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Sunday May 30, 2010 "Many Things to Say" John 16: 12-16 |
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Location: Blogs Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 6/2/2010 9:15 AM | One of the friends I met in seminary, Drew Johnson, could always be counted on to sum things up succinctly and accurately. He was one of those people who didn’t always get the highest grade in the class, but it always seemed like he understood things better than anyone. I can still remember sitting in the lounge at Candler, discussing some of the more difficult issues that arose in our classes and how his take on it almost always illuminated my thinking.
After a weekday worship service where the preacher’s message was an exploration of the trinity and our understanding of it, we were on our way to lunch, both deep in thought. Drew broke the silence of our walk by asking, “You know why we only celebrate Trinity Sunday once a year, don’t you?” I responded that I did not. “Because,” he said, “if we spent any more time than that trying to figure out the trinity, our heads would explode.”
Well, it’s Trinity Sunday. And exploding heads or not, it is something that helps define who we are as Christians, so it is something that we must at least address.
Most of us would accept that we, as Christians, are Trinitarians. We believe in the notion of God being present in three different, yet equally powerful, forms. We have made it a centerpiece of our worship in a couple of ways. First, during the Gloria Patri, we sing, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost…” Second, we refer to the Trinity again in the Doxology when we sing “Creator, Christ and Holy Ghost.”
Most of us could give at least a cursory explanation of the trinity. No matter the language we use – father, son, holy ghost or creator, Christ, holy spirit or maker, redeemer, sustainer or any of a whole myriad of possibilities – the idea of three different parts of the God-head is something Christians have understood for a long time.
Now, I say understood in only the loosest of ways. It is one thing for me to say I understand that God exists in three forms; it is something else altogether for me to say that I truly, understand how that works. Three in one? How can each be equally God? How does the existence of one not diminish the existence of the others? How could Jesus be God on earth, and God still be in heaven? Fully human and fully divine is but one of the many mysteries of the trinity! And just how does this Holy Spirit work anyway? How can the Spirit be with each and everyone of us, equally and constantly, and also be in heaven, where by the way, Christ sits, just to the right of God? But wait a second, how can that be? Aren’t they one and the same?
Cover your ears, because soon, if my friend Drew is right, we are venturing into exploding head territory.
It is one of the great mysteries, maybe the great mystery, of our faith. But take heart, no one fully understands it. Even the person many believe to be the preeminent theologian of the 20th century, Karl Barth, considered anyone’s claim to understand the trinity to be one of the great delusions of all time. This man who spent years and years writing the most exhaustive systematic theological work of all time, the 14 volume “Church Dogmatics”, believed that seeking to understand something and truly understanding something are two very distinct things. While he applauded our attempts to understand, he firmly believed that some things would not and could not be truly understood. The trinity was one of those things.
I bet you have heard lots of different sermons about the trinity, most of which were not very helpful, really. I once heard a preacher solemnly explain that the Trinitarian God is just like a pretzel. Three loops of dough, interconnected. I once heard a sermon that likened the trinity to a cloverleaf, three leaves fed by the same nutritional stem. I have heard H20 used as a teaching device, because H20 exists in three states: frozen (ice), liquid (water) and gas (steam vapor) – just like God exists in three states…
I think you get the picture. We try so hard, and so valiantly to understand, but God is not just like H20; God is not just like a cloverleaf; God is not just like a pretzel.
Personally, I think the function of Trinity Sunday is to keep us humble. To remind us that we don’t know everything. But even more importantly, I think it serves to remind us that we don’t need to know everything. This, of course, does not mean that we won’t continue to try to understand, or that we will stop asking questions. Our questions are important, and we can never know which of our questions are unanswerable.
It seems to me that Jesus alludes to this very predicament when he takes his leave of the disciples and ascends into heaven. In the brief passage from John that we heard read this morning, I think many of our questions are addressed. Not answered, mind you, but addressed in a way that will make some sense to us.
First, Jesus says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”
This statement may not seem like much, but I think it gives us a firm foundation to stand on in the midst of the mysteries of our faith, the unanswerable questions of our journey. Jesus had many things to say, but he HAD to leave them unsaid. Not because he couldn’t articulate them, or because he didn’t have the time. He left them unsaid because we would not be unable to understand them. This is a strong statement of our humanity, a firm understanding of the limits of human understanding. But as the passage progresses, Jesus is also making a pretty strong statement about the nature of God.
Continuing on, Jesus said, a spirit is coming, God’s Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth. The Spirit that was made known on Pentecost, while the disciples awaited guidance. A spirit that will guide us toward truth and greater understanding.
At the end of the passage he makes his great Trinitarian statement: “(The Holy Spirit) will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine.”
In that brief statement comes our understanding, such as it is, of the trinity. All three aspects of God: creator, Christ and holy spirit and fully contained in each other.
This is not a long passage, but it is a powerful statement of who we are, and who God is.
Jesus confirms what we already know: we have limits to what we can understand. If we claim to have all the answers, we delude ourselves. We can’t bear everything. That’s just reality.
Just as real is what this passage says of God. Even though we may not understand everything, God surpasses all of that. The promise of the Spirit’s presence is not only a great gift, but a great reality. God is very near, very close. As the writer Robert McMorley has noted: “Through the presence of the spirit, God walks with us in the garden. He leads us through the desert. He makes his home in our sanctuaries. He is the light we see by. He wipes every tear from our eyes.”
McMorley is right. But still, we recognize that as present as God is, God also is not completely knowable. That is a very real tension in our life. And that tension is where we live out our faith.
It is a tension that gives rise to our celebrations, and our contemplation. It is God’s presence that brings us together, and it is God’s mysteries that we wonder about.
But there is still another message in this passage that we must not let slip by as we ruminate about the great mysteries of God.
We spend a lot of time deeply contemplating the “how” of God? How could the trinity by possible? How could Jesus be fully human and fully divine? How can the Holy Spirit be fully present to all of us simultaneously?
“How” is a great question. I once took a journalism class in college where the professor told us that the first question of journalism is always “how?” He went on to say that the what, the when and the where questions were all part and parcel of the “how” question, but good reporting will make sure that the “how” question was dealt with in any story.
He was quick to point out, however, that while the “how” question may be the first question to be dealt with and is the mark of good journalism, the mark of great journalism is an ability to deal with the “why?” question.
So, we must ask ourselves today, “Why does the trinity exist?” And the only answer I can come up with is because God is a God of love.
Everything thing we know of God, from every possible source, shows us over and over again that God’s love is the one constant in everything that we know.
Beginning with that first creative act, God’s love has shown itself time and time again through God’s amazing acts of forgiveness and guidance and redemption and grace and second chances and third chances. Humanity has struggled throughout history with how to respond, but God always found a way clear to pursue love, no matter what. Even as God dealt with our Hebrew ancestors as a parent deals with a rebellious childe, that same parental love shone through in the fulfillment of God’s covenant that began with Abraham. Even as humanity slipped further and further away from God, God sent a visible sign in the person of Jesus Christ, to let the world know that God seeks a personal relationship with each and every one of us. Even as Christ ascended into heaven, God sent the Holy Spirit to be here to comfort us and guide us and lead us to places like this, where surrounded by others of like mind and desires, we can ask our questions, sing our praises and give thanks for all the good gifts that have been showered upon us.
There is no doubt, we still have lots of questions, questions that hit us where we live. Questions about how we can recognize the spirit’s guidance and how we are to respond. Questions of why we still must endure difficult times, even as God walks with us. Questions of where God is leading us. Questions of how we are to live our lives.
These are all questions that I hope we can deal with over the coming weeks and months. Questions that we can raise in our Bible studies, in our small group discussions, in worship. Questions that will bring us closer a more complete experience of God, even as we continue to struggle with those things that our beyond our comprehension. But we will only move forward in our understanding by continuing to ask the questions.
This then, is the legacy of Trinity Sunday: the idea that while there will always be a gap between what we know and what we don’t know. That makes our questioning all the more important, because if we sit back and allow ourselves to repeatedly say, “God only knows” that gap has no chance of being narrowed.
But here is what we do know: we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that God loves us. Our great creator God, the God who made the universe and all that exists in it, the God who is one in three and three in one, the God who came and lived among us, died and was resurrected, the God whose presence is felt all around us, the God who was and is and is to come, loves us deeply, passionately and completely.
And when we have asked all our questions of how and why, there is one very important question that only we can answer: what are we going to do about it?
Let us pray: Gracious God, we have so many questions. With the beauty of your creation all around us, with the truth of the redemptive power of your grace made clear to us in Christ Jesus, and with the guidance of your Holy Spirit, know that we raise our questions so that we might know you better and love you more fully with each passing day. Amen. | | | Permalink | Trackback |
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