“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Sermon for Trinity Sunday
| Text: Isaiah 55:9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” |
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A mystery yet personal
As I sat down to prepare this
sermon, I reckon I could hear a collective sigh from pastors and priests in
their studies and vestries around the country as they considered what they could
say on a day when the focus is not on a biblical event but on a doctrine of the
church.
Trinity Sunday strikes fear in
the hearts of preachers because there is an assumption that somehow, they are
supposed to explain the Trinity; provide an inspirational and motivational
sermon on the Trinity that will lift every person in the pew to new
understandings of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
As everyone knows who has ever
tried to do this, it’s not possible to adequately explain the Holy Trinity.
And even if I tried, I’m sure I would
put you all to sleep. It’s like
trying to tell you the history of the frying pan and make it interesting.
It’s not that the teaching about
God being Three persons in One is unimportant, or irrelevant.
Quite the opposite. It’s not
that the concept of God being Father, Son and Holy Spirit is totally
inconceivable and impossible. In
some way, even our limited minds can manage to grasp the Trinity in some small
way, even if it is describing each person in the Trinity separately as we do in
the creeds.
But the three persons of the
Trinity are far more interconnected than the creeds suggest, and this
interrelatedness, this interconnection between the persons of the Trinity leads
us to ask so many questions.
Questions that we can’t answer. How
can the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit be three yet one God and how do
they interact and react individually and independently with one another.
In the end we need to acknowledge what God says in Isaiah, “As the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my
thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).
One thing we do know is that there is a bond of powerful love between the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
In the end, we simply have to
say that the Trinity is a mystery.
This isn’t a cop out. It is an
admission that God is far greater than any human explanation.
The good news is that even
though we have a mystery that defies explanation, that doesn’t matter.
Faith does not rely on explanations of how the three persons of the
Trinity work. The doctrine of the
Trinity is not so much about nailing down who God is but about the relationship
between God and us. It’s about the
experience of God in our lives.
Let’s look at it this way.
Say your son or daughter or grandchild asks you to explain in detail what
it’s like to fall in love. He or
she asks,
How do you fall in love with someone?
How do you know when you’re in love?
What being in love feel like?
How do you know when the other person loves you?
In other words, the questioner wants a complete description of what it means to
be in love with another person.
My guess is that you would have
a difficult time. I know I would.
I could talk about what I know from my own experience but that might be
quite different to someone else’s experience.
Is it possible to describe what it really means to be in love to someone who has
never experienced this kind of love to the point that he/she would really
understand?
You may try to describe what it’s like when love for another person takes
control of your heart and mind and every waking moment, but this kind of love
will remain a mystery to your listener. Why?
Because falling in love is only something you can experience.
I could go one step further.
Could you write down a step-by-step guide to help your enquirer, who has
never experienced true love, fall in love?
It can’t be done. However,
the truth is this – your enquirer doesn’t need a step-by-step guide because love
is an experience and will come whether he/she understands the process or not.
Even if you aren’t looking for love, it will still find you.
What I am saying is that because
something is a mystery, and love for another person is one of those mysteries of
life, that doesn’t mean that it can’t have a powerful effect on our lives.
The same thing applies to God.
We can understand certain things about God but when it comes to the
Trinity, we find our understanding to be very limited.
Like trying to describe love to someone
who has never experienced love, so we find trying to describe the Trinity an
impossibility. However, we know the
Trinity through experiencing what happens in us and to us when God’s love takes
control of our lives.
Before the idea of a Triune God
was ever formulated, as we find it in the Creeds we confess every Sunday, people
were already experiencing God in different ways as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We see that in the readings today.
In the Romans reading we hear Paul say, “We have been justified with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ … God’s love has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:1,5) and in the Gospel reading
Jesus says, “All that belongs to the Father is mine.
That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make
known to you” (John 15:15). In
just these verses Paul and Jesus are describing how different persons of the
Trinity interact with us.
Still confused?
Don’t worry. Don’t let it
worry you that you struggle with understanding the three-in-one God.
Remember this is a mystery in much the same way that Holy Communion is a
mystery – that Jesus’ body and blood is given to us with the bread and wine, or
that simple water and words spoken over a person can have such power in baptism.
This little story might help.
In a peaceful village nestled between mountains and forests, there stood
a single ancient flame at the heart of the town square.
The villagers called it ‘The Flame of
Life’. It never flickered out, no matter
the weather or time of day. It was warm,
constant, and gave light through even the darkest nights.
One day, a child named Eli asked
the village elder, “How can one flame do so many things at once?
It warms me, it lights the night, and
I’ve heard it can even cook food and protect us from wild animals.”
The elder smiled gently.
“Come with me.”
He led Eli to the flame and took
three items: a lantern, a cooking pot, and a torch.
With a burning stick lit from the
ancient flame, he lit each one.
“See here,” he said, pointing to
the lantern. “The light that guides your
steps in the dark — this is like the Son, who came to show us the way through
sin and death.”
Then he gestured to the cooking
pot, now simmering with stew. “This
warmth that nourishes and sustains — this is like the Father, who daily provides
for our needs and gives life.”
Finally, he raised the burning
torch, its fire fierce and moving. “And
this — this is like the Spirit, who goes with you, giving courage and comfort,
spreading warmth and light wherever it moves.”
Eli looked at the three flames,
then back at the original. “But… they’re
all from the same fire?”
The elder nodded.
“Exactly.
They look different, act differently,
yet they all come from the same source. One
flame. Three connections with us.
And still, they are one.”
You might have noticed that the
old man described how each person of the Trinity effects the lives of mere
mortals like you and me. The
Trinity is not isolated out there somewhere.
God is not mighty and majestic somewhere in the universe.
The Trinity is very much involved in every person’s life everywhere at
the same time.
God is relational.
God seeks to relate to us. God is
personal. In other words, he is
love and is constantly seeking to be in a relationship with us.
We are told, “We know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love” (1 John 4:16).
He is always seeking out
every person on this planet and wants to be in a relationship with even the
person who denies God, deserts his ways, follows paths that lead to hurt and
pain. He is like the father in
Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son – always waiting to be in a relationship with
his child again with an intense and never-ending love.
God became a human, walking
among us, suffering as we suffer, and showing us the loving heart of God,
inviting us into a relationship with God.
Jesus doesn’t say that we must be more loving to be loved by God, or that
we should at least try to be more loving.
Jesus came as the one who loved us completely just as we are and in this
total love for us, gave himself completely for us.
In doing this he invites us into a loving relationship with the Triune
God.
We see this happening at our
baptism. The Father, Son and Holy
Spirit welcome us into a loving relationship and forgive us, give us eternal
life, walk beside us in our earthly journey.
The Triune God promises to love us unconditionally, even if our love
toward God is often shaky and our faith less than bold.
God reveals himself to us in a
relational way – a way in which we can more easily understand him.
He knows we can’t really cope with the complexities of the Trinity, so he
has shown us himself as our Father, our maker and provider, and carer and
everything that goes with what we know as a loving parent.
He reveals himself as the Son,
Jesus – a very human person who brings into our lives forgiveness, new life, new
ways of living, love to empower every relationship.
He reveals himself as the Holy
Spirit who is always working in us like a skilled artist, shaping us to be more
like God, doing the works of God, loving others as God has loved us.
I know and you know that this
does not adequately describe the God who loves us so powerfully, but at least it
gives us a handle to understand that God is very personal, he is here in a
relationship with us. That’s why we
have come to this place for worship.
We belong to God. In God we
have found our home, in God we are loved warts and all.
When we talk to other people
about God, this is what we should tell them.
God is the God of relationships.
He is relevant to everything that is happening in people’s lives.
God is love. The Father, Son
and Holy Spirit are part of every moment of laughter, every tear and every cry
of pain and grief. In God’s love, there
is strength, comfort, hope.
In a moment we will come to Holy
Communion. The Triune God whose
love blazes across the universe on the one hand and on the other hand, guides
our footsteps every day, is now the God who says to us, “Take and eat, this is
my body. Take and drink this is my
blood”. God is offering himself
again in love. Here is the body and
blood of Jesus, heaven and earth meet and the saints above and the saints on
earth celebrate the love of the Triune God.
We may not understand everything
about the Trinity, but we do know that God loves us deeply and, on this day, we
celebrate with thanksgiving and praise the wonder of the love that the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit have for each of us.
© Pastor Vince
Gerhardy
E-mail: sermonsonthenet@outlook.com
