June 3, 2007: “What’s the Big Deal With the Trinity?”
Sermon
June 3, 2007
Trinity Sunday (C)
Dancing is a beautiful sight, if it’s done right. Recently, our church has developed a ministry for our young girls who want to dance, giving them the opportunity to lead us in worship through their movements. I love to watch good dancers at work practicing their art. “Dancing with the Stars” has brought dancing back into the public eye, and I think we’ll see a lot more young people getting into different kinds of dance because of it. That’s a great thing.
What does this have to do with the Trinity? You’ll find out…
How do we talk about the Trinity? It’s one thing to give little illustrations like the one I used for the children’s sermon, but the fact is that this is an awfully hard concept to understand – and one that no one has completely gotten, even though there have been BOOKS and BOOKS written about it.
And why is it important to, anyway?
It’s not up to us to understand every nuance of the Trinity, but it does help us to understand where the doctrine came from and how it makes a difference to us today.
1. It describes the God we worship.
There is the idea that there’s less of a need for the Trinity today than there used to be, or that it was once more understood than it is today. I don’t think this is true. People have ALWAYS had trouble understanding the Trinity. In the days when Christians sadly killed other Christians who didn’t believe just like them, people were killed over this very doctrine.
There is also the idea that this doctrine was just made up out of the blue, or patched together out of a bunch of separate ideas. This would be easy to believe since, even though there are 120 or more references to the trinity in the Bible, there is no direct teaching on the Trinity to be found in all the scriptures. While it’s true that the doctrine was not fully developed until nearly 400 years after Jesus, this does not mean that it was thrown together on a whim. Far from it – the early Christians debated and argued over who Jesus was and what to make of the Father and Spirit for years and years before an agreement was finally reached.
Not just there for confusion – The Trinity wasn’t just put together because people wanted something confusing about their religion. Who on earth wants a complex, mysterious and baffling religion?! We are no different from the earliest human beings in our desire for a religion that is simple, easy to understand and to practice. No, this complex doctrine of three in one was not something people came up with to make Christianity more attractive – if anything, it has made Christianity less attractive over the centuries!
Doctrine describes experience – No, the Trinity came about, like many other doctrines, because people needed a name for something they had already experienced. The disciples were almost all Jews who believed in God long before they ever met Jesus for the first time. Yet, by the end of their three years with him, they had watched him perform countless miracles, suffer and die, and raise from the dead. By the time they saw their last of Jesus, these men had no other option but to believe that Jesus was, in some way, God himself.
Yet this “God himself” had gone out daily to pray to “God himself,” had even prayed with and for his followers. God praying to God? How could this be?
And this God, praying to God, promised that another Comforter would come and would remind them of all the things Jesus had said and done, would empower them to be his witnesses, would live inside them. And once that Spirit came, once again they had no choice but to understand that in some strange way God had come to live inside them too – not as Jesus, who had gone away, and not as the Father, to whom they still prayed and saw at work in the world. Here was yet a third “version” of God.
So what to do? First they had known God as someone removed and enthroned above. Then they had known God as someone who walked beside them. Then they had known God who lived within them. How to understand God in this way?
So the doctrine of the Trinity was born. Not because someone said, “hey, let’s come up with something really cool to make our religion different!” Not because Jesus had sat them down and given them a lecture about it. But because, like all of us, they struggled to find a way to express the things they had experienced of God.
Following the map – What difference does the Trinity make to us? According to C.S. Lewis, doctrines of theology like the Trinity make the same difference to us that a map makes. We look at maps of the Atlantic Ocean today, and we see a lot of blue with spots and typing on it. But while it seems simple to us, what’s actually represented on that map is something very different than a piece of paper with blue ink on it.
It’s one thing to look at a map of the ocean, and another thing to stand on the beach and look at it. It’s one thing to run your finger across the Atlantic ocean on your desk globe, and another thing to get on a canoe in Virginia Beach and strike out for England. Even though the map may look tame, the ocean is anything but tame. And the map will help us get from one side to the other.
And we have that map because every island dot, every beach, every trade route was tediously explored and mapped by sailors over the course of centuries. Now that we’ve been in space, we can make pictures of the world and make maps of places we’ve never been. But before that time, every map had to be made by someone going there – writing out and drawing their own experiences on paper for those who come behind them.
Relying on the experiences of our forebears – So in something that is so complex, so difficult to grasp, we find something that is absolutely essential. It would be silly (and suicidal) to hop in a canoe and head to England without a map and compass – we have to rely on the experiences and wisdom of those who came before us. It would be just as silly to set out to know a God without the wisdom of those who have experienced him before us. And those who experienced God before us have experienced him as Trinity.
Makes us distinct – The Doctrine of the Trinity makes Christianity distinct. No other religion has a God who is at once enthroned in heaven, walking and suffering alongside us as one of us, and living within us and empowering us to do his will. Whether you realize it or not, you
2. You don’t have to understand it to be able to appreciate it.
The older I get, the more I know that I DON’T know. I understand my limitations. And to me, the mystery of God, the vastness of our amazing God – is both frightening to me AND comforting.
While he was working on the doctrine of the Trinity, St. Augustine had a dream one night in which he saw a little boy on the beach. The by had dug a hole in the sand, and he had a spoon and was trying desperately to spoon the water of the ocean into the hole – which of course swallowed up the water within moments. An angel told Augustine: this is how it is with humans trying to understand God. Our minds simply cannot hold it all.
It’s frightening because, like Augustine, we come to realize that there IS something bigger than us. It’s incomprehensible, impossible to understand. As humans, we want things that are simple and things we can control (just look at modern science and technology). But God is neither. I think that might be why so many modern folks are beginning to reject the notion of God altogether.
But it’s also comforting.
As uncontrollable as we are, we can take comfort in the fact that someone IS in control.
As often as we face uncertainty, we know there IS someone who knows.
As small and inconsequential as we feel sometimes, there IS someone who cares for us.
As little as we can do, there IS someone who can do the impossible.
3. It is the whole reason we exist.
This is where it gets practical.
Think of the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit as the kind that is developed in a true, loving marriage or a deep friendship. In some way that is indescribable, the two really do become one – they begin to complete one another’s thoughts, to understand the other and know what the other needs. There’s trust and honesty that overcome the normal walls we usually put up between ourselves and other people. The two people are still individuals, and yet they are together making a oneness that is bigger than their individual selves. It’s like we live in a dance – moving together to the same music, moving in the same directions, following and leading, working together and not apart.
Now, if you live in that kind of relationship – if you have that kind of marriage or friendship with someone – you know that it’s not an easy thing. In fact, it’s one of the hardest things we do because it requires us to live outside ourselves. And as wonderful as it is, for some of you it might be all you need – you might be perfectly happy if you could move to a deserted island with that person for the rest of your life!
But as satisfying as that kind of relationship is, and as hard as it would be to share it, imagine what it would be like if you could extend that relationship to include EVERYONE. What kind of place would our world be if we could all relate to each other that way?
Well, that’s exactly what has happened on a divine level. God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have existed for as long as time has been. They have a perfect relationship of love and care for one another, understanding and knowing each other perfectly as One. And God could have stayed that way forever, never needing anything or anyone else. They have always existed in a beautiful dance.
And yet, God chose to make others. And not just to make others, but to offer those others a chance to join in the dance – those ‘others’ are you and me, in case you didn’t realize it. God made us in his image, and has given all of us the chance to join in that beautiful dance, the relationship of perfect love and care.
And rather than that ruining what was there (“three’s a crowd… or in God’s case, Three’s company and FOUR’s a crowd), the dance becomes even more beautiful because all of creation is joining in. And God’s desire is that ALL of creation might join in the dance at last!
Now you and I have a choice. We can work against the dance – step on toes, trip others up, generally move against the flow – or we can join the dance, and invite others to join as well. You can call it salvation, redemption, whatever you like. But when we accept God’s love, we join into that perfect relationship – and begin to extend that kind of relationship to others.
Closing
So this funny little doctrine of the Trinity turns out to be anything but trivial. It’s the whole root of who God is, and what God intends to do with the world.
Does it sound froofy and mysterious? It is. Does it sound confusing? It is. Does it sound campy and far-fetched? It is. And that’s OK. And despite all that, these are the basic building blocks of our faith – the truth of what others have experienced about God, and what YOU and I can experience about God.
So does the doctrine of the Trinity make a difference to you and to me? Absolutely. All the difference in the world.
