Read Psalm 29
Read John 3:1-17
“Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the LORD
glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory of his name; worship the LORD
in holy splendor.” These are the
words from psalm 29 that we read together earlier. But as we read it, did we
actually stop to think about what it was that we were saying? Ascribe to the
Lord glory and strength, worship the Lord in holy splendor. What we are saying
is that we attribute all honor and glory to God. In essence we are being called
to give credit where credit is due. As the psalm continues this becomes more
and more explicit. The psalm describes the voice of the Lord breaking the
cedars, causing cattle to skip and flashing flames of fire. The psalm tells us
that the Lord sits enthroned as King forever. In other words, when we say
ascribe to the Lord, we are ascribing everything to the Lord. We recognize that
everything belongs to the Lord and that God shall be glorified and Worshiped
because of it.
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| Image Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library |
Today marks a day in the Christian Calendar known as
Trinity Sunday, the day in which we celebrate the totality of God; Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. As we look at the psalmist ascribing all of these things to
the Lord, we do so recognizing that it is the work of all the trinity. As we look as the creation story we can see
each person of the trinity at work. The most obvious is God the Father as he
speaks the world into creation, but John reminds us in his prologue that “In the beginning was the Word (that is Jesus Christ) and the
Word was with God and the Word was God.”
At the same time we can read about the Spirit hovering above the waters
in creation. Even here in this psalm, though not explicitly stated, when can see
the trinity in work. We see the works of creation so often attributed to God
the Father. We see the flashing flames of fire that we associated with the Holy
Spirit. And we hear about the Lord who reigns in heaven as king for all
eternity, the role that Jesus now fulfills after his ascension into heaven.
On the surface it is easy to recognize the Holy trinity
here in the scripture, but as we begin to dig deeper and question more,
understanding the trinity becomes much more difficult. After all, how can 3 be 1? We learned from an early age that these are
in fact different numbers (unless that new common core curriculum can teach us
something different). And if the three are one how are the same but different?
If it makes you feel any better we aren’t alone in asking these questions, in
fact it was a great debate in the early life of the Church, In fact different
councils were held to discuss and hash out an understanding, including the
council of Nicea (from where we get our nicean creed) and the council of
Constantinople. Through these councils and creed we get a rough statement on
the Trinity. It is one God in three distinct persons, yet one substance or
nature.”
Totally makes sense now
right? We can all go home. Over time people have tried to use different
analogies to try to help explain. Some have used and egg differentiate between
the white the yolk and the shell. Others use water to show that it exists in
three forms, liquid, gas, and solid. For as helpful as these analogies can be,
they are also sadly wrong. They fail to fully grasp the trinity by falling into
different heresies. Water for example helps us to think of how 3 different
things can be one, but it ice doesn’t exist anymore when it becomes water; that
would be like saying the Father didn’t exist when Jesus came to Earth, or that
Jesus doesn’t know sit on the throne because the Holy Spirit is with us. The
egg fails because it doesn’t recognize the unity of the trinity. You can take
the away the shell of an egg and it is still an egg, you can’t take away the
Father and still call it God, if that were the case the trinity would be three
gods not one.
As humans, especially in this age of information we can
get really frustrated with the trinity. We believe that we should be able to
understand it, and if we can’t than there is something wrong with its
principle. Jesus’s discussion with the Pharisee Nicodemus in John 3 may give us
a way to go about addressing the trinity. This passage is loaded with verses
that are probably very familiar to us. We have the discussion of being born
again, and of course the famous John 3:16. Often lost in this dialogue is the
way that Jesus challenges Nicodemus’s way of thinking. Like us, Nicodemus wants
all the answers, he wants it all to make sense, and so when Jesus says we must
be born again, that just does not compute. How are we to be born again. Are we
to enter into our mother’s womb a second time? How? Sounds oddly familiar to our questions
about the trinity. But listen to how
Jesus responds, “The wind blows where it chooses, and
you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it
goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Jesus compares our knowledge to that of the
wind, we can’t fully define it or see it, but we know it. But still this answer
is not satisfying to Nicodemus, as it might not be to some of you. He again asks, “How can these things be?” to
which Jesus kind of mocks him, “Are you a teacher of
Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? Aren’t you supposed
to be smart, aren’t you supposed to be a teacher and leader for the people and
you don’t get it? “If I have told you about earthly
things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly
things.” And there’s the real kicker. In our search for truth and
knowledge we want to believe we can have answers for everything, and still
there are things here on Earth or in the universe that we simply can’t explain
or understand. If we fail to even understand these things, how do we expect to
understand God? The trinity is simply a
mystery, and all we know about it is through what has been revealed to us. What
we say about it is just our best understanding of it. The trinity is not a
theological concept for us to learn and fully understand, it is not theoretical
nonsense, it is the very nature of God which we as humans cannot fully
understand. So instead of asking how does it work, or how is it possible, maybe
we should instead be asking different questions about the trinity. Maybe we should
ask what would it mean if there was no
trinity.
How many of you love the Christmas season? Me too, if I’m
being honest I actually hate the summer. Being a fair skinned red head I
actually hate being in the sun, lying out on the beach doesn’t sound like
relaxing it sounds like torture. I actually prefer the cold and the chill of
Christmas time. I’ll take winter and Christmas over the dog days of summer
anyday. I love the decorations and the traditions. In Richmond one of those traditions happens
late on Christmas Eve. At the historic Byrd theater, they show the classic
Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” In the movie George Bailey played by
James Stewart faces many difficult situations causing him to wish that he had
never been born. With this wish an angel comes and shows George what the world
would look like without him. As he watches his family, friends, and city all
functioning as if he never existed, he begins to realize that his life really
did matter to so many. He in fact had a profound impact on the lives of so
many. In the end he is in fact pleading for Clarence the angel to send him
back, he wants to be with his wife and family, and celebrates when does in fact
return. It took seeing what the world would look like without him for George to
realize his importance.
Maybe we can take a cue
from this classic movie and think about what the world might look like without
the trinity, maybe then we can start to see why it is so important. As we do I
am sure we too we find ourselves falling into the trap of some of the classic
heresies, but even if we do, I think this little thought experiment will be
helpful. We may begin to understand the importance of our belief in the trinity
that separates us from our Unitarian friends. So let us think what would the world
look like without the trinity.
Let’s picture if God
was only a Unitarian God as some believe. At first it doesn’t really seem that
bad. You would still have the God of all creation who formed us in his image
and breathed into us the breath of life.
I could still stand on the top Mill Mountain like I did yesterday and
admire the beauty of creation all around me. As followers we could still
delight in a God who made covenant with us to be our God and for us to be God’s
people. This picture is not very different from the one that we typically
ascribe to God the Father, the first person of the trinity, and honestly this
view is not too different from how we typically think of God.
In this understanding however there would be no God
incarnate. A world without the trinity would not have a self-emptying God who
became human and humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross.
There would be no new Adam giving us as humans new life through his life death
and resurrection. There would in fact be no good news of Easter, no joy of
resurrection and no hope that we or any of creation would be saved. There would
be no great hymns of power in the blood, or Old rugged cross. If we did believe
in Jesus, he would either only be a man who would not have the power to save
us, or we would have to believe that he was a different, lesser God than God
the father we worship. When we look at what it would mean if there were no
trinity, we begin to see exactly what we would be missing, and they are somethings
that are essential to our faith.
And we haven’t even looked at all of what we would be
missing. That was just if there was not second person of the trinity, but what
would it look like if there were no Holy Spirit. There would be no Pentecost,
no birthday of the Church and likely no 3000 baptized on that day. If there was no Holy Spirit then Jesus’s
ascension would have been like abandonment. We would have had God live and
dwell with us, die and rise again only to have him leave without giving the Advocate
to be with us. The term A.D. when used to talk about years is often thought to
mean “after death” when it in fact means anno domine, the year of the Lord,
celebrating the resurrection of Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom of
God. But if there were no Holy Spirit would we still celebrate the year of the
Lord or would it mean for us after death; a time to remember when God stopped
being present with us. If there was no Holy Spirit our groans would simply be
groans, for we would not have the Spirit to intercede for us. Just as was the
case if there was no incarnate God, if there was no third person of the trinity
our very understanding and belief in God would be shattered. While we may not
be able to understand the trinity, we can understand how important it is.
Still there are many who will not like this explanation.
There are many who do not want to embrace the mystery that is the trinity. In
philosophy there is even a negative term for this mystery called ex machina.
Back in the time of Greek plays it was a common occurrence for there to be a
problem in the plot that nothing could solve until a God carried in by a
machine or ex machina would come in and solve. In philosophy this term is now
used whenever God is used as a quick fix to explain something that can’t be
explained. I am sure there are some who feel this way about the mystery that is
the Trinity, that when we don’t know we just chalk it up to being part of
mystery of God. Maybe this isn’t a bad
thing, as Jesus says if we can’t even understand these earthy things how are we
supposed to understand what is heavenly? Maybe the psalmist is right, and we
should ascribe to Lord glory and strength, ascribe to the Lord glory of his
name and worship the Lord in his Holy Splendor. Maybe instead of trying to
figure it all out we as simply called to cry “Holy, holy, holy; merciful and
mighty!
God in three Persons, blessèd Trinity!”
God in three Persons, blessèd Trinity!”
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