language of the Trinity. For Paul, the Trinity is never just about the division of power within the person of God but is always about God's love for the world in Jesus Christ. It is no accident that the Trinitarian formula that Paul uses here is slightly different from later Trinitarian formulas. It begins not with God but with Christ and then follows with God and the Spirit. "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you." It is first because of his experience of the love of Christ that Paul must resort to Trinitarian language to talk about the God who loves the world like this through the power of the Spirit.
When we witness an infant baptism, we are privileged to welcome a young child into the Christian church through that sacrament. When water is poured on this child, in order to talk about the wonderful thing God is doing for this child, we have to speak of the Trinity. In that baptism, God, the creator of the universe, promised to that little child a new future that is in the hands of the risen and ascended Jesus. Therefore, we baptize in the name of this God who has bestowed upon the child this marvelous gift: "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."
The promise of baptism like the promise of the gospel is like a murder mystery. Are you familiar with the genre of literature called the "whodunit?" murder mystery? Agatha Christie is one of the most famous authors of this style of mystery. Some years ago, the television series, Murder She Wrote, was a similar adaptation of this style. A crime was committed. The suspects were examined. By the end of the story, Inspector Poirot (or similar character) solved the mystery by identifying the culprit. The butler did it!
Suppose you came across a murder mystery you had never read before. You bought the book or checked it out of the library, and, when you got it home, you cheated. When nobody was looking, you read the last chapter first. Then you went back and read the story from the beginning. Or you recorded Murder She Wrote on your VCR, and when you came home, you cheated. You watched the last five minutes first before watching the entire show from the beginning. Because you knew in advance the ending, now you experience the plot and story of the mystery in an entirely new way. In a sense, you now have an entirely new story. Now you have ... Columbo! For those you who are old enough to remember or have seen the show, which is still in syndication on cable, in Columbo you knew from the very beginning who the murderer was. The suspense came in watching Columbo track down the culprit whose identity you already knew.
That is now what we have in the promise of the gospel. In baptism, God gives us a new last chapter, Jesus' last chapter. Jesus' fate and destiny are now ours. We have died and risen with Christ in advance, before we ever reach our last chapter. Because we now know what that last chapter will be even before we get there, we get to live and experience the plot of our lives in a new way. Our lives are changed, different, altered because of the "down payment" we have received on this new last chapter written by God in the life of Jesus and offered to us in the power of the Spirit.
There, I did it again. Did you notice? I could not help telling you the gospel without speaking of the Trinity, one God yet Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
That is the only reason why the Trinity is important. That is the only reason why orthodoxy matters. Orthodoxy is perverted when it is imposed as some sort of ideology or doctrine "you gotta believe." Then we might as well say, "Shut up and believe it!" But orthodoxy is never about some truth we "gotta" believe in order to be right. No, orthodoxy is always about what needs to be said in order for the good news to be good news. The Trinity is the way we need to talk about God in order for the good news to be good news. For if the good news is not good news, then it's not the good news. For when the good news is good news, then the God who is the source of this good news is always Trinity. Orthodoxy is always for the sake of the gospel.
Is there still mystery to the Trinity? Yes. The Trinity will always sound irrational and confounding. Trinitarian math will always sound absurd. But the real mystery of the Trinity is not simply its complexity or a strange sort of logic. The real mystery of the Trinity is this: Why does God bother at all? Why does God bother with us at all? Why does God bother to love us like this? Why does God bother to be this merciful, this compassionate, this generous? Perhaps some day we will know the answer to that question. But even if we never find out, it won't matter.
She was your typical awkward adolescent. She was convinced that she was an ugly duckling, fat and plain and surely never the kind of girl that any boy would ever give the time of day. But she went to the dance anyway, hoping against hope that that one particular boy she had secretly had her eyes on for months would pay attention to her and, hope against hope, might even ask her for a dance.
She stood where all the ugly ducklings usually stood: off to the side, out of the way, almost hidden because she was too ashamed to be visible, out in front, public, where she was convinced everyone would make fun of her.
But then she was stunned, absolutely stunned. Unexpectedly, surprisingly, miraculously, that very boy she had so secretly dreamed about came to her. There was no ridicule. There was no laughter. There was no rejection to which an ugly duckling such as herself had grown so accustomed. Instead there was an invitation ... to dance! She of all the beautiful girls in that room was asked to dance by this boy!
Shocked, amazed, overwhelmed, thrilled, she could not believe what happened to her. There was only one question she wanted to ask. Why had he noticed her? Why did he want to dance with her? Why did he bother to pick her?
Then she thought the better of it. This was no time to ask such questions and probe the mystery. No! This was simply the time to enjoy the dance -- and enjoy the dance she did!
Why did God bother to love us like this? Why is God Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God in three persons? Perhaps this is the time to leave questions like that unanswered. This is no time for an explanation. This is the time to enjoy the dance! Amen.
I vividly remember an event from my childhood. My father, who was also a pastor, was often visited in the summer by one of his boyhood friends, Harold, from St. Louis. Sitting around one Saturday night socializing, I remember Harold blurting out to his old friend, "Eddy (that was my father's name), whatever you do tomorrow, don't preach on the Trinity! You will put us all to sleep."
We feel obligated to confess the Trinity. We would feel very strange not talking about God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We don't want to discard it from our worship life. But few us know why it is important. Few of us would ever want our pastor to preach on the Trinity. It seems like the ultimate invitation to at least confusion if not total boredom.
Instead we spend our energy trying to explain the Trinity. We have developed all kinds of interesting illustrations and examples to explain the Trinity, this phenomenon of one God in three persons. Let me cite a few of them for you.
Water, H2O, one element, comes in three different forms: liquid, solid, and gas.
Here I am, Steve Albertin, one person who also at the same time has three different roles: son, father, and husband.
When we speak of "one God in three persons," what the early church had in mind was very different from what we think of today. "Person" is actually a translation of the Greek word, persona, which refers to the mask an actor would wear in the theater. So, in the case of the Trinity, one God in three persons is comparable to one actor playing three different roles, wearing a different mask, a different persona, to play each role.
One of the greatest leaders and theologians of the early church, Saint Augustine, wrote a massive work, On The Trinity, that has greatly shaped our understanding of the Trinity today. It took him ten years to write and is actually not one book but fifteen books all on the Trinity. In that work he developed that famous formulation of the Trinity that we see reflected in much church teaching, hymnody, and even art. Perhaps you have seen the visual portrayal of it. There is a triangle that at each point portrays a different person of the Trinity -- Father, Son, and Spirit. In the center is the word God. Between each person of the Trinity and the center is the word is. So, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. Then between each person of the Trinity are the words is not. So, the Father is not the Son. The Father is not the Spirit. The Son is not the Father, and so on.
Augustine looked at the world around him and saw examples of the Trinity everywhere. One well-known example went like this: love. Even Jesus said that we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We say, "I love myself." "I" is the subject of love, the lover. "Myself" is the object of love, the beloved. And "love" is the action of the lover for the beloved. It is all one activity with three distinct parts: the lover, the beloved, and love.
Such are the ways we often try to explain the Trinity. It isn't easy. It seems to require a lot of intellectual gymnastics. It seems to have its own kind of strange logic and rationality. For example, have you ever heard of "Trinitarian math"? Normal math is 1+1+1=3. But Trinitarian math is 1+1+1=1. It is indeed mysterious and confounding, reflecting the reality of a God who defies human explanation.
The doctrine of the Trinity has not been without its critics. The other two great monotheistic faiths, Judaism and Islam, have complained that we Christians need to make up our minds. Do we believe in one God or three Gods?
Others have complained that the Trinity reflects the concerns of a world that is no longer ours. It cannot be doubted that the doctrine of the Trinity is formulated in the philosophical categories of a world dominated by Greek philosophy. When we recite the Nicene Creed, the influence of those philosophical categories is obvious. Today we don't think that way. We don't argue about "substance," "accident," and "essence." Therefore, some say, we need to discard the Trinity as ancient and antiquated.
Still others, especially oppressed minorities such as women and blacks, have complained that the Trinity was just another tool of a patriarchal, racist, and an oppressive church.
What is common to all these attempts to explain the Trinity is that they treat it as an intellectual exercise that seeks to clarify a mystery that defies explanation. Unfortunately, that often results in doctrinal formulas that are simply "imposed" upon us. We are told that this is what we "gotta" believe, if we want to be a Christian. Sometimes I get the impression that when we teach the Trinity to our young people, what we are essentially telling them is "Shut up and believe it!"
The Trinity is really something altogether quite different. We miss the point of the doctrine of Trinity and what it is to accomplish when we treat it as some sort of ideology or doctrine that we "have to" accept and believe. Rather, the doctrine of the Trinity is the result of our experience of the gospel. The Trinity is the way we talk about a God whose love we experience and encounter in the gospel of Jesus Christ. We can't talk about a God who loves us like this without using Trinitarian language. It is because God loves us like he does, that we must speak of God as three in one, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
A classic example of basing the doctrine of the Trinity in the experience of the gospel of Christ is in today's reading from 2 Corinthians. With this benediction, Paul brings to a conclusion this letter. In the four previous chapters Paul has had to defend the authority of his apostleship after his critics have attacked the authority and legitimacy of his apostleship in every way. Paul's defense is not so much a defense of himself personally but a restatement of the gospel of the crucified Christ. He has warned and admonished the Corinthians, but his final word to them is a blessing. It has to be this way for Paul because the basis of his call for a change among the Corinthians is not his anger or personal indignation but God's love for them in Jesus Christ. Paul's last word to them must be love because that is God's last word to them. The only way Paul can talk about a God who loves the world like this is to talk about his experience of Christ in the power of his Spirit.
Paul can't talk about the God who loves them like that without resorting to the language of the Trinity. For Paul, the Trinity is never just about the division of power within the person of God but is always about God's love for the world in Jesus Christ. It is no accident that the Trinitarian formula that Paul uses here is slightly different from later Trinitarian formulas. It begins not with God but with Christ and then follows with God and the Spirit. "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you." It is first because of his experience of the love of Christ that Paul must resort to Trinitarian language to talk about the God who loves the world like this through the power of the Spirit.
When we witness an infant baptism, we are privileged to welcome a young child into the Christian church through that sacrament. When water is poured on this child, in order to talk about the wonderful thing God is doing for this child, we have to speak of the Trinity. In that baptism, God, the creator of the universe, promised to that little child a new future that is in the hands of the risen and ascended Jesus. Therefore, we baptize in the name of this God who has bestowed upon the child this marvelous gift: "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."
The promise of baptism like the promise of the gospel is like a murder mystery. Are you familiar with the genre of literature called the "whodunit?" murder mystery? Agatha Christie is one of the most famous authors of this style of mystery. Some years ago, the television series, Murder She Wrote, was a similar adaptation of this style. A crime was committed. The suspects were examined. By the end of the story, Inspector Poirot (or similar character) solved the mystery by identifying the culprit. The butler did it!
Suppose you came across a murder mystery you had never read before. You bought the book or checked it out of the library, and, when you got it home, you cheated. When nobody was looking, you read the last chapter first. Then you went back and read the story from the beginning. Or you recorded Murder She Wrote on your VCR, and when you came home, you cheated. You watched the last five minutes first before watching the entire show from the beginning. Because you knew in advance the ending, now you experience the plot and story of the mystery in an entirely new way. In a sense, you now have an entirely new story. Now you have ... Columbo! For those you who are old enough to remember or have seen the show, which is still in syndication on cable, in Columbo you knew from the very beginning who the murderer was. The suspense came in watching Columbo track down the culprit whose identity you already knew.
That is now what we have in the promise of the gospel. In baptism, God gives us a new last chapter, Jesus' last chapter. Jesus' fate and destiny are now ours. We have died and risen with Christ in advance, before we ever reach our last chapter. Because we now know what that last chapter will be even before we get there, we get to live and experience the plot of our lives in a new way. Our lives are changed, different, altered because of the "down payment" we have received on this new last chapter written by God in the life of Jesus and offered to us in the power of the Spirit.
There, I did it again. Did you notice? I could not help telling you the gospel without speaking of the Trinity, one God yet Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
That is the only reason why the Trinity is important. That is the only reason why orthodoxy matters. Orthodoxy is perverted when it is imposed as some sort of ideology or doctrine "you gotta believe." Then we might as well say, "Shut up and believe it!" But orthodoxy is never about some truth we "gotta" believe in order to be right. No, orthodoxy is always about what needs to be said in order for the good news to be good news. The Trinity is the way we need to talk about God in order for the good news to be good news. For if the good news is not good news, then it's not the good news. For when the good news is good news, then the God who is the source of this good news is always Trinity. Orthodoxy is always for the sake of the gospel.
Is there still mystery to the Trinity? Yes. The Trinity will always sound irrational and confounding. Trinitarian math will always sound absurd. But the real mystery of the Trinity is not simply its complexity or a strange sort of logic. The real mystery of the Trinity is this: Why does God bother at all? Why does God bother with us at all? Why does God bother to love us like this? Why does God bother to be this merciful, this compassionate, this generous? Perhaps some day we will know the answer to that question. But even if we never find out, it won't matter.
She was your typical awkward adolescent. She was convinced that she was an ugly duckling, fat and plain and surely never the kind of girl that any boy would ever give the time of day. But she went to the dance anyway, hoping against hope that that one particular boy she had secretly had her eyes on for months would pay attention to her and, hope against hope, might even ask her for a dance.
She stood where all the ugly ducklings usually stood: off to the side, out of the way, almost hidden because she was too ashamed to be visible, out in front, public, where she was convinced everyone would make fun of her.
But then she was stunned, absolutely stunned. Unexpectedly, surprisingly, miraculously, that very boy she had so secretly dreamed about came to her. There was no ridicule. There was no laughter. There was no rejection to which an ugly duckling such as herself had grown so accustomed. Instead there was an invitation ... to dance! She of all the beautiful girls in that room was asked to dance by this boy!
Shocked, amazed, overwhelmed, thrilled, she could not believe what happened to her. There was only one question she wanted to ask. Why had he noticed her? Why did he want to dance with her? Why did he bother to pick her?
Then she thought the better of it. This was no time to ask such questions and probe the mystery. No! This was simply the time to enjoy the dance -- and enjoy the dance she did!
Why did God bother to love us like this? Why is God Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God in three persons? Perhaps this is the time to leave questions like that unanswered. This is no time for an explanation. This is the time to enjoy the dance! Amen.
