Message 06-03-07

 

Series:            What I Want to Know [Trinity]

Scripture:            John 16:12-15

 

Title:                                        The Trouble with Trinity

 

I am a man under authority. That doesn’t mean that I have authority but that I live under someone else’s command. I follow someone else’s orders on how to live. Where to live, where to work, how to decide issues… I turn all of this over to God. I pray about what I’m supposed to do. I pay attention and expect that God will speak to me during the day and call me into service. I’ve shared at other times about how I’ll pay attention to what I call “prompts” – a sense or a feeling or the feeling that I’m being told to do something – and I’ll follow the prompt. I believe that God expects me to make up my mind and handle all the regular parts of my day in a way that reflects his power and presence in my life. In other words I don’t bring every part of my day into prayer wondering whether God wants me to eat lunch today or something like that. What I do expect is that God will speak to me and call me into the work he has for me to do when he needs me. What I pray about is that I’ll be sensitive enough and open in my spirit enough to hear him and have the courage to follow it.

 

I’m sharing all this because I’m going to talk with you about a theological issue about how God works. It’s Trinity Sunday and on this day we consider the nature of God. When I’m going to study or explore theology the first place I go is to the Bible. I find out what the Bible says and I build my theology on that. So, when I say I’m a man under authority this is part of it. I expect that God will speak to me through the Bible and that the clearest, best information will come from there. This is my first step. Before I listen to other people and their opinions, before I look at my own feelings, I look to see what the Bible says and I try to explore that as completely as possible.

 

Now I have to admit that this is a bias, but I also have to admit that I recognize that I was taught a lot about what the Bible means, long before I was reading the Bible myself. One of the things I have to do is negotiate the theology that was built into me, to make sure it lines up with what the Bible actually says. That’s difficult and I can pretend that I escape it completely. I have to admit that some of what I was told about the Bible influences what I see in the Bible.

 

That’s probably part of the reason I have had so much trouble with the concept of “the Trinity” and maybe why you do too. At the beginning of the year, in my email “Connection News”, I asked for people to send me the kinds of questions they think about most about God, Jesus, Faith and the rest. I got some great questions sent to me. I’ve started bringing forward the answers to these questions in my messages. Some just fit with a particular Sunday, like today. This fall I’m planning a series called “What I Always Wanted to Know” in which we’ll look at the questions that didn’t fit with any particular Sunday. But today is Trinity Sunday and the “Trinity” is one of the things that I was asked to explore with you.

 

People have used a lot of images to discuss the Trinity. Eggs with yolks and white and shell, water with fluid and ice and steam, trees with roots and trunk and branches, shamrocks or three leaf clovers have all been used as examples. These never worked for me.

 

The Trinity is the message that there is a three in oneness to God and none of the images of three things having a connection worked for me. I think part of the reason they didn’t work is because I studied so deeply in the Old Testament. The heritage and roots of our faith are in the first part of the Bible. What we call the Old Testament was the whole Bible to Jesus. And there is a moment when Jesus is asked “What is the greatest commandment?”  His answer is the essential truth that sums up the entire book – But it doesn’t begin with a commandment. It begins with a claim. Jesus said, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Jesus then went on to say, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. This is the greatest commandment and there is another like it, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” The entire book is summed up in those words and I’ve used the paraphrase I love here before. Love God. Love People. Everything else will fall into place.

 

But this begins with this claim of Jesus, reflecting the words of God from the earliest part of the Bible, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

 

These words became the heart of a struggle for me. How are we to accept the idea of three in one when we are told that it isn’t three but one? Why do we even talk about three in one?

 

Back in 325AD, Christians came together to discuss their faith. In the town of Nicea the emperor Constantine and the Pope Sylvester called for a general synod, or gathering, of the leaders of the western church to discuss and clarify the faith of Christianity. We could spend a lot of time getting into all the politics of what went on there, but the truth is what we seek. It was at the Council of Nicea that the “Trinity” was put into place as a doctrine of Christianity. The question is what is the truth about the Trinity and about God.

 

There are really two things that helped me as I explored this and I lift them up to you in hopes that they will help you as well. The first was a little essay that was written by John Calvin in the 1500’s. In this essay he wrote about why we have a doctrine of the Trinity. It wasn’t about the Trinity just why have a doctrine on it in the first place. Basically he said there we have a doctrine of the Trinity so we can talk about what we experience of God. Christians make certain claims about God, that we’ve experienced God in a particular way in Jesus, but at the same time Christians are a people who stand under authority. They stand under the authority of the Bible, of Scripture. The Bible and Jesus himself tell us that God is one.

 

Regardless of the problems we might have with Constantine and the history of the church and the politics of the council of Nicea, the issue of how we understand God remains. This is a question that each Christian has to face. Do we make up what we think about God or do we allow God to express God’s self to us. Do we live under the authority of God?

 

I said there were two things that helped me with the concept of the Trinity and the first was the little essay by Calvin. Calvin wrote that we need some way to talk about how we experience God. And that led me to the second thing that helped. How do I experience God and how have Christians experienced God over the years? At some time in the life of each Christian it is good to consider the answer to this question. At the heart of it this is the question of the council of Nicea. And the answer is simple. We have experienced God as the creator of all. We have experienced God fully expressing Godself in Jesus. And everything we experience of God now is the Holy Spirit.

 

What Christians experienced was the truth that God exists and has come seeking after us. What Christians experienced was that Jesus existed and gave us the clearest expression of God. What Christians experienced was the reality that after Jesus was no longer on the planet we weren’t left without a clear connection to God. What Christians experienced was that God is right here with us now.

 

When Socrates died he said to his disciples, I leave you as orphans in the world. His truth, the experience of living with him and coming to understand the world through his eyes died with him. But when Jesus was going to die he said to his disciples, “I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.” And what he promised was that his “coming” would be found in the Holy Spirit.

 

 

What we experience of God now is what we call the Holy Spirit. And so we look around us and we experience the truth of the creation of the world and the universe. We read in our Bibles and we experience the truth of Jesus – the clearest expression of God we can find. But when we talk to God now, when we listen for God’s voice in our hearts and minds, we are hearing the Holy Spirit.

 

If there is anything that explains this to me in a concrete way it is what I spoke of with the children this morning. The clearest picture and experience of God that I find is when we become one. When we move as one and think as one. I find the Trinity reveals that God’s nature is one of being a servant, of love and of nurture and that is experienced in community. The best description I have of the Trinity now is “community.” It is the giving and receiving of love.

 

It is God.